Should we remove swirls?

ACE

ACE

What's that smell?
We had a thread a while back about removing vs. filling swirls and I have a question: Suppose you have a car with high swirl visibility like black or red and you actually remove the swirls using DACP, Menzerna Intensive and Final or some similar combo. Now you've removed some paint and the finish is perfect. How long is it going to take before the finish gets swirled again? Bad weather, washing, driving, in-between doses of QD- on swirl-prone paints, I think it would be reasonable to say that if your car isn't garaged and you actually drive it, maybe 2 months? Maybe i'm wrong here, but if you remove those swirls 6 times a year you're going to be in trouble in short order. Maybe, for people who enjoy working on cars, it would actually be a better idea to remove the swirls after the winter and then go with products like 3M Swirl Remover to just fill them for the rest of the year. I would think you could safely polish with a product like that every two months without really removing any significant amount of paint and have a virtually flawless finish. What do you think?
 
I have several cars I have been doing for the last 11 years and in those 11 years I have polished, buffed and waxed them a whole bunch and no problems yet!:)

Anthony
 
I agree with Anthony I have a black BMW and it gets my full attention on a regular bases, with no problems.
I know there is local detail place that is using filler and I get his cars once in a while. The customer always say about the same thing. The car looked great for about a month but after washing, it looked just like little had been done. I like to hear that because I can then explain what they did and what I will be doing and the reason for charging more.
 
Along those lines (I have a red car), what would be a good product for swirl removal? If 3M SMR just fills them in, how do you know what actually removes them? I was looking at getting some of Meg's Medallion Premium Paint Cleaner (I think it is locally available). That way I don't have to do mail order and wait for it. Also, would a PC 7424 provide enough oomph to remove swirls, or do I really need to use a rotary (which I don't have)?

Thanks,
Neil
 
Neil

I'm using Ardex swril remover but not before I clay and polish with my orbital. I use a cutting pad on t he polish. In the light on my car you can still a few marks. But time and again I have won business with this car as it stands out well in the sun.
 
what polish

What kind of polish do you use? I do my vehicles at home, by hand. What would be a good polish to use (with UPP)?
 
How to tell swirls ...

Rockford 33,

An easy way to tell if you have swirls is to make sure you remove all of the polish. One way of doing that is to buff the material off with a MF and then lightly mist the area with a 1:1 mixture of water and iso-alcohol. This will remove the polish/cutting compound out of the cracks and enable you to view the surface from a glancing angle to verify the status of the swirls/scracthes. This works for me anyways :)

-Matt
 
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