Pictures from June 16, 2012 - Saturday Open Class

[tbird2340]

So things like this aren't fixable with the G2 and some compound?

[tbird2340]

Or these?

[Marc08EX]

IMO, they're RIDS and they're extremely deep to be polished out. I think you need to wetsand them to properly remove them but I'm not 100% sure.

On your first picture, there are some swirls around the light source. That's the type of defects UC can remove.

[ATC4USMC]

Can you "catch" your finger nail on them? If so, you can forget trying to get them out with a buffer and UC!

[Wildcat Rudy]

IMO, they're RIDS and they're extremely deep to be polished out. I think you need to wetsand them to properly remove them but I'm not 100% sure.

On your first picture, there are some swirls around the light source. That's the type of defects UC can remove.

I have gotten out deeper scratches, but it is not for the faint of heart and I don't recommend anyone try it. It has been a few years and I'm afraid I may have lost a couple of my buffing bonnets in my last move, but I'm due to work on the Acura TL we bought last month.

First, I only have a rotary (not orbital) buffer for now. But to relate this to a story, I had an '85 Merkur and lived in an older house at the time, and they used "hardware cloth" (it's like chicken wire) and made their own cover to put over a dryer vent on the side of the house. So...you can guess who sort of scuffed into it one day while backing into the driveway. The several scratches I made in the clearcoat were white, thin and a couple seemed quite deep...but not through to the primer. As I was none to happy with that lemon of a car, and the scratches had sat there for a year or so, I finally got mad enough and took the wheel to it, figuring if I screwed it up too much, I wouldn't be all that heartbroken.

I used a couple of applications of Meguiars #1 Medium Cut Cleaner, using the buffing wheel parallel to the scratches, and repeating until I worked all but two of the scratches down. Then I did my usual follow-up with #2 Fine Cut Cleaner and #9 Swirl Remover. When I was done, the smaller scratches were gone completely and the deeper one sort of rounded themselves off to where they looked more like a tiny crease than a scratch...and you could not see them unless you were up close. I tried this on a key scratch but it was too wide to do any good. Even by hand. Meguiars probably has a more aggressive compound but I would be afraid to try it myself. I figure that #1 is probably the most I can handle with my rotary (and it can really cut and clean up paint nicely).

So my usual regimen when I buff is to hit the worst of the scratches with #1, do the whole car with #2, and then finish off the whole car with #9. Then I usually apply #26 (High-Tech Yellow Wax) to protect it all, either by hand or with a cheaper orbital I have that only has enough power and speed to apply wax.