I polished and waxed my Crossfire a month ago. It looks pretty darn good but I think I can do better. It was my first time with the Porter Cable Polisher. I'm using the detail spray almost every time I take the car out so it almost never gets dirty. I know the wax is still good for several more months but I've got that urge to pamper the car. How often do you polish?
How often is too often? Just wondering if the experts can lead me in the right direction. If this weekends nice, you know what I'm thinking of doing.

Les

 

A lot of what determines how often a car needs polishing is how often it is exposed to the elements. I clay bared, polished and waxed the black roadster about 4-5 months ago. It sits in the garage most of the time and still looks like it did the day after I polished it.

The red coupe is a daily driver for my wife. The last time it was polished & waxed was when we first saw it at the dealership. Seriously, they were detailing the car when we first saw it. That was about 15 months ago and honestly it still looks very good. One of these days I'm going to give it a refreasher polish & wax though.

 

I only do a full detail job (i.e. clay bar, polish and wax) twice a year. And use detail spray after every other car washing... the key is to wash it really well with higher quality products (note: I said quality not most expensive). Microfiber towels are a God sent and I use armor all wash soap, the one with the wax added in... Yes it does help.

 

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.

 

~ ditto ...

 

I hit mine every 3rd wash. Once you have the currect surface prep, it is easy to keep it there and you could wax the whole car in about 1.5 hrs. I really like Next Generation 2.0 especially on darker colors.

Steve

 

I've found that using a detailer like Meguiar's Ultimate quik Detailer after every wash helps to repel the rain/dirt and keeps it cleaner longer.

 

I use the heck out of that as well. I mix some of the 2.0 in it and it works like a dream.

Steve

 

Where I park is underground but after a day its covered with carbon dust. The car is washed weekly and I hit it with the detail spray every other day to get the dust off. Needless to say, the car is staying almost spotless all the time. I don't see any swirls in the paint and the shine is nice, but after seeing the shine that some of you have on your cars I'm thinking you had better light for a picture or I need to polish again to bring out more dazzle in the paint.
Thanks for the advice. I'll wait the 6 months and try again. Maybe its time to practice some more on the Intrepid.

Les

 

Once a year clay, Every 6 months a two step Zaino process, once a month polish, once a week wash with detail spray. If its above freezing it gets washed. Leather cleaned and treated every other month.
Once or twice a year the tires come off, wheel wells, calipers etc get a coat of paint.
Pat

 

I just tried the new Megs D151 Paint Reconditioning Cream via pc7424 orange pad on my 1990 black Z (my XF is still pristine) The D151 did an awesome job, very close to show quality. Finally got rid of all the swirl marks which makes a big difference on a black car. I followed with Megs NXT Synthetic Paste wax. Well worth the time ( 7-8 hours). I puchased the D151 online from Auto Geek $30 for 1 gal plus shipping. No smaller sizes were available yet. A very good new product from Meguiars.

 

D151 was designed for high volume shops that do literally dozens of vehicles a day (in some cases, hundreds of vehicles a day). Our main competition in this arena is Blue Coral, Car-Brite and a couple of others. When we were developing D151 we learned a lot about what those other products do, and don't do. It's kind of funny to see a black minivan sitting in our garage here at work, with one side taped off into large sections so it looks like a huge rolling patchwork quilt. What we found was that a lot of these other products did a great job of hiding defects (sometimes they did an awesome job of hiding defects, actually) and that some were, well, worthless. We formulated D151 to be much, much more effective at actually removing defects, to be much easier to wipe off, and to provide a higher shine than the competition. It does all of these things and, to our surprise, does so to a level that is keeping a lot of enthusiasts really happy. I say "to our surprise" because this was never intended to be an enthusiast type product. Never intended to be used when you're shooting for a show car shine. But in a lot of cases it far exceeds even our own expectations. Really nice to hear it worked so well for you!

 

Mike it appears you were involved in the evolution of the D151. I haven't personally used the product...YET. About the only issue I guess was not spoken about is the longevity of the shine as well as the protection. I have to assume with insider knowledge somewhere longevity of the product came into discussion and review.
I have babied my Roadster...but if there's a new and better product !!!! I'm all about it !!

