How many times can I polish

E

ericthebikeman

New member
I'm wondering how many times I can polish out the hood with a porter cable and a white or yellow pad and 3M SMR. I realize there are several factors that could affect it but I rather not do it if I'm going to buff the paint off. I have a '01 VW if that makes a difference.
 
With any polish with abrasives, you are taking off micro layers of the clearcoat. I only polish with abrasives as needed.
 
I don't have a very high opinion of the 3m smr, I tried it out for a few years, it really didn't do much than to cover swirls. With the PC there is a wide variety of polishes both OTC and online that can do a better job with less polishing. Just my humble opinion
 
How about 1Z metalic polish with a meguiars yellow pad? I don't think this combo is very aggressive.



I've polished the swirls out but they eventually come back necessitating a second round of polishing.
 
With 3M SMR and a PC, you're not gonna run out of clear coat unless you do something pretty unusual. But as Bill D said, there are a lot of products you might be a lot happier with. Like 1Z's Metallic Polish (hint hint), which is also *very* mild.
 
I have become an advocate of the 1z polishes as well, I can honestly say I was truly impresssed by them. I haven't felt that way in a long time :up
 
04BlackAV said:
That's because the MP is more than likely hiding the swirls rather than taking them out.So when the oils and fillers leave the swirls reappear.
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My remedy to that concern is to spray the paint with some isoproyl alcohol, wipe and inspect what defects are still left behind, I do this as a prep for applying Klasse later on too
 
Hey 04,



Since we're on the topic, I'm sure it is possible for one to use MP and have swirls return sometime down the road, say, perhaps, they followed with a carnauba wax and that dissipated over time along with the wax/fillers in the MP and the swirls come back because the person did not use enough MP for long enough and/or really needed Paint Polish first then MP to really get all the swirls out.
 
MP is just so mild that it tends to hide things better than removing them.I used it by hand once and didn't work it long enough and it just hid my hazing rather than remove it.
 
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