Mike and members,
Thanks for your answers and help.
I don't have too much experience doing it. In fact, I did polishing for a body shop around 10 years ago using 3M products. ( I only worked this field for a year or so)
Anyway, it is my personal car that was painted last month. I am not aspiring a show job but a decent one.
It would be our pleasure to help see you through to success.
What I am planning to do is it :
Wet-sanding with a 2000 grit as best as I can without over do it.
Buffing it with a rotary polisher at around 1500 rmp using Ultra Cutting Creme from Presta. It is a medium-aggressive compound designed to remove the marks left by 1200 or finer grits.
All good so far...
The pad is a new Meguiars 8" yellow pad. I also have a new 3M wool pad that may use.
Safe the Megs pad for polishing with the swirl remover, you need to get an aggressive wool cutting pad and a spur to remove your sanding marks. The Spur is to clean your wool pad to make buffing easier and faster. You can use a screwdriver or the end of an open-end wrench but a spur works so much better.
The fibers of a wool cutting pad are cutters in and of themselves and together with the abrasives you can cut your sanding marks out faster and a lot more effectively.
Then,
Polishing it with a Presta Swirl Remover using a black foam pad (Cut and Shine)
If the black foam is a soft finishing pad you'll likely need the "yellow polishing" pad to remove the swirls. You'll need the abrasives in the Presta product PLUS the aggressiveness of the foam to remove enough paint to remove the swirls left by the Presta compound and the fibers of the wool cutting pad.
You might be able to do it with a softer foam pad but you won't know until you do some testing.
That'll work.
I went to the paint store to buy a Presta Ultra Polish compound which I guess is a microfinish compound. I wanted to use it after the Ultra Cutting Compound, but the store owner discussed me it and argued against this idea. He told me since my car is a light color, I don't need to use micro-finish compounds but only compound and swirl remover.
He told me only dark or black cars need to be polished 3 steps using compound-polish-swirl remover.
What he meant is it's only on darker colors that you can see swirls, it's harder to see them on lighter colors so it's okay to do mediocre work on lighter colors. This is an example of no passion for the craft. Nothing wrong with his approach is you don't mind mediocre results but this forum and most all detailing forums are filled with people pursuing excellence, not mediocre.
You want these kind of results no matter what kind color or kind of paint you have.
The worse thing is he told me since I don't own a DA polisher, and all the job will be done with a rotary, if I use the compound-polish steps only, there will be visible marks or pad traces. Instead, he told me that using the compound-swirl remover steps, I won't see any traces at all.
That doesn't make sense in the context of what he said about dark and light colored paints.
Read this --carefully
Hologram Free with a Rotary Buffer
It was a conflict for me since I am new in this, so I followed the paint store owner.
I don't want to over-complicate it and will do my best to get a decent finish. I know you are all professionals and master in this matter. I only one to get guidance to do a decent job using the shorter and less complicated steps.
I really appreciate your help.
Jorge.
I've never used Presta products so I don't know how they compare with other Pro versions like Meguiar's, Menzerna and Optimum.
If you only want to use a rotary buffer then I would recommend for your last machine step you invest in some Menzerna
SF 4500 – Super Finish Polish (PO85RD)
Menzerna - New Names and Product Numbers
I couldn't see them when I was doing it during the day. I don't know if still need to apply more swirl remover or if a microfinish compound such as M-205 will do the trick to remove them.
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