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Last night was a busy and diverse night, including taking on a major paint correction/rescue with pretty dramatic results.
The first project of the evening was making a pair of really nasty looking GMC tail lights look a bit better. We'll call this a success, and we hoped it was an indicator of how other projects would turn out as the evening wore on. The process here was 1000 grit finishing disc followed by 3000 grit finishing disc (same discs found in our consumer Heavy Duty Headlight Kit), both done with a 3" pneumatic DA, then rotary polished with a 4" foam polishing pad/M105 and finished with 4" foam finishing pad/M205.
This MR2 came in with some nasty water spotting and heavy swirls. It's a repaint that could use a bit of TLC but it's only been in the current owner's hands for about 3 weeks.
Not what you want your paint to look like.
A quick test spot with Ultimate Compound on a W8207 yellow foam polishing pad was the first test spot.
The paint has some clarity issues due to the quality of the respray, but that doesn't mean you have to live with all those water spots and swirls. After hitting it with Ultimate Compound, the owner no longer needs to worry about that!
Nick Winn tackled a set of somewhat finicky headlights on a Lexus RX330.
Nicely sanded and ready to be buffed out.
This nasty looking scratch was on a very narrow panel on a BMW Z4. A bit tricky to get to with a full sized DA or rotary buffer.
So we pulled out a specialized small footprint pneumatic DA and some custom cut down pads. While this combo may not make sense for the average consumer, on a professional level it makes sense to have a wide variety of tools to handle unusual, specific situations.
Success!!
This was the really big project for the night - Ric had a minor fender bender with his Caddy and didn't have a lot of choices when it came to replacing damaged body panels. That meant a color mismatch, but also paint that was in pretty rough shape. At first we didn't think much could be done for it, but after seeing what Ric had accomplished on half the hood with Ultimate Compound on a DA buffer, we started to think differently about the situation. First up, however, was a serious claying of the very rough surface. The C2100 Aggressive Red Clay was put to good use here.
We almost started buffing before realizing we hadn't taken a "before" shot, which explains the big spot of compound on the hood. But you can clearly see the difference between the right side, which is how Ric found the hood, and the left side, which he buffed out with Ultimate Compound. It's a huge difference, for sure, but nowhere near as good as we thought it could be.
After doing a first test with the DAMF System, specifically the 5" microfiber cutting disc and D300, we decided to step up to the new DMX5 Xtra Cut disc and D300. Look at reflection to the right of the buffer in the shot below: that clarity was brought about by an extended pass of the DMC5/D300 combo. That's a massive improvement, although this angle doesn't show the slight hazing and the fact that we still thought it could be better.
This is serious progress, but we're hitting the paint pretty hard to get here.
Close up time: this is the right side of the hood, just as Ric got it, with nothing more than claying done to it.
This a close up of the area treated with just Ultimate Compound. Much of the chalkiness is gone, but clarity is still almost non existent. But it gave us hope!
This is after using the DAMF System.....now we're on to something!
But after looking at the process of repeated, aggressive application of the DAMF System, we decided to try another approach - DA damp sanding. A 3000 grit finishing disc will cut a lot of the oxidation without introducing a lot of heat (or any, really) to the paint. This process leaves behind a very uniform, very predictable sanding mark that is then very easy to buff out.
The left side is after using the DAMF System on an area that had previously been treated with Ultimate Compound. The right side shows what happens after a quick once over with a 3000 grit finishing disc and then DMC5/D300 on a G110v2 without need for repeated passes, heavy pressure, or anything else that would heat up the paint unnecessarily.
That did it for us - time to damp sand the entire hood and then buff it out. Left side sanded, right side sanded and buffed. Again, the buffing was done with a G110v2, not a rotary.
While Nick keeps a watchful eye on buffing technique in the background, Ric is applying some D302 Polish as a follow up to his correction process.
Ric and Brad handled the buff out after we did the sanding. Teamwork!!!!
And this is what we ended up with.
Go ahead, scroll back up to the "before" shots.... this is indeed the same hood and we did NOT use a rotary buffer on it.
So what's crazier here - that we actually pulled this off, or that it was actually pulled of with ease and without being terribly invasive to the paint finish?
