filler

[radkonn]

What products have fillers in them, Meguiars or others? I just purchased a pc and some aggressive polishes, but I want a product that will fill light swirls between my major details. I just don't want to keep wearing down the clearcoat. Does 3M SMR have them? I noticed that they have one for dark and light colored cars, so I'm guessing the answer is yes.

Thanks

[Mike Phillips]

Re: filler

Originally posted by radkonn
What products have fillers in them, Meguiars or others? I just purchased a pc and some aggressive polishes, but I want a product that will fill light swirls between my major details. I just don't want to keep wearing down the clearcoat. Does 3M SMR have them? I noticed that they have one for dark and light colored cars, so I'm guessing the answer is yes.

Thanks

Your goal should be to remove the below surface defects, (swirls and scratches), not merely fill them in. If you want to fill them in, you may find this difficult to do as clearcoat finishes are scratch-sensitive and tend to show defects very easily.

Even if you fill them in, because whatever you use to fill them in with will wear-off, they will re-appear after a car wash or two.

Meguiar's compounds, paint cleaners and cleaner/polishes are formulated to remove defects, not merely fill them in. Part of the way they do this is by using a lubricating film to cushion the abrading action of our diminishing abrasives, this prevents more swirls and and scratches from being instilled in the process. You'll find people on other forums generically labeling this lubricating film as a filler, but that's because they typically don't understand the complex abrading/polishing action taking place on the surface at the microscopic level.

If you want to merely fill scratches and swirls in, then any quality wax will help to do this as any quality wax or paint protectant, (or polish by some peoples definition), will do this if the product is in fact actually leaving behind any of itself behind. If a product leaves itself behind to protect the finish, (the goal of a wax or paint protectant), by definition, it is filling because it is coating over. This should especially be true of any product that claims to be layerable as if it is truly layering, then the film-build it is leaving behind should be increasing in thickness and thus the surface imperfections should be become less visible.

[radkonn]

My goal is to completely remove the defects using 83 and 80, but inevitably, I know more defects will appear over time. I just don’t want to keep removing clear coat every time I see minor defects. Basically, I want to let them build up over time. I will take what I have learned in this forum to minimize any damage caused by me. Thanks for the reply it was very informative. Now, I have a better understanding.