At the gentle but insistent prodding of our own Intermezzo I decided to try
Klasse. I did the hood of my M5. There were some decent swirls and scratches - so I decided, in the wake of the recent info from
Meguiar's about the relative abrasiveness of their stuff, to try some various compounds (including
AIO) to prep the hood before doing an AIO +
SG application.
Read on in this thread if you care about a comparison between:
Klasse All-In-One (AIO)
Meguiar's Medallion Premium Paint Cleaner
Meguiar's Dual Action Cleaner Polish (DACP)
3M Finesse-IT II
Meguiar's Scratch-X
&
Polishing vs. cutting foam pads
The actual Klasse report will be
Part 2.
I put the car in the garage and set up my dual-head 1000w halogen lamp in front of the hood. This really amplifies any defects. Everything described below was done with the PC at speed 6.
I chose 1/4 of the hood, and applied AIO with a polishing pad and the orbital. I worked it until it pretty much disappeared - and then easily buffed out the residue with what was left. I could see it had done a nice job of hiding the minor swirls, but wasn't going to hit the deeper ones.
Next I tried Medallion, also with a polishing pad. The result was no better, and maybe a little worse, than the way the AIO had left it. I think there was some minor new swirl/haze.
Next I tried the
DACP. I was surprised that there wasn't more progress, but I can only report a very slight reduction in swirl appearance. The finish it left was fine.
Then I switched to a "cutting" pad - the stouter, yellow foam. Unfortunately I didn't try the Medallion again, but I did retry the DACP. This time I could see more of a difference - conclusion -
cutting pads cut better! There were still visible scratches and minor swirls (plus more on yet untouched sections of the hood.)
Now, also with cutting pad, I tried the FI-II. This had the biggest effect, removing about 75% of the marks -
clearly better than the other products for this purpose. I did work it long and hard, and was very pleased that the resulting finish was really good - no detectable haze. I have said in the past you might need to follow FI-II with SMR - but now I'm not sure. Could be the paint (that had been my experience on the black Porsche) or technique. In any case, at least for some paints, you can go straight from FI-II to AIO or wax. One thing about FI-II, though - unlike the others it is a bit "sticky" to buff out. A little detail spray makes this job much easier. It also produces a ton of dust. I used a Calf. Car Duster to remove this with no ill effects.
Having determined the FI-II was the way to go I did the whole hood. As with all the other products I used my standard technique for diminishing-abrasives - with lots of time and heavy pressure to start, followed by lighter pressure to polish after it dries.. I found myself increasing pressure again, then lightening - a few times - just to make sure it was fully broken down.
The hood was now about as good as it was going to get, but I noticed one long, gently curved scratch (about an arm-radius - geee - wonder how that got there?). I broke out a clean foam hand pad and with the the pressure of the side of my finger, rubbed in some Scratch-X along the length of the scratch. I used a lot of pressure at first and a lot of strokes. After buffing I could see the scratch was less noticeable, but there was a little hazing - had to get in exactly the right position to see it. Based upon my earlier AIO test I was confident that AIO would take care of this.
Now - on to
Part 2 - AIO + SG.
Linear Mode