The first project of the evening was making a pair of really nasty looking GMC tail lights look a bit better. We'll call this a success, and we hoped it was an indicator of how other projects would turn out as the evening wore on. The process here was 1000 grit finishing disc followed by 3000 grit finishing disc (same discs found in our consumer Heavy Duty Headlight Kit), both done with a 3" pneumatic DA, then rotary polished with a 4" foam polishing pad/M105 and finished with 4" foam finishing pad/M205.
This MR2 came in with some nasty water spotting and heavy swirls. It's a repaint that could use a bit of TLC but it's only been in the current owner's hands for about 3 weeks.
Not what you want your paint to look like.
A quick test spot with Ultimate Compound on a W8207 yellow foam polishing pad was the first test spot.
The paint has some clarity issues due to the quality of the respray, but that doesn't mean you have to live with all those water spots and swirls. After hitting it with Ultimate Compound, the owner no longer needs to worry about that!
Nick Winn tackled a set of somewhat finicky headlights on a Lexus RX330.
Nicely sanded and ready to be buffed out.
This nasty looking scratch was on a very narrow panel on a BMW Z4. A bit tricky to get to with a full sized DA or rotary buffer.
So we pulled out a specialized small footprint pneumatic DA and some custom cut down pads. While this combo may not make sense for the average consumer, on a professional level it makes sense to have a wide variety of tools to handle unusual, specific situations.
Success!!
This was the really big project for the night - Ric had a minor fender bender with his Caddy and didn't have a lot of choices when it came to replacing damaged body panels. That meant a color mismatch, but also paint that was in pretty rough shape. At first we didn't think much could be done for it, but after seeing what Ric had accomplished on half the hood with Ultimate Compound on a DA buffer, we started to think differently about the situation. First up, however, was a serious claying of the very rough surface. The C2100 Aggressive Red Clay was put to good use here.
We almost started buffing before realizing we hadn't taken a "before" shot, which explains the big spot of compound on the hood. But you can clearly see the difference between the right side, which is how Ric found the hood, and the left side, which he buffed out with Ultimate Compound. It's a huge difference, for sure, but nowhere near as good as we thought it could be.
After doing a first test with the DAMF System, specifically the 5" microfiber cutting disc and D300, we decided to step up to the new DMX5 Xtra Cut disc and D300. Look at reflection to the right of the buffer in the shot below: that clarity was brought about by an extended pass of the DMC5/D300 combo. That's a massive improvement, although this angle doesn't show the slight hazing and the fact that we still thought it could be better.
This is serious progress, but we're hitting the paint pretty hard to get here.
Close up time: this is the right side of the hood, just as Ric got it, with nothing more than claying done to it.
This a close up of the area treated with just Ultimate Compound. Much of the chalkiness is gone, but clarity is still almost non existent. But it gave us hope!
This is after using the DAMF System.....now we're on to something!
But after looking at the process of repeated, aggressive application of the DAMF System, we decided to try another approach - DA damp sanding. A 3000 grit finishing disc will cut a lot of the oxidation without introducing a lot of heat (or any, really) to the paint. This process leaves behind a very uniform, very predictable sanding mark that is then very easy to buff out.
The left side is after using the DAMF System on an area that had previously been treated with Ultimate Compound. The right side shows what happens after a quick once over with a 3000 grit finishing disc and then DMC5/D300 on a G110v2 without need for repeated passes, heavy pressure, or anything else that would heat up the paint unnecessarily.
That did it for us - time to damp sand the entire hood and then buff it out. Left side sanded, right side sanded and buffed. Again, the buffing was done with a G110v2, not a rotary.
While Nick keeps a watchful eye on buffing technique in the background, Ric is applying some D302 Polish as a follow up to his correction process.
Ric and Brad handled the buff out after we did the sanding. Teamwork!!!!
And this is what we ended up with.
Go ahead, scroll back up to the "before" shots.... this is indeed the same hood and we did NOT use a rotary buffer on it.
So what's crazier here - that we actually pulled this off, or that it was actually pulled of with ease and without being terribly invasive to the paint finish?
:doublethumbs up! 
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