wolfgang paintwork polish enhancer scratches my paint

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coop creek

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OK, first post. My project is a Harley Street Glide, it's a few months old, dark blue (black with some blue in it). I'm prepping it to apply Wolfgang paint sealant. A few areas need polishing and I got a 3" Griots DA polisher and Chemical Guy's V36 and V38 for that. Other areas don't need polish (or are not accessible to the machine) so I got the Wolfgang product for these areas. I tried applying it by hand with a foam applicator (on the batwing fairing) and it left fine scratches in the finish. I tried it again on a test spot using a microfiber applicator, this time pre-coating the pad with the product, and it still left long sweeping scratches in the direction of application. Do you have any suggestions regarding application?
 
That product has no abrasives that I know of.


Sent from my iPhone using AGOnline
 
It's acting like it has abrasives in it, either I'm doing something wrong or it's the wrong product for the paint.
 
It might not be the product and could be the applicator(s) you tried.

I'm not familiar with Harley's paint, but I've encountered some vehicles where the paint is VERY soft and simply rubbing my finger on a spot could mar the finish. For the area you describe you may need a really soft MF towel and very light pressure to prevent marring the paint.
 
Harley paint is notorious for being soft. I had a vivid black road king, and it scratched and marred just from looking at it. Traded it in for a 2017 Pearl white Street Glide Special, and never looked back. Good luck, I hope you figure it out.
 
Like said above, I bet it's not the product but instead the media you're using to apply it. It's marring the surface.
 
coop creek said:
OK, first post. My project is a Harley Street Glide, it's a few months old, dark blue (black with some blue in it). I'm prepping it to apply Wolfgang paint sealant. A few areas need polishing and I got a 3" Griots DA polisher and Chemical Guy's V36 and V38 for that.
Click to expand...


Send me your shipping address. I will send you the Wolfgang versions of V36 and V38 and then I recommend you do your own testing and use the products that work the best on the paint on your Harley.


coop creek said:
Other areas don't need polish (or are not accessible to the machine) so I got the Wolfgang product for these areas. I tried applying it by hand with a foam applicator (on the batwing fairing) and it left fine scratches in the finish. I tried it again on a test spot using a microfiber applicator, this time pre-coating the pad with the product, and it still left long sweeping scratches in the direction of application.

Do you have any suggestions regarding application?
Click to expand...


Generally speaking - paint cleaners are non-abrasive. They clean via a chemical action and thus the category paint cleaner. They are only for removing topical substances like old waxes, glossing agents, light oxidation, staining from road film and surface impurities.

Also - I use to teach "hand polishing" at Meguiar's. I quit teaching hand polishing when I came to Autogeek. The reason why is because we don't sell hands here at Autogeek - we sell tools.

Besides that little nuance, after perfecting the art of hand polishing a l-o-n-g time ago, and after teaching hand polishing for 7 years at the Meguiar's detailing classes, what I learned is most people don't have the,

  1. Skill
  2. Muscle
  3. Patience
  4. Persistence



To polish paint by hand. It's a lot more difficult than most people know. Also, for what it's worth - I never use paint cleaners. Why? Because for all the work it takes to hand or machine apply a paint cleaner, a "quality" fine cut polish will do everything a paint cleaner will do and do it better. It will also remove fine swirls and scratches. That's just me though, everyone can find their own way I'm just sharing my take on paint cleaners. Been sharing my take on paint cleaners for about 15 years now. Just wade through my 40,000+ posts and you'll find them. :)


Also a paint cleaner is an either/or product.

You either use a paint cleaner or you use a polish. You would NEVER use both this would be redundant.


Here's my e-mail, send me your shipping address and I'll get it out today.


[email protected]



And my guess is the paint is probably soft and if this is the case then just about anything rubbed over it will scratch it.



:)
 
One more question....

You say you're going to apply the Wolfgang Deep Gloss Paint Sealant 3.0 for your LSP - my guess is, if the paint is soft, that even wiping off a polish can or might put toweling marks into the paint.