 

Like I stated earlier, we developed D151 for high volume shops that do literally dozens of vehicles a day (in some cases, hundreds of vehicles a day). Primarily these are places like large rental car agencies, auction houses (Manheim, if you're familiar), etc. The intent was never for a long lasting shine or even to achieve a show quality finish. Far from it in fact. High volume reconditioning places that turn over a huge volume of cars very quickly - that is the intended audience. Having said that, it does seem to be a pretty remarkable product and we're guilty of some overachieving here! The protection offered by D151 is polymer based, not carnauba, so you can expect decent longevity out of it. I still prefer to top it with either M21 Synthetic Sealant or M26 Hi-Tech Yellow Wax, but that's just a personal preference thing.

 

I polish three or four times a season (the car does not come out in Minnesota winters). I polish this often not because my cars see harsh use but because I'm still pursuing swirl-free paint. I use Adam's Polishes exclusively. I usually use his Swirl and Haze Remover with the orange pad and the PC set on 6. When I take the car out into the sunlight, it looks perfect. When I pull it into the garage, wait for the Sun to go down, and look at it under a bare light bulb, I still see lots of microscratches. I tried Meguiar's ScratchX and didn't see any improvement. I also tried Adam's new Fine Machine Polish with the same results.

I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. Is my technique bad? Am I using the wrong products? Do I need to try different pads? Or, is this normal? Do all of those "wet-shine" cars look like mine under a bare bulb? Mike's post above implies that, despite all of my hours of buffing, I've "barely touched the paint." Clearly, what I'm doing now isn't giving me the results I want. Unfortunately, winter is fast approaching here in Minnesota so I won't be able to try again until spring. I plan on using this winter to assemble a variety of different products and hopefully get better results next year.

 

If you are using Adam's polishes you want to PM Acrispy, he uses Adams and his car is like a piece of glass. Hopefully he can guide you in the right direction. He also uses a Porter Cable.
Pat

 

Will do. Thanks!

 

I think the only thing you're doing "wrong" is product choice. The paint on the Crossfire is extremely hard, meaning it's fairly difficult to correct defects. ScratchX is a very, very mild paint cleaner and as such I wouldn't expect you to accomplish much with it. Most of Adam's products, good as they are, are not terribly aggressive either. Depending on the quantity and severity of defects in your paint you probably really need to step up to something a good deal more aggressive.

Let's face it, if you aren't getting rid of swirl marks I don't care how often you're putting pad to paint, you just aren't removing much paint or the swirls would be gone. Unless, of course, you continue to put fresh swirls in through a less than perfect washing/drying process. That's where most swirl marks come from.

I fought the paint on my car for a while with a D/A buffer but finally just gave up and used my rotary with a wool pad and M105 Ultra Cut Compound. I don't recommend this for someone who's never used a rotary before but what I will recommend is you wait until after SEMA next week to make a decision on a new choice of polish/paint cleaner/compound. Meguiar's is introducing several new products at SEMA that are pretty amazing and should help your situation tremendously. They llikely won't be on store shelves until late December, but they will be widely available (think Wal-Mart). I can't divulge anything more than that, but trust me - there's some pretty amazing stuff coming real soon.

 

I use a microfiber wash pad, a grit guard, and microfiber drying towels for cleaning the car. I don't wash in the sun and I dry the car thoroughly. I really don't think I'm adding swirl marks when washing.

There's no way I'm trying a rotary. Given the choice between damaging my paint and living with the microscratches, I'll take the scratches. I hope the new stuff Meguiar's introducing will work with the Porter Cable. I'm definitely ready to try something new.

 

Yes, the new products we have coming out will work just fine with the DA buffer - you do NOT need a rotary.

As for the introduction of swirl marks - they only come from physically touching the paint, either through washing/drying, use of a quick detail spray to remove light dust, etc. Unless you've got some holograms introduced by a rotary buffer before you owned the vehicle. I've seen plenty of dealer prep departments do a serious number on paint with a rotary, only to cover everthing up with a good glaze and then a few coats of wax. As the wax wears off and the glaze gets washed away, the holograms show up again. You can refill and hide over and over again, but they aren't going away unless and until you make them go away.