Polishing a Mini Cooper with hood decals

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mcrider

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Greetings Everyone,
I will be helping a friend detail his red Mini Cooper next week. He has the model with the two symmetrical white decal stripes on the hood. We inspected the paint and observed that there were sufficient swirl marks that warranted a two step polishing process. After washing and claying we will be using the Griot's Garage Machine Polish 2 for correction (I also have some leftover XMT #3) followed by their One Step Paint Sealant (Machine Polish 3 with sealant and white pad) and then topped off with their Premium Carnuba paste wax. My concern is using the DA polisher (GG 6") over the decals. We noticed the decals have the same swirl marks as the hood paint. Should we hand rub the decals with MP3 or will it be safe to use the DA on the decals at perhaps a slower speed. I find when I use the GG 6" with LC orange pads at a speed of 5 or 6 the pads heat up even though I'm not applying much pressure so I back it down to 4-4.5. Thanks in advance for your help.
 
Unfortunately, decals can't really be polished. If they have swirls and scratches, you may be able to take them out with the polisher, but chances are you are going to damage the vinyl or make it so that it doesn't last for nearly as long as it should've.
 
I have a Cooper that had stripes on the hood. I thought about polishing them by hand with something made more for plastic seeing as they are vinyl. Unfortunately I didn't try, I just ended up removing them.
 
Hi Guys, thanks for the responses. Since the decals are vinyl I'll be taping them off and keeping the DA away from them. But I do have a few questions as to what I can still do to clean and fill the scratches on the decals:

1) Can I still lightly clay the decals?
2) Next, can I use a product such as GG Paint Glaze as a WOWO (no hard hand polishing) since it has some fillers in it to hide the swirl marks?
3) Can I then follow up with GG Paint Sealant and Preium Carnuba Paste Wax (both applied by hand)? I'll be doing the whole car with GG One Step Paint Sealant but thought that product might be overkill with the Paint Glaze.
4) Or, since the decals are vinyl, just use something like 303 as the final protectant (LSP)?
If 303 is the answer, do I do any of the above steps at all?

Thanks again ...
 
mcrider said:
Hi Guys, thanks for the responses. Since the decals are vinyl I'll be taping them off and keeping the DA away from them. But I do have a few questions as to what I can still do to clean and fill the scratches on the decals:

1) Can I still lightly clay the decals?
2) Next, can I use a product such as GG Paint Glaze as a WOWO (no hard hand polishing) since it has some fillers in it to hide the swirl marks?
3) Can I then follow up with GG Paint Sealant and Preium Carnuba Paste Wax (both applied by hand)? I'll be doing the whole car with GG One Step Paint Sealant but thought that product might be overkill with the Paint Glaze.
4) Or, since the decals are vinyl, just use something like 303 as the final protectant (LSP)?
If 303 is the answer, do I do any of the above steps at all?

Thanks again ...
Click to expand...

1) Yes, I do all the time when I clay.
2) Uhh some people say that waxes, glazes, polishes are bad for the vinyl and it will dry it out and cause to prematurely fail. If you have good quality vinyl, then I would say go for it. I have 3M 1080 Vinyl on my car (the best vinyl in the business I'm told) and I have waxed it, clayed it, and opticoated it and all seemed to benefit the vinyl and look of the entire car. Final answer, up to you, but know the risks.
3) Same as above.
4) Never used it on the vinyl, so can't answer you there.


My opinion, look into opticoat.

Two options:

1)Apply opticoat on the vinyls before putting any wax or sealant on the car paint.
2) Or just put opticoat on the entire car.

If you choose 1, if you put opticoat on the vinyl before anything else, if you accidentally get wax on the vinyl, you won't really get it on the vinyl, but rather on the opticoat. And since it's on the opticoat, it shouldn't negatively affect the vinyl in any way.
 
Just finished the 2005 Mini yesterday. Used the GG One Step sealant on the paint with an orange pad and taped off the decals. Used a slightly more corrective hand-rubbed polish on the decals. Was able to polish out a lot of the cobwebs/swirls on the paint with the AIO combo. Topped it all off with a Carnuba paste wax. Looks Awesome.
My friend was very very happy (and so was I). This was the first time he'd had this level of detailing done to any of his cars.
Thanks to everyone for your suggestions, I really appreciated it.
Also, thanks to Mike Phillips and his "Art of Detainlg" book - a recent birthday present and, like this forum, an invaluable resource.
 
Great to hear!! Did you chemically strip a section to see how well it removed defects?? I always wondered about griots one step.


Sent from my iPhone using AG Online
 
Yes. After washing, GG Paint Prep (chemical stripper), claying and taping, we did a test section on the hood with the GG One-Step Sealant and their orange pad. The One-Step is basically their Machine Polish 3 with Sealant. I've used Klasse AIO and XMT 360 before and I think they're all good products. We did have to go back to a couple of sections with a second pass for more correction. We used the GG Fine Hand Polish (light hand rub application) followed by GG Paint Sealant for the decals as we did not want to risk taking off too much material. Carnuba paste wax topper made my friend absolutely thrilled. It looks pretty good for an '05. We didn't get all the swirls and scratches out but if it's okay with him it's sorta okay with me, if know what I mean. We spent 8 hours on the project and could have used a more corrective polish followed with a fine polish but time was limited.
Griot's has a store in Tacoma, Wa., and I live in the Seattle area so it's convenient for me to stop in as I grew up in Tacoma and still have family there that I visit frequently.
I did go through 4 orange pads - one exploded on me because I wasn't cleaning it frequently enough (lesson learned). I may be looking into the Grit Guard Pad Cleaner since I seem to be doing more and more family and friend's cars. Makes for a long day but to see the smile on their faces when you're all done makes it worth it.
Happy detailing and may the wind always blow the dust away from you :)
 
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