How often can you use the Mequiar's DA without removing the CC?

[sarecco]

I have an 07 Corvette with spiderweb swirls all over. How often can you use the Mequiar's DA with mild products like swirlX & Ultimate Compound without removing the Clearcoat? If the car keeps naturally getting Swerl marks & I keep removing them, it seems as though the CC will wear off?

Steve From NY
Black 07 Corvette
815HP

[Shawn T.]

Re: How often can you use the Mequiar's DA without removing the CC?

If you are using 8207 polishing pads and performing swirl removals once or twice a year with Swirlx and Ultimate Compound you have years and years before anything would go wrong. Rememerb, a DA is designed to be as gentle as possible to the paint compared to the power of a rotary.

[tcope1]

Re: How often can you use the Mequiar's DA without removing the CC?

Just from memory I think an application with the DA might only remove a hundredth of a mill. Considering your CC is about 4 mills (at least?) you can use the DA several hundred times before you even put a "dent" in the CC. But much more can be removed with a rotary and you can never be sure exactly how thick an area of CC is... this is why may higher end detailer's use gauges to help them.

[SVT Lightning]

Re: How often can you use the Mequiar's DA without removing the CC?

815 HP! Whoa......!

[Ron500]

Re: How often can you use the Mequiar's DA without removing the CC?

when u say 4mm, is that a general figure for most cars, so what would be the comparison of amount removed between UC and swirl x, that is pretty reassuring to hear, i thought a considerable amount of clearcoat is removed each time it is cleaned.

cheers.

[Mister B]

Re: How often can you use the Mequiar's DA without removing the CC?

Here is a good thread that Joe from Superior Shine Mobile Auto Detailing did back in 2004 that gives a good idea of just how much paint is removed during the various processes of paint finish care.

How much paint are you removing

[mattya802]

Re: How often can you use the Mequiar's DA without removing the CC?

Here is a good thread that Joe from Superior Shine Mobile Auto Detailing did back in 2004 that gives a good idea of just how much paint is removed during the various processes of paint finish care.

How much paint are you removing

Thanks for that link!

[tcope1]

Re: How often can you use the Mequiar's DA without removing the CC?

Had my numbers wrong... that was for the entire paint. The thickness of paint is always going to be slightly different but from what I recall, most are around 4 mills and the thickest I've ever read about is about 7 mills (I think 7 mills was from a repaint). From what I also recall reading, a typical detail with a DA takes off in the area of .001 mill... and this is from doing correction on the CC. If you did correction every week on a vehicle it would take years to do any damage (providing the CC was not thin). A few corrections every year and... well... you should not have an issues.

What I'm going by is memory of reading hundreds of posts. This is the impression I recall after thinking the same thing and doing some research.

Of course, there can always be thin spots. So if you are charging a premium to detail someone's $100,000 vehicle, you probably want to check the thickness.

[Michael Stoops]

Re: How often can you use the Mequiar's DA without removing the CC?

A typical factory clear coat is only about 2 mils thick (or is that thin??), not 4 mils.

Keep in mind, too, that a lot of what you're looking at when seeing swirls is bright white light reflecting off the sharp edge of the scratch which, technically, is what a swirl mark is. When this bright white light is reflected against a dark background the contrast is very high, and so the mark is very noticeable. On a silver car the background color is already close to the color of the reflected light, plus there's all the "noise" of the tiny metallic particles bouncing light around, and you can see why silver hides swirls so well.

When you use a paint cleaner - essentially an abrasive suspended in a liquid - you are indeed removing some paint. A lot of what you're removing, though, is just the very sharp edges of those swirl marks. Take away that prism effect of the sharp edge and visually you've taken away the swirl. So the amount of paint being removed is incredibly small when using a D/A and mild products. Obviously this is part of the reason we always preach using the least aggressive method to get the job done.

Now, if you find yourself having to remove swirls from your paint several times a year, we're a bit more concerned about how you're maintaining the finish than anything else. Good quality towels, routine removal of light dust with some UQD, proper wash techniques, etc are all critical when it comes to preventing swirls in the first place. While you can't remain swirl free forever if you're touching the paint in some way on a regular basis, how you touch the paint will ultimately determine how quickly and to what degree the swirls come back. And prevention is always faster and easier than correction.

Of course, some paints are just much more susceptible to marring than others so you have to be extra careful with those. But some of those same paints are super easy to correct with very mild products like M205 or even just a really good cleaner wax like ColorX, M66 or D151.

[Ron500]

Re: How often can you use the Mequiar's DA without removing the CC?

interesting, so how much clearcoat would a cleaner remove like UC?

[Michael Stoops]

Re: How often can you use the Mequiar's DA without removing the CC?

interesting, so how much clearcoat would a cleaner remove like UC?

With fairly routine work on a D/A with a typical foam polishing pad like our W8xxx series - basically just typical swirl/cobweb removal - you would be hard pressed to measure the amount of paint removed. It really is that minor.