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Another beautiful, sunny Saturday in SoCal and another enthusiastic group of car crazy car guys!
As is customary, we select a dark colored vehicle driven in by one of the students, always looking for one with plenty of swirls to correct. In this case, it's a new Acura ILX.
Nick Winn discussing the finer points of the polishing step in our 5 Step Paint Care Cycle.
Out in the garage it was hands on demo time - we did traditional foam correction on one side with Ultimate Compound, Polish and Wax. Here it's UC on a W8207 polishing pad.
Next up, some UP on a W9207 finishing pad.
Before working on the other side we first primed the microfiber cutting pad with D300, then blew out the excess with compressed air.
Fully primed, it's just three pea sized drops of products before putting pad to paint.
Attacking swirls with the DA Microfiber Correction System
If you don't have an air compressor, a pad brush works great to clean the microfiber pad after every section.
Out in direct sunlight, this is what the UC/UP side looks like. No wax yet, just compound and polish.
The right side is after just D300/DMC 5 - no polish and no D301 Finishing Wax either. The correction was a bit better but there was a tiny bit of hazing. This angle almost seems to magnify the haze, and without a polish it's not quite as dark as the other side but that's to be expected here.
Someone asked about this process effects paint thickness, so we took a series of readings in the area immediately above where we corrected, and on the corrected area. There was no discernible difference, indicating just how safe an non invasive DA paint correction is.
Time to let the students get a feel for the buffer.
Working under Nick's watchful eye.
One other vehicle of particular interest was this 1990 3 Series BMW that sat outside, parked, for 12 years. That's a lot of inactivity for any vehicle, so after getting mechanically sorted the owners now want to address the paint. It's going to be quite a project for them, that's for sure! The bonded contaminants were so bad that even the blue Pro Mild Clay was a bit challenged. This really is a case where the red Pro Aggressive Clay is the right choice - the paint literally felt like 80 grit sandpaper.
Once the hood was clayed we tried a couple of different processes to see how far up we could bring the paint. This car has single stage paint, and single stage white paint is incredibly hard and resistant to polishing. Knowing that this paint was probably never going to look "new" again, we started with D300 on a microfiber pad. The paint is so dry that is just pulled all the lubricant out of D300 and the residue was quite difficult to remove. We then gave M100 a shot on a microfiber pad and, while wipe off was still tricky due to the dried out nature of the paint, the correction did seem a bit better than with D300. We then did a little experiment to remove the last of the compound residue that was fighting us - we applied White Wax with a microfiber finishing pad and let it haze. Wipe off was a snap, and it took the little bit of compound residue off with the wax.
This is what the paint looked like before we started - the reflection of the overhead lamp is almost non existent and the paint looks extremely mottled due to the oxidation.
After M100 and White Wax, you can clearly see the detail of the reflector in the overhead light as clarity is greatly increased. This car is going to take a lot of time but there is hope for it yet!
As is customary, we select a dark colored vehicle driven in by one of the students, always looking for one with plenty of swirls to correct. In this case, it's a new Acura ILX.
Nick Winn discussing the finer points of the polishing step in our 5 Step Paint Care Cycle.
Out in the garage it was hands on demo time - we did traditional foam correction on one side with Ultimate Compound, Polish and Wax. Here it's UC on a W8207 polishing pad.
Next up, some UP on a W9207 finishing pad.
Before working on the other side we first primed the microfiber cutting pad with D300, then blew out the excess with compressed air.
Fully primed, it's just three pea sized drops of products before putting pad to paint.
Attacking swirls with the DA Microfiber Correction System
If you don't have an air compressor, a pad brush works great to clean the microfiber pad after every section.
Out in direct sunlight, this is what the UC/UP side looks like. No wax yet, just compound and polish.
The right side is after just D300/DMC 5 - no polish and no D301 Finishing Wax either. The correction was a bit better but there was a tiny bit of hazing. This angle almost seems to magnify the haze, and without a polish it's not quite as dark as the other side but that's to be expected here.
Someone asked about this process effects paint thickness, so we took a series of readings in the area immediately above where we corrected, and on the corrected area. There was no discernible difference, indicating just how safe an non invasive DA paint correction is.
Time to let the students get a feel for the buffer.
Working under Nick's watchful eye.
One other vehicle of particular interest was this 1990 3 Series BMW that sat outside, parked, for 12 years. That's a lot of inactivity for any vehicle, so after getting mechanically sorted the owners now want to address the paint. It's going to be quite a project for them, that's for sure! The bonded contaminants were so bad that even the blue Pro Mild Clay was a bit challenged. This really is a case where the red Pro Aggressive Clay is the right choice - the paint literally felt like 80 grit sandpaper.
Once the hood was clayed we tried a couple of different processes to see how far up we could bring the paint. This car has single stage paint, and single stage white paint is incredibly hard and resistant to polishing. Knowing that this paint was probably never going to look "new" again, we started with D300 on a microfiber pad. The paint is so dry that is just pulled all the lubricant out of D300 and the residue was quite difficult to remove. We then gave M100 a shot on a microfiber pad and, while wipe off was still tricky due to the dried out nature of the paint, the correction did seem a bit better than with D300. We then did a little experiment to remove the last of the compound residue that was fighting us - we applied White Wax with a microfiber finishing pad and let it haze. Wipe off was a snap, and it took the little bit of compound residue off with the wax.
This is what the paint looked like before we started - the reflection of the overhead lamp is almost non existent and the paint looks extremely mottled due to the oxidation.
After M100 and White Wax, you can clearly see the detail of the reflector in the overhead light as clarity is greatly increased. This car is going to take a lot of time but there is hope for it yet!
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