Holograms - help?

[Trillion]

First things first - Hi! I'm new here, and I'm new to detailing.

Well, after reading several articles on how to use a rotary polisher, I finally decided to get hold of one, and shot to work on my car with Sonus FX1, 2 and finally 3. I used the Meguiars cutting pad with the FX1 cutting compound, the polishing pad with the second polish, and finally a finishing pad with the finishing polish.

Initially, I was left with a few holograms after going through all of the polishes, and I couldn't figure out what was causing them. I refined my technique, and discovered that the only way to remove these holograms was to apply a good deal of pressure (30lbs?) to the pad end, use slightly less finishing polish, set the buffer to 900RPM and move the buffer sloooooower. I only tried the finishing polish with the finishing pad, and the only way I managed to remove the majority of the holograms was to apply a large amount of pressure to the pad..

However, there are still some light holograms that are noticeable if you're looking for them when the car is in full strength sunlight.

So, my question is.. has anyone had any experience of this polish before; any ideas on how much I should be using of each, techniques with these specific pads (all meguiars). The car is a Ford Mondeo, and according to a particular site (I forget the name), it's classed as intermediate hardness. Should I try the polishing pad with the finishing polish since I had to push so hard on the polishing pad to get the holograms out?

Thanks guys

[Michael Stoops]

Re: Holograms - help?

First off, welcome to MOL!

As for you specific issue, we're a bit surprised to hear someone using that sort of pressure with a rotary buffer - that's downright scary as you can introduce tremendous heat doing this, and high heat levels are usually a very bad thing.

Have you tried using the finishing polish with the foam finishing pad, the tool set to a very low speed - 1100 rpm or less - and moving the pad slowly over the paint with just the weight of the tool? Keeping the pad as flat as possible is key here, as is the lower speed. But also be aware that some paints can be incredibly challenging to finish out completely hologram free and it often takes a lot of skill to do so. Hardness or softness of paint has less to do with this than whether or not the paint is susceptible to marring in some form or another. People tend to want to oversimplify this and classify the paint as having some degree of hardness, expecting that to explain away what's going on. In reality, a paint can be "hard" as in resistant to correction, but at the same time be very scratch sensitive, easy to mar, or easy to create holograms in. Other paints can be very "soft" as in easy to correct, but still be very resistant to micro marring or hologramming. So don't focus too much on what you may have read online about how hard this paint may or may not be as that can quickly cloud your perceptions of what's happening.

Try the low speed, low pressure, flat pad approach and report back whether that's helped you out or not. It could also be that the particular product you're using as a finishing polish doesn't play all that well with this particular paint.

[Trillion]

Re: Holograms - help?

Thanks for the reply. I've had a quick go over some of the holograms using light pressure and 1000RPM, but instead of using the finishing polish, used the swirl remover with the finishing pad. The holograms seem to have vanished (under the torch at least), but I'll have to wait until the sunlight picks up again until I can assess it properly. Seems MUCH better though! I'll report back later, fingers crossed!

[Trillion]

Re: Holograms - help?

Holograms seem to be gone using this technique but I haven't had time to go over the car and properly test it as I've been tinting the headlights. The plastic was quite yellowed before but it came out very nicely with a cutting compound and the Megs cutting pad -




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