Mike's Cheater Technique

Here's how I CHEAT on soft paints. I use a super high quality one-step cleaner/wax. A quality cleaner/wax uses great abrasive technology. Correctly used, you let the product dry. When a "wax" dries it becomes a dry lubricant - in essence lubricating the paint as you wipe it off. Polishes and compounds cannot do this.

By finishing out with a one-step cleaner/wax you can cheat the paint out of scratching it.


This comes from the fact that I'm in part lazy. Have typed a lot about this cheating technique over the years.


I'll send you a sample of a good one-step cleaner/wax and my guess is you can skip the "dedicated" polishes altogether and just use this product and after having it down as a base you can top it with the Wolfgang DGPS 3.0



:)
 
So this is really enlightening information, especially about the amount of technique required for hand polishing. It's possible the scratches are occurring when I'm wiping off the paint cleaner.

I'm using really nice microfiber towels. I might be putting on too much product or not letting it dry enough.

I sent you my address, I'll take you up on your offer for the Wolfgang polishes, and the one step cleaner wax (do you apply that by hand or machine? I assume you're recommending machine application)
Even the V38 is causing what I guess you would call micromarring

I attached pictures. 1515 and 1516 are the batwing fairing polished with V36 then V38, then the paint cleaner (dumb, I know now), then more V36 and V38. Picture 1521 is the side of the saddlebag that I tried the wolfgang paintwork product, applied by hand with a microfiber applicator. picture 1526 is the front fender with nothing done to it.

I really did not expect this process to be so difficult and fussy.


View attachment 66560

View attachment 66559

View attachment 66558

View attachment 66561


:)
 
coop creek said:
So this is really enlightening information, especially about the amount of technique required for hand polishing. It's possible the scratches are occurring when I'm wiping off the paint cleaner.

I'm using really nice microfiber towels. I might be putting on too much product or not letting it dry enough.
Click to expand...

Could be. It's easy to troubleshoot IF you can get the paint perfect to troubleshoot against. Basically you get some area of the paint perfect and then simply rub on a "section" of the paint with the towels you're using and inspect for scratches.



coop creek said:
I sent you my address, I'll take you up on your offer for the Wolfgang polishes, and the one step cleaner wax (do you apply that by hand or machine? I assume you're recommending machine application)
Click to expand...

I got it, sorry I didn't get it shipped out last week, I was a tick busy documenting what you get to do when you attend any class I teach. I'm actually the only guy in this industry that teaches detailing classes and then also documents what takes place in them. I think all the rest of the classes available you have to "guess" what takes place.

Pictures: May 2019 Detailing Bootcamp Class at Autogeek with Mike Phillips



coop creek said:
Even the V38 is causing what I guess you would call micro-marring
Click to expand...

I talk about abrasive technology a LOT. Here on the forum, in my classes in general. It IS the most important factor in my opinion when it comes to polishing car paint. But according to the Poll I crated, I don't know what I'm talking about.


POLL - What's the number one most important factor when it comes to polishing paint?

:laughing:



coop creek said:
I attached pictures. 1515 and 1516 are the batwing fairing polished with V36 then V38, then the paint cleaner (dumb, I know now), then more V36 and V38. Picture 1521 is the side of the saddlebag that I tried the wolfgang paintwork product, applied by hand with a microfiber applicator. picture 1526 is the front fender with nothing done to it.

I really did not expect this process to be so difficult and fussy.


View attachment 66560

View attachment 66559

View attachment 66558

View attachment 66561


:)
Click to expand...


Remind me - do you have any kind of dual action polisher like the simple Porter Cable 7424XP?


PorterCable7424XP2.jpg



:)
 
For working on Motorcycles, even the Griot's 3" Orbital polisher with THIN foam pads like the Griot's BOSS pads or the Lake Country ThinPro pads would give you better results than working by hand.


Here's Chuck working the Griot's 3" Mini Polisher on a magazine-quality 1947 Chevy Pickup at my last class.

He's using the very coarse BOSS 2" Foam Cutting pad on a 2" Griot's backing plate.

a2019_May_Class_040.JPG


a2019_May_Class_041.JPG





:)
 
heloguy said:
Harley paint is notorious for being soft. I had a vivid black road king, and it scratched and marred just from looking at it. Traded it in for a 2017 Pearl white Street Glide Special, and never looked back. Good luck, I hope you figure it out.
Click to expand...

