Does Polishing Remove Paint?

[p1aycrackthesky]

Hi all - quick question. I just got a brand new DA polisher and to test it out, I was using some Ultimate Polish on a Megs yellow polishing pad at a speed of about 5 with light/moderate pressure. After finishing a panel, I noticed it appeared somewhat "dirty" or darkened for lack of a better word. I do have a dark colored car (2010 VW GTI in United Grey Metallic), so I'm curious - is it possible to remove a small amount of paint in the polishing process? Or, is it more likely I polished up against some dirty trim or rubber seal and darkened the pad that way? Thanks.

[Nick Winn]

Re: Does Polishing Remove Paint?

Welcome to MOL. Much more likely that you polished up against some dirty trim, or even are just removing some embedded grime. Even when using some of our most aggressive pads & compound combinations on a dual action polisher, the amount of paint that is removed is most of the time not even measurable.

[p1aycrackthesky]

Re: Does Polishing Remove Paint?

Thanks for the quick reply! That was my thought as well. I used a nanoskin autoscrub to clean up contamination prior to polishing and the paint felt quite smooth and glassy, but it's hard to say if I picked up everything. It was both my first time using a DA polisher and first time polishing this car after 100k miles and I just wanted to make sure I wasn't applying too much force or pressure to the panel and picking up paint in the process.

[Michael Stoops]

Re: Does Polishing Remove Paint?

So we're talking about a car that's 7 years old with 100k miles on it - and it's never been machine polished. Nick nailed it with the embedded grime part of his response. Even with the nanoskin use you're just removing above surface, bonded contaminants but are leaving behind embedded grime that is, technically, below the paint surface. This is road grime and other "stuff" that collects in the pores and micro surface texture of the paint over time. It's not really all that noticeable on darker colored paint, but on whites, yellows and other light colors it actually darkens or even yellows the color over time. A good deep cleaning, which is part of what a compound or even a cleaner polish will do, removes that embedded grime and reveals the true color of the paint. This is most noticeable on white paint, as seen in the image below:



This truck hood is obviously white, but the right side has a darker appearance and just doesn't look as "white" as the left side does. We used White Wax, which is a strong cleaner wax with some pretty potent abrasives in it, and that's it. Look at the difference in color after all the years of embedded grime have been removed. You did the same thing with Ultimate Polish, but most likely to a lesser degree simply because it's less aggressive than White Wax.

But the title of your thread is a very direct question: Does Polishing Remove Paint? The short answer is, Yes. Scary as that sounds, the process removes so little paint that we usually can't measure the amount of paint removed with a paint thickness gauge. Compounding will remove more paint than polishing will, and of course wet sanding will remove even more. Nonetheless, even with skilled wet sanding you can be incredibly safe and non-invasive to the paint when removing defects.

Here's something else to think about, though. Your car has a clear coat on it - basically a layer of clear paint that adds gloss and UV protection to the color coat below it. So when you compound or polish on this paint, what you're removing is a very tiny amount of clear coat, which you can't see on the pad because it's clear. So the discoloration you're seeing on your pad can't be from the color coat on your car, but it is a coincidence that your first time seeing this is on a car the color of yours!

[p1aycrackthesky]

Re: Does Polishing Remove Paint?

Michael and Nicholas, thank you VERY much for your thorough and detailed replies. This is great knowledge for me as a beginner. Would a product like M83 probably be helpful in this scenario? My car doesn't really suffer from any swirling, but the pain just lacks that "pop" if you will.