Will the G110 remove little/deep etchings into the clearcoat finish on new vehicles

[soupboy54]

I work for a car dealership that has a TON of oaks/maple/pine trees surrounding the lot. This means lot of 'tree sap' on our new vehicles. They have, to date, never done any sort of maintenance' on ther removal of this tree sap, and let it bake in all summer. Now we are looking to remove the little/deep etchings into the clearcoat finish on our new vehicles. To date, we've been using 'isopropyl alcohol' and hand rubbing to remove the majority of the spots. But---there are those that have baked into the finish. Am looking at the G110 (and pads) to help solve this problem and remove those marks. Will this unit/pads/products do the job? ANY info will be of great assistance before I decide what to do or what to buy. I current am using an old Makita 9207SPC polisher (have to start 'somewhere'---with 'something').

soupboy54

[Mike Phillips]

Re: Tips & Techniques for using the G110, G100, G220 and the PC Dual Action Polisher

Will this unit/pads/products do the job? ANY info will be of great assistance before I decide what to do or what to buy.

In order to remove the etching and scratches left by the sap and the follow-up removal of the sap you will need to remove the paint surrounding these defects until the surface is level with the lowest depth of the defects you're removing.

Will our G110 remove enough paint to accomplish this goal?

Maybe, you won't know until you try. Some factors that will influence the success of ANY tool will be,

Depth of the defect
Hardness of the paint
Aggressiveness of the products and pads
Skill of the person doing the work

So maybe, but you won't know until you try. It would probably be faster to use your hand with our new Ultimate Compound versus a tool with a clutch where the rotating action will stop if you apply to much pressure to the face of the pad.

There is a lot of discussion and explanation on this idea and these threads are tagged with these tags... exert and exert liability

http://meguiarsonline.com/forums/tags.php?tag=exert

http://meguiarsonline.com/forums/tags.php?tag=exert-threads

Not trying to be vague at all but seriously, you don't know what you can do until you push away from the keyboard, go out into the garage and actually start testing or experimenting with different pads and products along with your own skill and ability to see what you can do.

Some people are very good with a DA Polisher and can work magic with it while others are new to the tool and after trying it out are instantly back on the forum asking for help because "it" isn't working.

So for one person the tool is working and for another person the tool isn't working, what's the difference? The skill, ability and experience of the person that the tool is working for. We can't put these things in a bottle, you can only get them by going out into the garage and investing hours behind the tool.

I current am using an old Makita 9207SPC polisher (have to start 'somewhere'---with 'something').

The rotary buffer is a powerful tool, much more powerful than a dual action polisher with a clutch.

With the right pad and product the rotary buffer will remove enough paint to remove any defect that can be safely removed. That's where the risk comes in because you don't have a lot of film-build or paint thickness to work with.

Again, on the topic of exert, if you're working on small defects you might be better off to remove these by hand versus using a rotary buffer. With your hand you can exert a lot of pressure to a small area and remove only paint in that area. With a rotary buffer you're going to remove a lot of paint over a large area.

Sounds like a HUGE problem and one that should be addressed at the root cause of the problem so that it doesn't continue to happen into the future unless the owner of the dealership is happy to deal with the expense, time, difficulty and frustration of undoing the kind of damage being caused by leaving new cars under trees that drip sap.