E30 intial polishing

[mrcool]

Im going to give my new 88' grey e30 a intial polish up then it should be easy to keep on to off. Idea is to remove surface sratches & bring up the paint a bit. Its not really badly faded tho.

Plan is along the lines of

Wash
Clay
Polish
Wash
Wax

I have the meguiars 3 step paint cleaner, polish & wax system along with hand polishing applicators etc.

I also have acess to g3, g10 and their wax and a electric buffer.

I know the g3,g10 & buffer route would probely give more pleasing results than the meguairs system which is pretty low in abrasives. My only worry is I know how harsh G3 is.

What do you guys think?

Is the grey a solid coat or clear coated?

[powelly]

Assuming you have a mettalic car then it will be clear coated.

You don't need to wash the car between polishing and waxing, you will be better off with a wipe down with some IPA (not the drink by the way).
As I have said on plenty of other posts, leave the farecla in the bottle, it's old fashioned and very aggresive, even G10 is quite aggresive in my opinion, go for some 3M polishes or even Menzerna, have you used a rotary polisher before??? not being funny but in the wrong hands you could make your car look a whole lot worse. I do this kind of thing for a living, always start with the least abbrasive combination possible, you don't want to remove any more coating thickness than you have too, personally I would't like to attempt serious defect removal without the assistance of a paint thickness guage.

[mrcool]

Assuming you have a mettalic car then it will be clear coated.

You don't need to wash the car between polishing and waxing, you will be better off with a wipe down with some IPA (not the drink by the way).
As I have said on plenty of other posts, leave the farecla in the bottle, it's old fashioned and very aggresive, even G10 is quite aggresive in my opinion, go for some 3M polishes or even Menzerna, have you used a rotary polisher before??? not being funny but in the wrong hands you could make your car look a whole lot worse. I do this kind of thing for a living, always start with the least abbrasive combination possible, you don't want to remove any more coating thickness than you have too, personally I would't like to attempt serious defect removal without the assistance of a paint thickness guage.

Thanks for the input, I have never used a polisher before. The megauirs stuff I have already will make it look a bit better but the polish being very mild its not going to remove much in the way of scratches etc. and I was loooking to take advantage of the polisher but obviously do not want to wreck my paint.

Old fashioned? so is my car haha.

[CHR1S1990]

if you're not familiar with a rotary polisher, get your hands on a dual action polisher - a meguiars one is a good choice. may take a little longer than rotary, but still the results are in another league compared to hand polishing. as powelly states, a paint thickness gague is extremely handy

[powelly]

if you're not familiar with a rotary polisher, get your hands on a dual action polisher - a meguiars one is a good choice. may take a little longer than rotary, but still the results are in another league compared to hand polishing. as powelly states, a paint thickness gague is extremely handy

This is very true, one thing I will say though is, the Meguiars G220 is really not very good, it vibrates alot and it's not that well put together, go for the Kestrel DAS6, it's a far superior machine and you can get them for £75.

[powelly]

Assuming you have a mettalic car then it will be clear coated.

You don't need to wash the car between polishing and waxing, you will be better off with a wipe down with some IPA (not the drink by the way).
As I have said on plenty of other posts, leave the farecla in the bottle, it's old fashioned and very aggresive, even G10 is quite aggresive in my opinion, go for some 3M polishes or even Menzerna, have you used a rotary polisher before??? not being funny but in the wrong hands you could make your car look a whole lot worse. I do this kind of thing for a living, always start with the least abbrasive combination possible, you don't want to remove any more coating thickness than you have too, personally I would't like to attempt serious defect removal without the assistance of a paint thickness guage.

Thanks for the input, I have never used a polisher before. The megauirs stuff I have already will make it look a bit better but the polish being very mild its not going to remove much in the way of scratches etc. and I was loooking to take advantage of the polisher but obviously do not want to wreck my paint.

Old fashioned? so is my car haha.

Go for it, if you have the opputunity to borrow a rotary, all i'm saying is you don't want to run the risk of making your paint worse, in the most extreme case you could strike through the clear coat. The abbrasives in Farecla are non diminishing, they are still providing the same level of cut when you start polishing as when you finish, the brands I mentioned do not, the abbrasives are designed to break down with the heat produced from the polishing process, this helps to reduce the risk of taking off too much coating, polishes are certainly an area where progress has been for the better.

[mrcool]

Could you recommend a mild diminishing polish suitable for what I want to achive with a roatary? Cheers

[CHR1S1990]

if you're not familiar with a rotary polisher, get your hands on a dual action polisher - a meguiars one is a good choice. may take a little longer than rotary, but still the results are in another league compared to hand polishing. as powelly states, a paint thickness gague is extremely handy

This is very true, one thing I will say though is, the Meguiars G220 is really not very good, it vibrates alot and it's not that well put together, go for the Kestrel DAS6, it's a far superior machine and you can get them for £75.

£75, bargain! where from? was considering the meg's as a christmas treat for myself but if the DAS6 is better and for that price..

cheers

[CHR1S1990]

personally, i prefer to use the menzerna range. theres a good guide and product range over on polished bliss

http://www.polishedbliss.co.uk/cgi-bin/ ... KIT7#aKIT7

[powelly]

Menzerna is very good, my personal favourite though is the 3M range of polishes, Meguirs 80 and 83 are also an excellent choice Shinerame is a good place to get a kestrel, my bad though it's actually £79.95 but has free delivery, it is a far superior machine

[//Rocky]

Menzerna is very good, my personal favourite though is the 3M range of polishes, Meguirs 80 and 83 are also an excellent choice Shinerame is a good place to get a kestrel, my bad though it's actually £79.95 but has free delivery, it is a far superior machine

Its still quite a good price for £79.95, not much difference from £75.00

[Bluto]

the other one is to look at is a paint cleaner, this will remove some (maybe not all) of the swirls and leave the maximum clear coat on the car.

getting a car 100% is very nice, but if it leaves you with very little clear coat (and if you dont have a paint gauge, how will you know?) then what happens when it gets swirly again?

dont forget to add on price of pads when you buy a machine.