Polishing Question

[soccer05]

I have a black 2010 Mercedes Benz C300 and I was wondering if its safe to use M205 and Ultimate compound once a year? I don't want to completely strip away my clear coat. How many times can I polish before my clear coat goes away?

What would be the best\safest way once a year to detail a car?

Thanks

[agp56]

Re: Polishing Question

The two products you listed perform much the same task. Either one can be used to clarify light to medium irregularities if you are working by hand or DA. How many times is a wild card based on a host of factors including whether the car is kept in a garage or outdoors, the amount of pollutants in the air in your environment, etc.

[soccer05]

Re: Polishing Question

I thought M205 was less aggresive than ultimate compound?

[ChevyNick]

I think M205 is similar to Ultimate Polish. It doesn't have much cutting ability as far as I have read. M105 is slightly stronger than Ultimate Compound. So M205 is far weaker than Ultimate Compound. It is essentially a polish.

[wifpd4]

Re: Polishing Question

Check this out:
http://www.meguiarsonline.com/forums...e-you-removing.

and this:
http://www.meguiarsonline.com/forums...t-surprise-you!

[soccer05]

Re: Polishing Question

Yeah I read that post before on "how much paint are you removing" but that is only for sanding not polishing. If I use the ultimate compound once a year, would that kill my clear coat over the years? Or is it safe to use it once a year?

[umi000]

Re: Polishing Question

You really shouldn't be compounding that often - in fact, ideally, you should compound once, to correct the paint to the level you desire, then use proper wash technique and perhaps an occasional polishing session to maintain the paint in that condition. If you're needing to compound annually, you need to take a look at how you wash your paint. And yes, compounds and polishes work by abrading your clear, so using something like Ultimate Compound too often will eventually wear away enough paint to cause clear coat failure.

[soccer05]

Re: Polishing Question

then use proper wash technique and perhaps an occasional polishing session to maintain the paint in that condition. If you're needing to compound annually, you need to take a look at how you wash your paint.

When you mention occasional polishing, which polish are you talking about?

[wifpd4]

Re: Polishing Question

Sorry I don't have the specific references, but here is some information from Michael Stoops regarding your question.

Whenever someone asks this question, we like to ask them about their washing & drying process. If you need to buff out swirls twice a year at minimum then you need to evaluate how you're washing and drying the car as this is the source of the vast majority of these type of defects. Even a daily driver, if properly maintained, can go a couple of years without needing to fully correct it.

But let's put all this "paint removal" concept into perspective. No, there isn't a ton of paint on a modern, factory painted vehicle - only about 2 mils of clear coat (2/1000 of an inch). The fine swirls you see are incredibly shallow, but the edges of these fine scratches (which is what a swirl mark is, really) are very sharp and they act almost like a prism, bouncing very bright, white light back at you. When this happens over a dark base coat (black, red) the contrast is huge so the swirls stand out like a sore thumb. On metallic paints the metallic particles act like background noise, masking the swirls to some degree. Metallic silver is best at hiding swirls because the background color isn't that muchdifferent than the reflected light, and the metallic particles throw off enough "sparkle" of their own that it's hard to distinguish between metallic sparkle and swirl marks.

When you remove these fine defects a lot of what you're doing is rounding over these sharp edges, taking away the prism effect presented by the sharp edges. You're removing virtually nothing when doing this with something like M205 and a polishing pad on a DA buffer. It's only when you get into rotary compounding or wet sanding that you start to take off measurable amounts of paint, so those process generally can not be done repeatedly over the life of the vehicle. Rotary polishing with less aggressive liquids and pads is fine, if you know what you're doing. DA buffing is much more forgiving, much more fool proof, in the hands of a novice. But don't get lulled into a false sense of security by reading online that it's "impossible to damage your paint with a DA". You can. But you either have to try really, really hard or do something a bit bone headed.

The problems we see most often are when a novice user puts a 4" cutting pad on a DA and then uses a very strong compound to remove a deep scratch from a painted urethane bumper cover. Having read that it's "impossible to damage your paint with a DA" he leans on the darn thing, generates a ton of heat, and literally twists the paint off the bumper cover. But using 5.5" to 7" pads, even with quite a bit of pressure and Ultimate Compound, odds are incredibly slim that you'll do any sort of damage whatsoever, mainly because you aren't removing much paint at all.

As you suspect, there is no definitive answer here. M105 on a DA with a yellow polishing pad at speed 5 with moderate pressure, or M105 on a rotary with a wool pad at 1800 rpm? Huge difference in potential paint removal. But if all you're looking to do is remove fairly typical swirl marks, towel marks, etc then the rotary route is probably overkill. Remember, those marks are not very deep at all, and removal of them (visible removal) often means just rounding over those sharp edges to prevent reflection from them. Virtually every time we've done a paint correction with a DA and measured the paint before and after, we haven't been able to actually measure any real difference; ie, virtually no paint was removed (or at least not enough for the paint thickness gauge to read). And since a good PTG will easily read to 0.01 mil, that's saying something. But let's assume that even with very aggressive DA polishing (and this really is nothing more than an assumption, due to the huge number of variables in play) that you do remove 0.01 mil with each correction. Heck, let's go crazy and double it - call it 0.02 mil. Almost every single auto manufacturer today will tell you that if you remove more than 0.5 mil you need to repaint the car. Note that this is NOT the same as going through the clear (which is, on average, about 2.0 mils thick). So a removal of 0.02 mil with each serious DA correction would mean you could do this 25 times before reaching the 0.5 manufacturers threshold - meaning you've still got 1.5 mils of clear left!

[umi000]

Re: Polishing Question

When you mention occasional polishing, which polish are you talking about?

From Meguiars, products like M205 and SwirlX.

[soccer05]

Re: Polishing Question

You guys definitely answerd my quetsion. Thanks!