Need Some Help: Polishing Problems...

[RickyMartinZ28]

I'm working on a Camaro, with some very very odd clear...
The clear is extremely hard, it's taking a rotary @2500 rpm with a LC 4" Yellow pad and Ultimate Compound to even begin removing 3000 grit scratches...
When I'm finished with that combo, I have holograms.
I'll follow up with the Porter Cable with the LC 4" Orange Pad and UC to remove the holograms, which it barely does. Then I'm left with pig tails... tiny circular scratches...
I'll follow that up with the Porter Cable with the LC 4" White Pad with Swirl X, and have even tried Menzerna Intensive Polish... again, I result with pig tails as mentioned before, except less severe...
Follow up with PC and LC 4" Blue Pad with an assortment of polishes... nothing helps...
The only thing, was ColorX, which all it's doing is filling in the tiny scratches... After an IPA wipedown it all comes back...
Even applying wax with a foam pad is causing scratches...
I'm completely frustrated, the defects aren't easily seen on the green portions of the car, actually I can't see them at all, I just know they are there... The black portion however and defects are very very apparent...
Anyone have any ideas? I'm totally stumped.


Also, even a blue LC pad on the rotary with colorX is causing problems...

[gjohn28]

Re: Need Some Help: Polishing Problems...

I am not a pro, but it sounds like your progressively less cut approach got you close, but not quite where you want to be. I have had success with M205 as a fine-tuning/tweaker step. If you haven't already, try 205 with a finishing pad (or might need to go polishing then finishing pad) after the rotary/UC step and experiment with pressure and work time, as appropriate.

[Michael Stoops]

Re: Need Some Help: Polishing Problems...

A few things that seem odd here:

• Ultimate Compound isn't really designed for rotary use
• 4" pads on a rotary are reducing your cutting ability, not increasing it
• 2500 rpm, especially with that little pad, is most likely inflicting some pretty darn deep holograms

What year is this car, and what color is it? Is it factory paint or a repaint?

Spinning a 4" pad on a rotary will reduce your cutting ability since the smaller pad has a lower speed at the outer edge than a 6 inch pad would have, and an 8 inch pad would give even more speed. With a rotary speed is what gets the job done. You're trying to overcome this diameter dependent speed by cranking up the rpm on the tool, and that's just not a great combination, as you're finding out. It really is holding you back.

We're willing to bet you'll get far better results with a wool pad (the Solo red wool cutting pad is fantastic for this) and M105 Ultra Cut Compound to pull out those sanding marks and most likely leave you with almost nothing as far as holograms go. What light marring you do leave behind should clean up pretty easily with the D/A and some M205 Ultra Finishing Polish on a finishing pad. You seem to be a fan of LC pads so if you want to stick with those we'd recommend one of their intermediate polishing pads, preferably without dimples and in the 5.5" size for this finishing step.

We recently buffed out a white Chrysler Crossfire with stupid hard paint (and horrific swirls) and the above system worked beautifully. Prior experience with the paint on these cars has shown that moderate process that often work beautifully on other cars does nothing on these. The paint is among the hardest we've come across, maybe a notch or two below old single stage white.