Ultimate polish hard to get off?

[FriboRage]

Last night I was working with UC first with a weak turtlewax random orbital, which had great results for what I wanted. Then I moved to ultimate polish, but since all my buffer bonnets were dirty I did the UP by hand with a microfiber applicator pad.

I rubbed it into a corner of the hood and man, it was HARD to get off. It's like it was drying instantly. I had to reapply several times in some cases to get the white residue off the black paint, bleh. I had to hold the applicator in one hand and my wipe cloth in the other so I could switch off fast, letting it sit doomed me.

It took so much rubbing to get it all off, it took me 2x longer than the UC and I was sweating buckets. Did I do something wrong? I feel like it shouldn't be that hard, the UC and the ULW always have been so easy, never used the UP before.

Once I almost died getting it all off, the results were beautiful, only did the hood so far though... Hoping I did something wrong so I could justify doing the rest of the car.

[SVT Lightning]

Re: Ultimate polish hard to get off?

When you say 'white residue'......you didn't let it dry did you?

[FriboRage]

Re: Ultimate polish hard to get off?

Not intentionally, I was wiping off immediately, but it seemed once I started to wipe it just dried in smears.

[Murr1525]

Re: Ultimate polish hard to get off?

Well, it is oily, so may kind of smear when removing. Kind of want to do a general wipe over the area to remove some, then wipe again to remove more, etc. Not just focus on one spot until all gone.

But if drying is the issue, I wonder if your pad was soaking it up at all, or maybe too hot of a surface?

[drumdan]

I've had it dry prematurely on me. It took me a minute to get the hang of it. Now it's one of my favorite products in the line up.

[Detailing by M]

Re: Ultimate polish hard to get off?

Well that "machine" is weak, so you need to use very little product and clean you pad.
You have to work this until it's gone and nothing is left on the paint or, as you've discovered, it's a pain to remove.

[Michael Stoops]

Re: Ultimate polish hard to get off?

Well that "machine" is weak, so you need to use very little product and clean you pad.
You have to work this until it's gone and nothing is left on the paint or, as you've discovered, it's a pain to remove.

Psssst..... hey, Mario.......he's working with UP by hand........his low powered buffer isn't the issue here.



FriboRage, there might be a couple of things you can try to help remedy this situation. First, try experimenting with either less or more product and how long you're working it. If you're using a lot of product and it's drying up on you quickly, then try using less product in a smaller area. If, on the other hand, you're using a small amount of product over a large area, shrink that work area down a bit to avoid having it dry out.

We do see issues like this from time to time, and this is from a response we made recently on another thread with a similar discussion:

Our COO has a 2009 BMW M3 coupe that exhibits similar issues. It's the only car I've ever worked on personally that even M205 is a pain to wipe off of. And M205 is usually a breeze to work with. Doing two cars in the same day, including this BMW, is a real eye opener because on the first car everything just works the way one would expect it to, and then on this M3 it all just all just falls apart. Same day, same weather, same garage, same buffer, same bottle of M205 (or anything else) and it's just a huge fight with this car. Now, we know that there was some sort of an issue in the painting process at the factory with this car because a few years ago we did a full wet sand, cut and buff on it and there was extreme swelling of the paint during the compounding process, concealing the sanding marks and frustrating us to no end.

The point here is that sometimes you come across a particular paint that just doesn't like a particular product (or, in the case of the newest Subarus, a paint that doesn't seem to like much of anything applied to it!). The good news is these really annoying paint systems tend to be few and far between, but they can be factory paint or repaints. We had the exact same issue on a restored (and therefore repainted) 1959 Ferrari 250GT that we detailed at RM Auctions in Monterey, CA a couple of years ago. Everything else was fine on it except UltimatePolish.

Again, from personal experience, I've worked a car, just one, where M105 was instantly turned into a gummy mess on the surface and was completely unusable. I've seen one car, just one, where every single quick detailer used on it left a film that you could run your fingers through and leave streaks, but those streaks would eventually disappear as the film took over the clear areas. Just the craziest thing, but it turned out eventually that M34 Final Inspection was perfectly fine on it. The car had been waxed with NXT Tech Wax 2.0, which we've seen on thousands of cars without causing any sort of issue with any quick detail spray.

We could go on and on with examples of paint systems that react in really bizarre ways to very common inputs and products but we think you get the point here. Of course, for someone new to this hobby it's extremely frustrating and very hard to sort out how to overcome the challenge. Detailing forums like MOL and others, along with manufacturer's call centers and even discussions on Facebook exist for these reasons - to help people figure out the hows and whys of detailing.