This is so true! I have a black road glide and it marrs just sitting in the garage. With all of the Harleys I have done the "Best" finish I get is using 3D Polish with my GG. I haven't tried every finishing polish, but with the ones I own 3D polish finishes the best for me. My vivid black is one of the most difficult paints I have worked on. It took some time, and a lot of bad words to figure out what it likes to be finished with
 
I have a Griot's 3" polisher and I'm using Griot's 3" black foam finishing pads. I stopped working on the bike to think a little while I'm waiting for Wolfgang polish.... I've put the paint cleaner aside and I'm concentrating on the machine polishing which is causing haze. there's a bunch of things I think I'm doing wrong.
The 3" backing plate isn't perpendicular to the spindle and it's wobbling up and down when it spins, so I got new backing plates that are straight
I think I am polishing too large an area, and I'm working the product too long (easy to fix)
I'm not cleaning the pads as I use them (should I use a terry towel or blow with compressed air?)
The pad chatters sometimes, probably in the concave area on the fairing (should I hold the pad at an angle so that only a portion of the pad is in contact with the surface?)

Which is better, pad conditioner (Blackfire) or priming the pad with polish?
What's with the Griot boss pads, any advantage to what I'm using?

As I told you, I picked the Griot's orbital, their gray finishing pads and the CG products cause that's what they used at the Harley dealership near me
 
Have you marked the backing plate with a Sharpie to make sure its spinning?
I have a GG6 with a backing plate for 4in pads, can't hep you with the GG3
 
Here's an update,


View attachment 66647

View attachment 66646



I polished the whole bike today with Wolfgang finishing glaze.

This stuff is really, really good.


It got out all the hazing and tiny scratches on the batwing faring that were left/caused by Chemical Guys V38.



I did 4 or 5 passes I think. I did all the other painted surfaces and they came out perfect. I even did the front forks which are painted gloss black and are cylindrical with the 3" polisher, and got out the swirls that were there from previous washes.

I took the bike out in the sun and couldn't find any problems.

The pictures are after polishing. I'll put the deep gloss paint sealant on tomorrow.


:)
 
coop creek said:
I polished the whole bike today with Wolfgang finishing glaze.
Click to expand...

Am I safe to assume the package I sent came today?



coop creek said:
This stuff is really, really good.

It got out all the hazing and tiny scratches on the batwing faring that were left/caused by CG V38.
Click to expand...


I put a lot of focus on two topics a LOT on this forum, in my how-to articles and always in my detailing classes. Those two topics are,

Abrasive Technology

And the word "touch" as in touching the paint.


I'm going to write an article about these two topics next week. A few years ago I created a poll and ding-dang, I must be stupid because the majority of people keep telling me it's TECHNIQUE that's most important.

POLL - What's the number one most important factor when it comes to polishing paint?


:laughing:


But I know what I know and I've been doing this a long time now. Abrasive technology trumps technique infinity.


Glad it's working out for you.


:)
 
yes, I got the samples today, thanks again. The Wolfgang polish is easy to use and leaves a perfect finish. the other product was leaving haze and scratches. I don't think technique explains it. It's the polish.
 
Looks great when you have a great polish now. It's very less forgiving when you polishing softer paints. Great work and nice on your follow up.

Next is to be dialed in with a gentle wash method. But the first pictures you show where you have not been polishing looks great. If you want a tips, Carpro has a 2 finger wool mitt and a full size wool wash mitt. Combo those 2 and a great lubricated car soap like Carpro Reset and you have a nice gentle wash. It's a little more care with wool wash mitts in how you do afterwards with it. But it's hard to find a more gentle wash media than wool. And have a wash mitt dedicated for the painted panels and the rest of like a wheel mitt.

CarPro 2Fingers Mini Wool Wash Mitt, wool finger mitt, mini wash mitt

Merino wool wash mitt, auto wash mitt, sheepskin wash mitt

/ Tony
 
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