Would Meguiar's #80 remove my opti-coat layer ??

[asalah]

Was working on a black BMW
Spent 2 days in sanding, compounding, and polishing using meguiar's #84, #83, and #80 with various pads
Next I washed the car to remove any polish residues
Then I applied a layer of opti-coat

When opti-coat flashed, I noticed several high spots and holograms due to the application

So I gave an extra pass of #80 (the least aggressive polish), with the finishing pad (the least aggressive pad), and the DA polisher at speed 1 (the slowest speed ever), with no pressure at all

That removed the high spots and the holograms, but I'm wondering if it affected my opti-coat layer at all

Any clues ??

[Michael Stoops]

Re: Would Meguiar's #80 remove my opti-coat layer ??

Was working on a black BMW
Spent 2 days in sanding, compounding, and polishing using meguiar's #84, #83, and #80 with various pads
Next I washed the car to remove any polish residues
Then I applied a layer of opti-coat

When opti-coat flashed, I noticed several high spots and holograms due to the application

High spots from the application of Opti-Coat and similar are pretty common, but holograms? That should not happen from hand application of any product. Any chance these holograms were a result of the machine buffing that took place prior to the application of Opti-Coat?

So I gave an extra pass of #80 (the least aggressive polish), with the finishing pad (the least aggressive pad), and the DA polisher at speed 1 (the slowest speed ever), with no pressure at all

That removed the high spots and the holograms, but I'm wondering if it affected my opti-coat layer at all

Any clues ??

Generally speaking, when one of these semi permanent coatings has fully cured they require fairly aggressive compounding to remove them. But in your case the Opti-Coat did not have time to fully cure - it may have been "dry" but that's not the same as "cured". If you were able to level the high spots with such a mild approach, and remove what you've described as holograms, then you may well have removed most, if not all, of the coating. Obviously the removal of high spots means the removal of some product, there's no doubt about that. But it's the holograms that concern us. If these were indeed caused by the previous buffing steps and now they're gone, then you've most certainly removed the Opti-Coat. If they were just light swirl-like marks in the Opti-Coat itself then removing them still means removing a fair bit of that coating.