SSR2.5 and 1 and AIO results...What did I do wrong?

You should definately be able to sort out those swirls with a PC - you just have to be patient... the PC isn't a miracle tool when it comes to removing defects - you sometimes have to go over the offending area 3 or 4 times I've found.



Try the SSR2.5 with a polishing pad then follow up with SSR2 also on a polishing pad.
 
MaThGr82 said:
SSR2.5 and 1 and AIO results...What did I do wrong?
Click to expand...



Being brutally honest, it sounds as though you expected the PC to do all the work - the reality is you have to work at it as well. As pugoman said, dont be afraid to load up the pad and do an area 2 or 3 or even 4 times until you remove the swirls or get the swirls down to an acceptable level. Be patient, bear down on the PC a bit and you will see the results flourish! Good luck with it :xyxthumbs



Heres an example of me having to run 2 passes of SSR2.5 to remove some scratches, which I think are more severe than your swirls.......



The scratches

2307scratches_before-med.jpg




1 pass of SSR2.5 ( better but not quite right )

23071_pass_SSR2_5-med.jpg




2 passes of SSR2.5 ( yipee! scratch removed )

23072_passes_SSR2_5-med.jpg




Please ignore the orange peel, its a no cost factory option! :rolleyes:
 
Just a general question about polising. After removing all the swirls, weekly washes will generally introduce swirls back into the clear coat.



How many times do you guys polish to remove swirls? It seems there is a limit to this...so on a daily driver, you'd expect to have to live with swirls?
 
Yeah you were pretty much right. I thought that the PC would do it all by itself.

I just don't have the time lately to do my entire truck. I am going to try and get it done in the next few weeks but in the meantime, I look at the swirls and notice them much more than I have in the past.



I will tell you one thing though. I drove my truck last night to the store and the reflection off my hood was better than I ever remember it being.



Just so I have an idea fo how I am doing. How long do most of you guys think it would take to do two passes of SSR2.5, one pass with SSR1, one pass of AIO, then an LSP on a Full size lifted Silverado? I have a feeling that with the wash and everything else, it is going to take about 7 hours or so.
 
I can tell you that 5 hours is average for me on a saloon size car, on a truck, I could easily spend 7 hours, so yes I think your estimation is probably correct. :xyxthumbs



Thanks for the post 6cyl's_of_fury, most informative. :xyxthumbs
 
7 hours with a PC on that vehicle to do all those steps isn't unressonable. if you had a rotary and some experience with it, one pass of 80 with a polishing pad, the swirls would be gone and you could straight to LSP;) good luck, i hope it all works out for ya!



Vernon



PS: i love your truck, it has major style and looks great.
 
rodeo-clown said:
Just a general question about polising. After removing all the swirls, weekly washes will generally introduce swirls back into the clear coat.



How many times do you guys polish to remove swirls? It seems there is a limit to this...so on a daily driver, you'd expect to have to live with swirls?
Click to expand...



All a matter of how you wash. I hardly ever have to polish out marring these days except on my wife's car, which I usually wash carelessly (by my standards; I still use the two-bucket method, multiple mitts, etc.).



Even the family minivan had *very* few flaws in it when I finally redid it after over a year. I probably spent more time *looking* for flaws than I did correcting them. My S8 gets used year-round too, and I've only polished it twice since I got it in '01 (and the second time was because of the whole "deer incident" thing, mainly its being washed two times by someone else).



If I recall correctly, BradB. hardly *ever* has to polish his cars either, and Bill D doesn't mar his any more since he started using the foam gun.



Most people mar the paint every time they wash, but it's not inevitable/unavoidable. If you haven't seen my Wash Technique you might want to check it out. Takes a while and it's not easy, but not having to polish is nice.
 
MaThGr82- Yeah, you just need to work it longer, the marring in your pics oughta come out by PC. It just takes a *very* long time to do it on some vehicles. One can easily spend many hours on one panel. That's why more aggressive machines like a Cyclo or a rotary are popular with some of us.



Using a 4" pad with the PC will help it be more aggressive (far less bogging when you "lean on it"). IMO the added time needed with a smaller pad is *far* outweighed by the more rapid results that the smaller pad provides.



I'm not familiar with the SSR line of polishes, but I do all my PC polishing at speed 6.



Two passes isn't really very many. Six or eight might not be enough, for instance. Since you're not dealing with deep marring, you won't be taking off too much clear if you just keep at it until the marring is gone.



In your situation (which is sorta similar to the situation I'm in with our minivan, where I can't take it off the road for a long time) I'd do one panel at a time. When you wash, pick one panel and work it as long as you can. Next wash, do another one. That way you need only invest a reasonable amount of time/effort/patience each time. Of course, what's reasonable for one person is ridiculous for another....
 
PATIENCE! You said it.

I had such bad oxidation on a car I did a month ago I posted the pics. I've never seen it so deep, but I guarntee you guys probably have. I worked that area for an hour. I used Merzerna and got to one point but couldn't get it out. I broke out the Sonus SFX-1 but didn't use the SFX-1 pad. I used Orange DAS pad because it had more cutting capabilities. I cranked it to 6 in the advice of Accumulator and worked it for about 2 mins. I got some mirroring, but that came out with SFX-2. It was all gone! Thanks again Accumulator! Learned alot those two days.



