What is you first choice pad/product combination for testing a cars finish?

[Jack Barnhill]

At last week's TNOG, I noticed that Mike did the initial test area on 2 different cars with UC on a yellow pad. On 1 car this combination worked fine. On the other car, he had to go to the MFCS to get the appropriate cut.

This got me to wondering over the weekend... Given the variety of automotive finishes and hardness and the preferred practice of starting with lesser aggressive methods, do you have a set pad/product combination that you do the first test on an unfamiliar car's finish? If so, what is that combination? Or, do you do the first test on the finish with a different combination depending on the make, model, color, etc? Do you have recommendations for various makes, models, colors, etc?

[Shawn T.]

Re: What is you first choice pad/product combination for testing a cars finish?

I usually go with Ultimate Compound on a polishing pad to begin with. That is pretty much my go-to for testing on how to handle a car.

[Michael Stoops]

Re: What is you first choice pad/product combination for testing a cars finish?

Jack, we find that UC on a W8207 polishing pad running at speed 5 on a DA is a great starting point for the test spot on almost anything. Exceptions to that would be vehicles of the same make/model/model year of others we've worked on that had extremely delicate paint that was prone to hazing. Fortunately these tend to be pretty few and far between.

We have to admit to being pleasantly surprised at how quickly the Porsche Boxster responded to this combination, and very pleased with how much it liked a follow up with M205 on a W9207 finishing pad. Then again, we were pretty sure that M205 would do wonders for the clarity of that silver metallic paint, and the car owner noticed it immediately, too! As for the silver CLK, two passes with UC used fairly aggressively made a huge improvement and that paint seemed fairly hard as a result. Knowing that the DA Microfiber System loves hard paint, we were pretty confident that it would show well on this Mercedes, and it definitely did. That said, we've encountered other Mercedes models where a much less aggressive approach yielded a better result. We've also seen this on various BMW vehicles as their paints are all over the map, this due to BMW manufacturing in multiple plants in various countries and therefore using quite different paints throughout their lineup.

[Jack Barnhill]

Re: What is you first choice pad/product combination for testing a cars finish?

Thanks for replying, Mike. That's what I was looking for. Although, I was expecting more of a concurrence with your experience or maybe a few differences of opinion/experience from the rest of the forum.

Thanks again for nailing it down for me.

[Michael Stoops]

Re: What is you first choice pad/product combination for testing a cars finish?

Jack, if you look through the forum section with pictures from our Saturday Classes you'll see a wide variety of vehicles with a wide variety of issues, and all of them were tackled with Ultimate Compound and a W8207 pad at speed 5 on a G110v2. It's only been situations where a vehicle presents with either very delicate or very hard paint that we find a real need to move to something else. For those delicate paints we'll step down to something like M80, M205, SwirlX or even ColorX. For the more correction resistant paints we step up to either the DA Microfiber Correction System, M105 or a rotary buffer.

[Jack Barnhill]

Re: What is you first choice pad/product combination for testing a cars finish?

While I don't want to beat this horse to death, I guess this is where we go from cookbook detailing to detailing as an art.

It's obvious when you need to step up to a more aggressive combination; the finish just isn't looking any better. But, what would be the specific indicator(s) that you need step down to a less aggressive combination? And, how far would you step down, one step, two steps, or several steps and try to bracket the hardness of the finish?

[Tuck91]

Re: What is you first choice pad/product combination for testing a cars finish?

I always usually start with a cleaner/polish like M205 with the PC just to get a feel for the paint and see what it is able to do.

[BillE]

Re: What is you first choice pad/product combination for testing a cars finish?

While I don't want to beat this horse to death, I guess this is where we go from cookbook detailing to detailing as an art.

Well said!

It's obvious when you need to step up to a more aggressive combination; the finish just isn't looking any better. But, what would be the specific indicator(s) that you need step down to a less aggressive combination? And, how far would you step down, one step, two steps, or several steps and try to bracket the hardness of the finish?

This is where starting with LEAST aggressive method comes into play. Alway much easier to 'step up' than to have to not only correct the original 'problem' but also what an over aggressive did. Make sense?

Bill

[Michael Stoops]

Re: What is you first choice pad/product combination for testing a cars finish?

While I don't want to beat this horse to death, I guess this is where we go from cookbook detailing to detailing as an art.

It's obvious when you need to step up to a more aggressive combination; the finish just isn't looking any better. But, what would be the specific indicator(s) that you need step down to a less aggressive combination? And, how far would you step down, one step, two steps, or several steps and try to bracket the hardness of the finish?

While Ultimate Compound/W8207/Speed 5 on the DA will be a great starting point for the vast majority of vehicles, in those rare cases where it's overly aggressive there are indeed some tell tale signs. This is where a critical visual inspection of the surface comes into play, and why a test spot is so important. Obviously black paint is going to be the easiest to see the effects of an overly aggressive liquid so we'll use that as our example here.

Let's say you've got paint that is pretty darn glossy but still has a lot of swirls in it. You do a test spot and the paint still looks really glossy but the swirls have diminished almost completely - great, you're on the right track! Either go over the area a second time, or buff a bit longer with a single pass to knock them all out.

Assuming paint that looks the same as described above, but a properly performed first pass yields no visible change in the appearance, and a second pass also gives no (or very little) improvement, then you probably need to step up to something more aggressive

Again, assuming paint as described above, but after a first pass the swirls are all gone but the paint now looks a bit dull and hazy or has visible tick marks in it (small, tightly grouped little curved marks even distributed through the paint - note; we are not talking about pigtails here, that's a different issue), then you should try a less aggressive approach. And here's where delicate paints can get real tricky.

Say you step down to something a bit less aggressive on an adjacent test spot. The swirls are gone and there's no haze. Perfect, you're ready to wax.

What if the less aggressive product removes the swirls but still creates a bit of haze? You should be able to clean that light haze up with a very light pass of a finishing polish or, as we've found so often, a good cleaner wax like ColorX, and then use you're favorite LSP over that.

But say you step down to something a bit less aggressive and that new test spot shows almost no reduction of swirl marks. So you hit it again. Still the swirls remain but the paint is starting to look a bit hazy. Not bad at all, but you can detect it under really good lighting. What now? Well, you're most likely in a situation where you're practically forced into a multi step process. You need something with enough punch to remove the swirls, but you know it's going to haze the paint so a follow up with a less aggressive process is now mandatory.

Fortunately, many paint systems will respond very well to things like Ultimate Compound, D300 in the DA Microfiber System, or even M105, and present a very nice finish that is ready for wax. In many cases, just because you can, you go over that with something like M205 or Ultimate Polish just to give the paint that extra pizzazz, but you don't really have to. But some delicate paints will demand that follow up step. And the crazy thing is, other delicate paints come out looking great with nothing more than Ultimate Polish or M205 or similar.

It's because of these variations in paint systems that no single product is going to give equal results on every car. It's also the source of great frustration for new detailers who've seen so many people get great results using a certain process yet they can't immediately duplicate that result on their own car.