New to detailing

[Mopar4u]

2016 dodge challenger
Soooo many products, techniques, applicators its making my head spin. I prefer to stick with the miguiers products as they are accesible in my area. I had some scratches in my clearcoat of my 16 r/t. I used scratch x 2.0 at 1800 rpm with the migiuers drill assisted da (yellow pad) and removed them. Now i can see where i used the scratch x, its a little dull looking.
I moved onto swirl x and its better but i can still see micro rotational scratches. Is waxing what finally fills in those micro rotational scratches? I cant seem to get my finish to like factory new. I'm not pushing very hard on the da. 1800 rpm. Any suggestions?
Last edited by Mrmopar2u; 07-12-2016 at 10:09 PM.

[Nick Winn]

Re: New to detailing

Welcome to MOL! Sorry to hear you are having trouble getting out some little micro scratches. Waxing will fill defects to a certain extent, but ideally we would want to remove them first.

When you used the SwirlX to try to remove these micro scratches after the Scratch X 2.0, were you using the SwirlX on a separate clean yellow polishing pad?

[Mopar4u]

Re: New to detailing

Yes, brand new 4" yellow pad designed for the drill assisted da. Do i need to apply more force or more rpm?

[Top Gear]

Re: New to detailing

The dull-looking part sounds like typical hazing from the aggression of compounding, and will likely go away with a separate polish step (Ultimate Polish, perhaps). However, the micro-rotational scratches sound like dirt grains on the pad? Can you post pictures? As Nicholas indicated, you want the finish to look as perfect as you can get it before waxing, although waxing, especially with a cleaner-wax, can also be a part of the process.

[Mopar4u]

Re: New to detailing

If the pad had dirt grains it came that way, i used it right out of the package.

Should i be using ultimate polish instead of swirl x? How much force should be applied to the da/pad? Im sure this is operator error as im new but so is my black car and i need to figure out how to take care of it. I get so confused with all the choices.

[Top Gear]

Re: New to detailing

My POV is you are unlikely to be using too much force, even if you try. A foam pad on a drill adapter makes it almost impossible to do any real damage from force alone (this is why it's going to be a lot of work to get a swirl-free correction that way). Also, the pad was likely perfect, as was the liquid product - but was the paint area clean and clear? Did you clay it or at least thoroughly clean it? Was it a calm day with little wind? If not, you can scratch the paint easily with foam. That can be fixed probably with longer passes with the same product or a polish after carefully re-cleaning the area - and you should be working in small areas. If you're really seeing rotational scratches applied during your SwirlX step, then it's probably contaminants or dirt particles on the paint. However, it could be that you are referring to what we call "spiderwebs" or "swirls" that were there before you did the work, but the built-in polishing from the ScratchX/SwirlX only made them brighter or more noticeable (if so, it's a hint you're not even "scratching the surface", so to speak).

Again, we can't help much more than speculate without close-up pictures and more details on the steps you took start to finish.

[Bandit Rich]

Re: New to detailing

I get the same haze whenever I use SwirlX, ScratchX, Ultimate Compound and M101 no matter how light or heavy a scratch I am removing. I follow whichever of these products I am using with 2 applications of Ultimate Polish first on the yellow pad and then on the black pad and it gets rid of the haze. This is on old school single stage lacquer paint with no clearcoat so this should work on your car too.