17547ma_scar_010.jpg
 
Accumulator...thanks for the suggestion. I think I will just do one or two sections at a time and that will make it seem much better. I can't really take the truck off the road for more than a day on the weekends so I'll just do it this way. I figure in a month or so, I will have a swirl free truck. I'll definitely report back here with more pics.



Funny because I always thought the paint was in pretty good condition until I came here and learned that Swril marks CAN BE removed!!! Now am I am going insane when I see them and want them gone.
 
Even with the soft paint on my 626, it still takes several passed with moderate pressure to remove even minor defects.
 
German paints are like that also. I had a little scratch that brushed my soft clear coat on my Audi. It looked like a white brush type mark. It was odd for a scratch. That minor defect took 3 times longer than a swirls on the hood. Which normally takes one application. That was with Merzerna. Not like that with Sonus now.
 
Not to thread-jack but I'm :confused: Talk about different perceptions!



AudiPower- If you consider the clear on your Audi to be soft, what is hard? While I've never worked the Ceramiclear on new Benzes,

I've *never* worked any clear as hard as the stuff on our Audis, it's almost like working white single-stage. I finally had to buy a rotary to do significant correction on it. Of all the different paints I've worked since the '70s, nothing but ss white comes close to the hardness of our last eight or so Audis. Methods/products that worked great on other European, domestic, and Japanese paints just didn't cut it on the Audis' Spies Hecker clear. Heh heh, I'll polish loaner/rental cars just for fun, but I cringe at the thought of fixing a marred Audi!



Don't take this as a :argue or anything, I'm just, well, :confused: Audis used to be pretty much like other clears, but around the mid-'90s they got a lot harder. You do a lot of different cars and I'm genuinely curious about what paints you find harder.



ScottWax- Mazda must use different clear on their different vehicles. Even after 16 months of washing with BHBs the clear on our MPV wasn't marred at all. When it does get marred, it's almost as tough to work as the Audis. Compared to Subie, Acura, and Lexus clear (only other Japanese clears I've worked lately), it's like trying to polish a rock.



Gee, I sound like a real whiner on this post- "Wahhh...my clear is so hard.." :p
 
I was just saying Accumulator that I have to apply pressure to remove the littlest paint defects. I wasn't saying that Audis clearcoat is soft. My clearcoat feels baby soft after I'm done detailing it, but Audis like you said have extremely hard clearcoats. It's harder to work with (Audis) and not as forgiving as "American" clearcoats. I was told German clearcoats where more giving to clear coat damage for higher speeds, so if you where driving down the autobahn 90mphs and a little rock skipped on your hood it wouldn't leave a dent and damage your clear coat. Which is common. If it was a Ford it would leave a nice dent and need painted. Instead the clearcoat on a Audi asorbs more energy and less damage. Which has happened to me. I was driving down the highway and a rock the size of a quarter fell off a dump truck and hit my hood. It left a nice dent. Well, my fiance's VW Jetta the same thing happened, on the same highway, and it left a weird white looking smudge mark. Which took a while to remove but it came out without paint and a dent puller. This is from a well known car painter that I learned about Audis clearcoat. I've read this on a thread also on this great forum and web site articles. I'm not the greatest writer or have the best grammer. No hard feelings. Sorry about the confussion.

Fords have the weakest clearcoat. I've seen them a year old with the worst oxidation.

Would you on your vehicle have a "harder" or a "softer" clear coat?

Oh, I agree on how hard it is to remove marring on an Audi, VW. I stopped using Megs Cutting Polish because of that. I was using that on a '98 A6 and it looked awful and took me longer to get that out. I've had good luck with Sonus SFX Polishes with avoid marring. I avoid polishing my Audi unless with light scratches. I don't have oxidation, swirls or faded paint. AIO & Paint Cleaner help me avoid that. Also great maintenance helps.



Sorry about the mis-communication? :nixweiss
 
Audipower- OK, we were just miscommunicating, no problem and thanks for clearing that up. Heh heh, if there's harder clear than that on Audis, I don't want to do any correcting on it!



I myself *like* very hard clear. Doesn't mar with reasonable (OK, unreasonable ;) ) care, so no need to polish all the time. But man is it a pain when something *does* happen to it.



You know, the paint on the damaged panels where I hit the deer wasn't any more marred up than *all* the paint was after the shop washed it twice. Goes to show how important wash technique is.
 
Clean paint is everything. I only use polish when I ultimately have to. It's a waste of time and clear coat. It's all in the prevention.

My Aunt took her car to get detailed. She doesn't live near me so I couldn't do it. These guys swirled her car up to hell. It was worse off. My Uncle took pictures and sent them to me. She remembers them using bath towels to dry it. Funniest thing she said was, "I got a good deal though". Yeah I can take a Brillo pad to your car for $100 to.

My cars never have marring, swirls, oxidation, nothing, because I keep the paint clean and protected. That's how you get great shine. It's not the wax.
 
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