How often do you use products with abrasives on the whole car?

[Car Potential]

I have used UC once and it did a very good job cleaning the paint and removing the minor defects on the paint. So I don't see myself using UC or any other product with abrasives for at least a year and I would only use something with abrasives once a year at the max. Does that sound right?

And I understand that there are products that differ in aggressiveness; example UP vs UC and that different products have different purposes.

[Detailing by M]

Re: How often do you use products with abrasives on the whole car?

You use a compound when you need to remove defects.
So like ever one here. You need to not instill damage to your paint, ie: scratches so wash carefully, use top quality towels and good technique.
It's ok to use a compound but you will be removing a little of the Clear Coat each time, but not enough to be concerned. So don't worrier about rubbing out your car a couple of times a year.

[eatnosenuggets]

Re: How often do you use products with abrasives on the whole car?

I've used UC on both of our cars once last spring and haven't opened the bottle since. It did it's job, and it was worth using.

After instilling some towel marks from improper drying, UP was enough to clear them up. Depending on how gnarly the road salt/touchless washes were this winter on our cars, I will only use UC if UP isn't strong enough first.

I'm no expert, but in my experience UP is quite capable where UC was the product I would initially think I would want to use. In fact, I use the UP/ULW/GCCP(paste) 4 times a year on my car.

[Michael Stoops]

Re: How often do you use products with abrasives on the whole car?

It's not all that uncommon for someone to post that they're compounding their car for the 3rd or 4th time that year and have started to wonder how often they can do that before going through their clear coat. And when ever we see that question, we always ask why they feel the need to buff out the car so often. Usually they respond with "it has swirls", which then prompts us to ask what the heck they're doing so wrong with their washing and drying process to inflict so many swirls that the car needs to be buffed out every 3 months! If you're properly maintaining your vehicle then you shouldn't have to buff out swirls any more frequently than once a year, or maybe even less than that. We know people who haven't done a serious correction to their paint in many years, even on daily drivers. They have done light duty polishing with Ultimate Polish or M205, but in a pretty non aggressive manner and just to maximize gloss and clarity.

But back to actually compounding out swirls with Ultimate Compound or similar. We routinely tell people during our training classes and seminars that DA buffing, when done to remove fairly typical swirl marks, removes such a minute amount of paint that even a paint thickness gauge reading won't show a difference before and after the process. A couple of weeks ago we had Muscle Car Review magazine in our training garage for a piece they're doing on paint care, and we proved this to them on a badly swirled paint finish. The image below shows the before and after of our test spot, using Ultimate Compound on a W8207 foam polishing pad with the G110v2 set to speed 5 and moderate pressure applied for a few passes.


As you can see, the swirls were pretty severe, yet we finished with a totally defect free finish. And the paint thickness readings were virtually unchanged before and after the process. What does "virtually unchanged" mean? Well, our PTG reads to 0.01 mil, and after taking multiple readings in this small area both before and after correction, we found either no change or that minimal 0.01 mil change. So in total we were taking off no more than that, and since most car manufacturers state that 0.5 mil is the maximum level of clear you can safely remove we figure that means - in theory - this car could be buffed with equal aggressive as much as 50 times before reaching that critical 0.5 mil limit. That's a lot of DA polishing.

Now here's the really important part:

We are NOT saying that it's OK to buff your paint every few months because the process doesn't remove much paint. We're not even hinting at that, really, because the best case scenario, a "best practices" approach to car care, is to still not put the swirls in the paint in the first place. Or at least do what you can to dramatically minimize the creation of those swirls. Remember, some paints are harder/softer than others so the amount you remove for a given process can and will vary. New users tend to get overly aggressive, and some people tend to believe everything they read on the Internet. How many times have you read that "it's impossible to damage your paint with a DA buffer"? Well, nothing is "impossible". But some people read that, and then they read something like what we just posted above, put the two together, switch off their brains entirely, and just go crazy on their paint. Heck, that's how people rub through their clear coat by hand!

So I don't see myself using UC or any other product with abrasives for at least a year and I would only use something with abrasives once a year at the max.

It sounds like you're taking a very sensible approach here, but don't worry if you find the odd little mark here and there that you want to correct, and don't be afraid to use UP or similar a couple of times a year to maximize gloss and clarity if you so desire. But just as you mentioned, correctly, that different products have differing levels of aggressiveness, so too does the application process. But if you're able to maximize your washing and drying process and minimize the level of defects that result from that, you'll be so far ahead of the game and your vehicle will great for many, many years to come.

[Car Potential]

Re: How often do you use products with abrasives on the whole car?

Thanks for the replies.

So I will probably use Ultimate Polish once or twice a year. And with Ultimate Compound, I probably won't have to use it again on the whole vehicle but maybe will use it for isolated areas if scratches or defects occur.

The reason I thought of this is because it seems like the new white wax has some abrasives in it and I was thinking that I wouldn't want to use a wax with abrasives in it. But then again there is also the Cleaner Wax #6 which people have said really good things about.