After Friday's rain we had a sunny morning on Saturday, although at 38F it wasn't exactly SoCal warm, but no matter - we still had a group of enthusiastic detailing fanatics on hand to improve their skill set and learn how to maximize the appearance of their vehicle's paint.
Our demo car this time around was a 1998 BMW Z3 with original paint. While it was loaded with swirls and water spots, underneath all that the paint looked like it was pretty healthy with no serious problems.
Oh yes, there was the odd scuff here and there in the paint as well.
As per usual, following the classroom instruction we headed to the garage to put everything to the test. A quick assessment of the paint indicated that claying was called for. The owner of the car, Brian, had only acquired this vehicle a month or so ago and hadn't had much chance to do anything to it thus far.
One small section of the hood revealed this level of contamination. It was actually noisy when we ran a hand over the paint before claying, but nice and quiet and smooth after the fact.
We did some hand application of Ultimate Compound, Polish and Wax to demonstrate proper technique with this process.
We then used the same three products on the G110v2 buffer. The piece of masking tape you see on the backing plate is there to give a better visual indicator that the pad is still rotating. Again, proper technique is critical here, and if you tilt the buffer so that an edge of pad lifts off the paint, it will stop rotating and you'll diminish your result.
There's a foam pad behind that towel - we're demonstrating how to clean a pad on the fly while buffing. Doing so removes excess product and that small amount of paint you're removed, and let's you buff cleanly and efficiently with less dust and product build up.
There was a lot of interest in the Microfiber Correction System so we did a demo with it, as well. Here we're priming the cutting disc with D300 before we start working on the paint.
Firm but even pressure and the same sort of overlapping side to side strokes used with foam will maximize the results when using the DA Microfiber System.
And the payoff - clear, glossy, defect free paint in our test spots. We found both Ultimate Compound/Foam pads and D300/DMC5 microfiber pads to be very effective, but there was no doubt that on this slightly hard paint the DAMF system worked faster.
Here is a major group of scuff marks on the trunk lid that the owner was concerned about.
A good solid pass with the DA Microfiber Correction System totally obliterated the scuffs, and the paint is once again a deep, rich shade of red.
Time to turn the students loose on the hood and get the job done.
Both traditional foam with UC and the newer tech microfiber system were used so everyone could experience the differences.
Dueling buffers yield clear, glossy paint. Just as it should be!
As always, a big thank you to everyone who came out to spend a beautiful Saturday in Meguiar's Garage!!
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Originally Posted by EXECMOBILE
