Smearing after buff and wax

[Electriciandude]

I'm using 3m heavy compound for scratches followed by a 3m rubbing compound to remove the fine scratches from the heavy compound and other blemishes in the paint and then follow with 3m swirl remover/polish.Lastly I use nxt tech wax 2.0 and once I remove that wth mf cloths I blow all the excess compound and dust out of all the trims with the pressure washer.I use all foam pads but it never fails after all that I have swirls and smears all over and this has only been on black and other dark paints.please help before I lose my job!

[Michael Stoops]

Re: Smearing after buff and wax

Hey dude (sorry, it's a Southern California thing and, well, you left the door open!!), welcome to MOL!

There could be a couple of reasons for the things you're seeing. Any smearing may well be a simple case of applying the NXT Tech Wax 2.0 a bit too heavy and then not letting it dry fully. NXT needs to be applied in a very thin coat and then allowed to fully dry before removal. You should be covering all the painted surfaces of the vehicle and then start your clock, waiting 20 to 30 minutes before wiping it off. NXT is what we call a polish wax, meaning it has some polishing oils in it and if it doesn't dry completely it may streak a bit. This is usually just temporary, but is easily avoided by letting it dry fully. But a thin coat is key, and most people tend to overuse wax. A black vehicle should still look black when it's coated in wax, it should not look white!! In the picture below, the car has waaaay too much wax on it. This is going to take a very long time to dry, is going to be more difficult to remove than it should be, and it just wastes product.



The car below has a proper coat of wax applied, in this case by machine. But it's the same NXT Tech Wax 2.0 as on the vehicle above, and on your vehicle. This wax should be ready to remove in as little as 20 minutes and wipe off streak free. Of course, ambient temperature and humidity will play a role in drying time with low temp and/or high humidity prolonging drying times.






It's the swirls you mention that really troubles us, though. How are you applying these particular 3M products? Hand, dual action polisher, rotary buffer? What sort of pads - foam cutting, foam polishing, foam finishing, or some type of wool? How fast are you running the buffer (if you're using one)? Can you get us some pictures of these swirls? They could be holograms brought on by an aggressive compound and pad that you aren't getting rid of, or they could just be swirls that aren't coming out due to hardness of paint, your technique, product/pad choice, etc. It's a bit difficult to offer up more advice at this point without first having some more info on your process.

[Electriciandude]

Re: Smearing after buff and wax

I use a white 3m comp pad at about the #2setting on a rotary makita with a dial that goes from 1 to 10.I then switch to a grey polish pad for the 2nd step wich is the lighter 3m rubbing comp and then use a fresh pad for the next step wich is the 3m swirl remover and after that apply to much wax without proper drying time.hopefully this helps understand my situation better and can tell me what I did wrong and hoefully how to fix the smears without redoing everything!thanks in advance for your time!

[KC's]

Re: Smearing after buff and wax



pls show some pics, we want to see ....seeing a better pics

[geert dr]

Re: Smearing after buff and wax

I would remove all exces compound and polishing dust BEFORE applying any wax !
Then dry the car and aplly wax very thin and leave it to dry .
Before buffing always do a SWIPEtest to ensure the wax is fully cured !

[Michael Stoops]

Re: Smearing after buff and wax

Three steps plus wax...... almost sounds like you're making more work for yourself than you need to. What exactly are you trying to correct, just some typical swirl marks or something worse? No mention of wet sanding so it doesn't look like that's what you're after. You should be able to get a lot of cut out of the 3M white compounding pad and their strongest compound so even some pretty bad scratches should either be completely removed or at least minimized to a point where they are hardly noticeable. It may well be that you aren't running the Makita fast enough at this stage though, and maybe too fast later on.

At this point you may want to try a couple of test spots, perhaps side by side on the hood. If all you have are holograms from the rotary process, Test Spot 2 below should cure it. If you have some of the original defects still present, however, you may need to do the whole thing over again, and Test Spot 1 should tell you that.

Test Spot 1: use the white pad and heavy compound but jump the Makita up to speed 3 (1500 rpm if memory serves) and keep the pad really flat, moving it fairly slowly over the paint. Now drop down to your next step and slow the machine down a notch, again keeping it flat on the paint and moving it slowly, just using the weight of the machine. Then do your last step, and maybe even slow the machine to slowest speed. Keep that pad flat - can't stress that enough.

Test Spot 2: skip the heavy compound and white pad and just jump right into your second and third steps, as outlined above.

Without having any pictures to go by, what follows is speculation only: it sounds as though you may not have worked the first compound aggressively enough to remove the scratches and other defects, while at the same time moving the machine too quickly or too much up on the edge of the pad, thereby inflicting holograms on top of the defects. Your final steps either weren't done long enough, done too aggressively, or still done with less than perfect technique to remove the holograms. Any original defects still present probably would not be removed during these steps anyway. Nonetheless, it can be difficult to rotary polish without leaving some trace of holograms behind. It's not impossible, but it doesn't just happen either!

What is it you're working on? Make, model, year, overall condition? Paint systems vary wildly and this info may give us a bit more information to help you out. You could be working on very hard paint, or even very delicate paint. One will hold onto it's original defects while the other will be so easily marred that it can make you think it's holding on, while in fact you're just swapping out old defects for new ones every time you touch it. We had that very situation on a Shelby Cobra replica we worked on over the weekend.