First time detailing

[darkid]

Hi everyone,
So my fiancee got me the G110v2 for my birthday a few weeks ago after a few well placed hints on my part. Btw thanks to Bill Davidson at detailing depot for some great service...She also got me a yellow polishing pad, and a black finishing pad.

For my lack of patience I wanted to get some polish right away so I bought whatever they had at Napa, which turned out to be the Fine-Cut Cleaner (M02), some Medium-Cut Cleaner (M01), and some show car glaze (M07). I own a 2003 BMW Z4 that is Merlot Red Metallic, and there's a ton of swirls and tiny scratches in the finish that have accumulated over the years. From all the reading i've been doing on this forum, I decided i'd start light and go with the M02 and did a few passes at speed 4. It didn't come out so I did a few passes at speed 5, then 6...

After a while I decided maybe the product wasn't agressive enough so I moved up to the Medium Cut cleaner. Again, I did a few passes on speed 5 but to my surprise there's still quite a few scratches remaining. It took out some of the cobwebs but there's still a lot remaining. I was thinking of going out to pickup some Ultimate Compound at Canadian Tire but I decided i'd ask for advice before I sped any more money on this...

Am I using the right pad? Should I move up to a cutting pad? What about the compound? Should it be enough to remove minor imperfections? My last question is about the G110V2...
I find the pad doesn't spin much at all. The one thing I find weird is if I have it on speed 5, the pad spins maybe (big maybe) twice per second. As soon as I add a tiny bit of pressure with my hand, it's like it barely spins. If I put some decent pressure, it definitely stops spinning. And what's even weirder is that if I put it on setting #6, it spins slower than on #5! Is this normal?

Thanks for your help.

[greg0303]

Re: First time detailing

First things first - you have to marry your fiance. G110 for Your Birthday, it sounds like you found your true match. Congrats !!!
All of the cleaners which you've got work best with rotary buffers. For your G110 you need Ultimate Compound, SwirlX, some pure polish and your favorite wax (either synthetic or carnauba). Cutting pads don't work so well on G110 because there's not enough cutting ability. Again wool and foam cutting pads are for direct driven rotary polishers.
When using dual action polisher you don't want to kill its rotation. Make a line using a marker on your backing plate and make sure it moves otherwise you'll be left alone with just orbital movement which is not enough for paint correcting work. On the other end you don't want to be to gentle as you won't do any improvement at all.
The safest way is to start with SwirlX and do some small test area. If you're happy with the results continue, if you're removing only 50% of defects try another pass, if you're not successful at all step up to Ultimate Compound and again do a little small test area.
Polishing pad/ finishing pad combo should be fine in your case.

[wifpd4]

Re: First time detailing

...
For my lack of patience I wanted to get some polish right away...

As we all did!! If you haven't already, put the Mequiar's training videos into your schedule.

http://meguiarsonline.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=134

The other thing I did, that I'm surprised I don't see suggested more often, was visit Mequiars.com and go to the interactive page for initial suggestions.

http://www.meguiars.com/rx/rx_main.cfm

Of course the real action is here in the forum. It's populated by some really knowledgeable and helpful folks. I'm sure they will pop in to this conversation shortly.

[Dubbin1]

Re: First time detailing

Before going any further you are going to need more then 1 of each pad to do the whole car. Minimum of 3 each would be a good start. While you are ordering the pads go ahead and toss in M105 and M205. I assure you that you will get the results you are looking for with that combo.