Originally Posted by Mike-in-Orange

How often you need to polish is totally dependant on how well you maintain the finish, how much exposure the car gets, etc. Last time I did a full blown machine polish on my daily driver was 18 months ago, and just a couple of weeks back I had to touch up some areas. I always hand wash at home (maybe once a month since it doesn't rain much here) and routinely (3x/week or more) wipe the car down with a quick detail spray and a few microfiber towels.

My Crossfire doesn't get anywhere near that level of exposure so now that it's dialed in I don't anticipate having to put a machine to it again for a couple of years at least. Not for routine stuff anyway - you never know when some little emergency is going to come up though!


Basically, if you machine polish a vehicle and don't get out all those fine little swirl marks, then you've barely touched the paint. In harsher terms, you've hardly removed any clear coat. A factory paint job usually has between 1.5 and 2.0mils of clear coat on it. Polishing with a D/A buffer like the PC7424 or G110 and the usual cleaner polishes like Meguiar's M80, 3M FinesseIt, etc and a polishing pad will take off such a small amount of clear that you can't measure it with even a fairly high end paint thickness guage. In fact, it isn't until you get into wet sanding and rotary buffing to pull the sanding marks out that you start pushing the limits of safe clear coat removal.