Red Line

What is a good product to use to remove fine micro scratches?
I have a 1992 Black C-4.
When you look @ the car from a distance it looks amazing.
But when you get up close to the car and look @ an angle you can see thousands of micro scratches on the paint surfaces.


Will a good polish fill in fine scratches or do I need to use 3m rubbing compounds?What products have you used?????????

Also would a good high speed buff do the trick?


Many Thanks.........

Ski

http://www.autopia-carcare.com/inf-perfect.html

cdodkin

+1 for Autopia

They do a new polish for any car, which works really well for Black, called Swirlbuster which is something the weekend warrior can use with porter cable polisher to defeat the scratches and swirls without risk of damaging the paint.

http://www.autopia-carcare.com/son-450.html

Wax by itself will not fix the problem - a polish like the one above will polish the swirls out of the finish leaving it smooth and ready to wax/seal.

Here's my hood after Swirlbuster



And close up under fluro lighting



No more swirls and scratches!

Red Line

That looks awesome..........
What kind of wax did you put on top of the polish.
Also what kind of product do you use to prep before polish.


Thanks bud.

cdodkin

So prior to polishing I wash with a good car shampoo, currently a Meguiars NXT shampoo, then dry.

Then I clay using a Meguiars pro clay and blue magic clay lube to really get the paint clean and smooth.

Then it's on to the Swirlbuster polish and Pad using a Porter Cable on speed 6, until it polishes clear.

Clean off with a MF cloth.

Then wax - I've used Meguiars NXT to great effect - the black hood picture was NXT liquid wax.

I've also started using Klasse sealant instead, which gives a deep shine and appears to last really well.

Here on my guards red:



Apply either with the PC and buff off using a real wool pad on the PC.

Anthony Orosco

Hello,

What products and tools do you have on hand, if any?

You'll want to stay away from a high speed rotary and the 3M compounds.

By hand it will be difficult to get those hairline scratches leveled down so you may need to get a nice orbital polisher, some pads and proper products.

Now you can do it by hand but all you'll be doing is filling those scratches temporarily with a glaze, like 3M's Hand Glaze or Megiuars #7.

Your process is going to be:

Wash
Clay
Polish
Seal

My suggestion would be to get either a PC or Cyclo orbital polisher, some Optimum or Menzerna polishes and a few pads.

PC pads would consist of several 6 inch pads - orange, white and blue (Lake Country pads)

Menzerna Intensive Polish and Final Polish II

-OR-

Optimum Hyper and Polish

You can seal the paint with a host of products like a nice paste wax or a more durable polymer sealant.

Let me know if I can be of any more help,
Anthony

Eric Kessel

Sorry to drag up an old post, but I would like some clarification on this. I've got a 90 C2 (Black) that also looks pretty good from 20 - 30 feet after a wash, but when you get close there are lots of micro scratches. Except for the bumpers. They are heavily oxidized. I have a PC, and the Sonus DAS pad kit (blue, green and orange 7" pads), a couple of white LC 6" pads, and Optimum Polish. I'm thinking the polish will be fine for the body, but I might need to compound the bumpers. Any recommendations for a compound? (I'm leaning to the Optimum Compound, but what about the Hyper Compound, or possibly a Presta Ultra-Light Compound.......) Thanks for any hints on pads/compound/polish for the bumpers.

A quick attempt on the bumpers with the Orange Sonus pad, and the Optimum Polish brought back a glossy finish, but the scratches remaing.........

Anthony Orosco

Your bumpers are a tricky area because those pieces are plastic and painted with elastic materials, a soft wind seems to mar them

First wash and clay the entire painted areas including bumpers. Clay does not remove oxidation but it will clean the paint from contaminates.

You may need some Hyper Compound to level out the paint before you do a final polish. Use the Hyper with a mild polish pad before using the orange pad, work your way up in aggressivness, first by pad then by product.

So you may want to start with a polishing pad and Optimum polish. If that doesn't work for the marring then try the Polish with an orange pad. If that doesn't work then try the Hyper with a polishing pad and then onto an orange pad, etc.

You'll then want to work down the aggressive scale once you notice the marring removed. So from Hyper and orange you may want to go with either Polish and orange or Polish and a mild polish pad, then Polish and a fine pad.

Always seal the paint when done with a quality wax or sealant.

Hope that helps,
Anthony

Eric Kessel

Anthony,
Thank you for the quick reply. Do you recommend the Hyper over the regular Compound? I intend to use Collinite once I'm done polishing. It's a daily driver that stays outside..... as you can imagine, it's never going to be perfect, but I'm trying to clean up what's possible.

Thanks again.

Ranger

+1 for Autopia.
Memorize the applicable parts of their whole darn website. I recommend that you go a little low on aggressiveness and high on manhours. And it's a lot safer to go after a 75% scratch and swirlmark result then to go a little too much and cause a problem.

I bought a whole mess of stuff, to include their orbital kit, from Autopia and dumped in lots of hours. I didn't get all of the problems out, because some of the issues were in tricky places and I decided that it was too risky. I also burned thru the clearcoat in a dime-sized spot on the roof, but I'm convinced that it was because the clearcoat was way too thin there, as opposed to I screwed up. That sounds a little self serving, but by the time I got to the roof I was pretty good at the effort. And I burned thru really early in the polishing process. There's still a fair amount of swirls and scratches on the roof, but I don't dare go after them.

It really made a heck of a difference when you look at the paint up close. The burnthru is irksome, but you have to look for it to find it. And the rest of the effort came out so good, that it was a big net win.

Pretty much all your paint problems can be fixed with Utopia's favorite swirl remover (name escapes me) and their orange orbital pad. That's a relatively non-aggressive approach. It takes some time and effort tho. Any "compound" with a buffer would be spooky.

A cheap dual action orbital buffer is a waste of money because it doesn't have much power, and it might have so little random motion that it's more "orbital" then "dual-action".

The dual action mechanism responds to the amount of friction between pad and paint surface. That is to say, if you press hard, you don't get much dual-action. How much moisture is in the polish is a factor too. So you have to play around a bit with how much polish you put on and how hard you press such that you maximize the random motion of dual-action, yet still make progress in removing small amounts of clearcoat.

Be careful with clay. It likes to pick up grit that then scratches your paint. When you first buy a clay bar, cut it in two and put one piece in a ziplock bag. Then use the other piece on the car. Watch the issue of grit in the claybar like a hawk. If there is any doubt in your mind, toss the claybar and go get your back up.

Anthony Orosco

The Hyper is better suited to do correction work that the polish can't handle but yet it finishes down almost as nice as the Polish.

The Collinite is a great choice as it's a pretty durable paste wax.

By the way, your Hyper shipped out yesterday

Thank You,
Anthony