Choosing a Pad & Polish Combo

You know the situation - your own car, or someone else's car is sitting in front of you with swirls you want to remove... But what products and pads to do it? How hard or soft is the paint, what products are needed?? In this thread I present a generic set of possible product combos for attacking the majority of swilrs on the majority of paints... This is intended as a guide only, not hard and fast combos to use as each and every car is different with different requirements, but the following should get you on track. :)



First of all, regardless of the car you presented with and regarless of the reputation the car may have for hard or soft paint, always always always mask off a test spot to trial least abrasive combinations first. You just never know when a car may throw you a curve ball and be harder or softer than you expect, and for all the time a test spot takes to do, its always better tp be safe than sorry. Work up through the abrasive levels until you get a combo that removes the swirls and then work with that over the car... This way you ensure you are not removing any more paint than is necessary for the removal of the paint defects.



Below are possible routes you might like to take with some of the most popular polish brands you'll hear mentioned here on Detailing World... The below are just meant as a guide, so not all cars will follow them to the letter, but as a rough guide they can get you started... Start at the top left, and work down: Green arrows represent a successful combo, red arrows represent a combo that wasn't successful so lead you to a more abrasive combo to try...























:)
 
hey man, nice charts . . . thanks for taking the time to post this . . . i think ill print one out for my wall . . .
 
archer39 said:
Where would optimum Poli-seal fall in line in the optimum chart? Would that be consider a LSP?



I'm sorry to say I have no personal experience of this product - haven't seen it readily available anywhere in the UK... Sorry folks.



Hopefully someone else can chime in with where this product falls in line with the rest of the Optimum range.
 
that would be great if someone elce could chime in. i just bought the optimum kit and it would be great to know.



thanks
 
LSP, last stage protectant...You could use PS as a LSP, i mean it has enough protection to provid LSP results. Its not as though you need to follow up with anything after using PS. Im just not sure it fits within LSP definitions, as it is a polish also.
 
Back
Top