Glass Polishing... deep cleaning

[Zitosonic]

Dont try this if you are not confident about your skills ... my car windows have acid rain i cant get rid of it... i try white vinegar, kerosene, windex, cigar ashes with no result... so after getting nutz (some may say what i do is crazy) i decide to go hard with this.

I use W-8000 yellow foam pad with Deep Crystal Paint Cleaner on a rotary buffer at medium low speed and it works well. But I was curious so i try something with more bite and use Compound Power Cleaner and it works magic.

[Mike Phillips]

Next time try this by hand with a piece of terry cloth or by machine with a W=7006 foam cutting pad.

#4 Heavy Cut Cleaner




It will work so much better than either of the two product you tried because of the type of diminishing abrasive this product uses. Next time you're around a bottle of #4 Heavy Cut Cleaner, shake up the bottle and pour a little into your fingers and then rub your fingers back and forth. You will easily feel the diminishing abrasives, (if you continue to rub your fingers together your will feel the diminishing abrasives breakdown and disappear).

Now, feel any of the products in the 80's series, such as the #84 Compound Power Cleaner in the same way and it will feel like you're rubbing a soft, smooth hand lotion between your fingers.

The difference is the 80's series uses microscopic diminishing abrasives while the traditional Mirror Glaze products use for lack of a better term, macroscopic diminishing abrasives.

It is this larger size diminishing abrasive particle that cuts, or slices through the film that has built up on the surface of your glass and polishes it off.

Liquid glass cleaners don't offer this polishing effect. When ever I detail a customers car, I'll almost always machine polish their glass with this system so that the glass is a glossy and shiny as the paint. When you do this and you've detailed the car correctly, the finished look jumps out at you! because everything on the car is gleaming.

In Oregon and Washington, I ran into a lot of people with horrendous water spots on their glass, as such, I have a lot of experience polishing glass.

Mike

[Zitosonic]

i haven't try it yet, but i will

thanks Mike

[kty10]

Are there products that you'd recommend for cleaning glass without the use of a rotary? Perhaps something that can be applied with a DA or by hand?

[Zitosonic]

Originally posted by kty10
Are there products that you'd recommend for cleaning glass without the use of a rotary? Perhaps something that can be applied with a DA or by hand?

I use a terry cloth first and need a lot of elbow grease to make it work, but If you can use a terry cloth there is no doubt it will work with a DA.

Lets follow Mike's suggestion and use a cleaner or compound that uses Meguiar's Diminishing Abrasives technology.

[Mike Phillips]

Originally posted by kty10
Are there products that you'd recommend for cleaning glass without the use of a rotary? Perhaps something that can be applied with a DA or by hand?

What works best for removing any kind of water deposits or gunk that has built-up on the outside of your cars glass is a rotary buffer with either a foam cutting pad or a wool cutting pad. That's only because the machine takes all the work out of it.

If you don't have a rotary buffer then the next best approach is to use a piece of terry cloth by hand with some enthusiasm. The nap, (the little cotton loops), act as a gentle form of an abrasive together with the diminishing abrasives to help you cut through the layer of gunk and expose the glass surface.

The oscillating action of the dual action polisher with a foam pad doesn't work. That's because the dual action polisher is typically to gentle to be effective, that is, you can probably be more effective and work faster by hand than with the dual action polisher for this procedure.

Mike

[zey]

Mike, will #4 with rotary buffer cuts the glass and remove scratches? Will it also mar the glass surface?

[Don]

I borrowed a single speed rotary several years back and used a compound (type forgotten) with a wool pad on the windshield of an '86 Toyota pickup that I had at the time. This was back before I even had a clue about using a Variable Speed buffer and didn't even know the PC existed (all I had was a GEM orbital).

My clueless use of the rotary left some obvious holograms on the glass, BUT, some of the marks I was trying to get rid of were gone.

I have a feeling that the Toyota glass was a bit 'softer' than usual, so it swirled with my bad technique. If I'd have known what I was doing, I bet I could have improved it even more.

I plan on doing something similar to the wife's Jeep. I've been driving it to work since the accident, and even Rain-X isn't effective (we've had some HEAVY rains & snows and I can't see a thing while I'm driving). I was going to use some #83 & the PC, but now I'm thinking about going to the body shop that has my Cavalier & borrowing a VS rotary.

[Carrera]

I assume that M85 would work as well.

[Setec Astronomy]

Originally posted by Mike Phillips
In Oregon and Washington, I ran into a lot of people with horrendous water spots on their glass, as such, I have a lot of experience polishing glass.Mike

Mike, any suggestions for a product to apply after polishing to help maintain the surface? I searched and found a post asking this question where Lynn replied that Meguiar's doesn't make that kind of product and recommended RainX. I was wondering if any of the paint protection products (NXT, etc) would be worthwhile on sunroofs, side, and rear windows. In the old days I always used to wax my windows, but somewhere along the way I stopped doing it.

[Mike Phillips]

Originally posted by zey
Mike, will #4 with rotary buffer cuts the glass and remove scratches? Will it also mar the glass surface?

Allow me to correct you, M04 with a rotary buffer doesn' not cut the glass, it is only for removing the gunk that has built up on the glass, therefor it shouldn't mar the glass. This entire thread is about removing contaminants on the surface, that is water deposits and other contaminants that have built up as a layer of gunk on top of the glass. This is not about removing scratches in the glass. For this you need special products that can be purchased at the Eastwood company.

Mike

[Mike Phillips]

Originally posted by Carrera
I assume that M85 would work as well.

No this product won't work to remove gunk that has built-up on the surface of window glass because it uses a microscopic diminishing abrasive, what works is the larger diminishing abrasive found in the M04 Heavy Cut Cleaner. If possible, shake up a bottle of both of these products and then pour some of each out and feel them between your fingers, you will notice right away the difference in they type of diminishing abrasive each uses.

Mike

[ntaylor]

Couple more questions:

When is the M04 indicated vs. the regular glass cleaner vs. the NXT glass cleaner? Is the NXT that superior, seems like the regular gallon would go a lot farther.

Is there any time when a dual-action polisher would be useful on glass? Such as buffing Rain-X or with a cutting pad? I think I also saw a post that now escapes me mentioning the foam pad that comes with the PC 7336 as possibly being appropriate for glass but not to be used on paint.

[ntaylor]

Anyone?

[Mike Phillips]

Originally posted by ntaylor
Couple more questions:

When is the M04 indicated vs. the regular glass cleaner vs. the NXT glass cleaner? Is the NXT that superior, seems like the regular gallon would go a lot farther.

Is there any time when a dual-action polisher would be useful on glass? Such as buffing Rain-X or with a cutting pad? I think I also saw a post that now escapes me mentioning the foam pad that comes with the PC 7336 as possibly being appropriate for glass but not to be used on paint.

If you read through this thread, most of these questions are answered.

M04 Heavy Cut Cleaner is a paint cleaner that utilizes a diminishing abrasive you can feel with your fingers, as such if you have any kind of film or water deposits that have built up on the glass, like in you can see a film on the glass that normal wiping with a glass cleaner doesn't budge, then you can use a product like this to polish this gunk off the window.

The NXT Glass cleaner is a Glass Cleaner in our consumer line that you can find in your local stores. The glass cleaner in our Detailer line is only available through PBE stores or online and is concentrated so you must dilute in order to use. Of course a gallon will go farther than a single bottle, but most people don't want the hassle of ordering a gallon and diluting into a secondary bottle. Thus we introduced NXT Glass Cleaner as a superior product on the market in this category.

Dual action polisher are too gentle to do much for glass.

Mike