Several polishing questions...

M

mattgg11

New member
I'm not having any luck finding someone to polish my car, so I have a few questions before attempting it myself. The vehicle has only light marring and I have no desire for it to be 100%. I'm just looking to address a handful of areas on the car that are bugging me.



1) I plan to use a UDM, 4" orange pads, and Z-PC. Will this finish down LSP-ready, or will I need to follow this up with a less aggressive pad?



2) I would like to polish the clear plastic headlamps/taillamps. Which would be better to use for this, Z-PC or Plastic-X?



3) I've applied touch-up paint, which has left high areas of paint Will my polishing combo (Z-PC, orange pad) level out these high areas of touch-up paint?



4) Is applying masking tape to all edges really necessary if I'm not using a rotary (since there is very little chance of burning through the paint)? The only other reasons I can think of to mask is to protect any black plastic trim from being stained by the polish (which isn't a concern for me). Do I need to mask off anything?



Thanks.
 
I would clay it after wash to get the big chunks out of the paint before buffing. From what I've heard about ZPC is its a very mild abrasive and is highly pad dependent as to what it will remove. I would start with your orange pad and take a look, if its not cutting it you could try a yellow pad or a heavier compound SIP I think would work. If after the orange pad you are happy then run over it again with a white pad. Then apply ZAIO with your with pad the you should be ready for your LSP of choice. I think ZPC would also work on the lenses, I don't see why not. Depending on how high your touch up areas are they may require some wet sanding. I've heard good things about meg's 3000 grit, its hard to go too deep with it, better for learning. I would mask around your emblems and any thing that is plastic, plastics burn with any thing if your not careful. I'm no pro by any means, and I'm pretty new to this forum but from what I've read hear so far I think this is how you should go about it.
 
mattgg11 said:
1) I plan to use a UDM, 4" orange pads, and Z-PC. Will this finish down LSP-ready, or will I need to follow this up with a less aggressive pad?
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I'm not as optimistic as BigJimZ28, I'd say yeah you'll need a milder pad.



2) I would like to polish the clear plastic headlamps/taillamps. Which would be better to use for this, Z-PC or Plastic-X?
Click to expand...



I don't really know, but FWIW I've always just used regular car/paint polish on mine and I've never had a problem.

3) I've applied touch-up paint, which has left high areas of paint Will my polishing combo (Z-PC, orange pad) level out these high areas of touch-up paint?
Click to expand...



No, I wouldn't expect it to do any leveling. I'd try the Langka/etc. stuff if you want to avoid wetsanding, or just live with the blobs. Wetsanding with 3K can sometimes be a bit *too* gentle and using more aggressive stuff and open a can of worms. I've gone all three routes (leave the blob, Lanka it level, wetsand) and I've been OK with the results each way.
4) Is applying masking tape to all edges really necessary if I'm not using a rotary (since there is very little chance of burning through the paint)? The only other reasons I can think of to mask is to protect any black plastic trim from being stained by the polish (which isn't a concern for me). Do I need to mask off anything?
Click to expand...



Probably not but *if* the paint just happens to be really thin there, or *if* it's been polished before (you might not even know about that) then yeah, there's a (remote) chance that you could have a problem. If I were doing the work I doubt I'd mask it unless I had some specific reason to do so, and that's even if I were using aggressive measures.



Try to *not* use too much product so it doesn't get into panel gaps/seams/etc., which is another reason people mask such things off.
 
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