2007 Nissan Maxima. Owner contacted me by e-mail. He bought the car used and wasn't too happy with how it looked in the sun. I looked it over a few weeks ago but due to weather and him traveling on business, I wasn't able to get to it until today. Typical dealer installed rotary swirls, which somehow they manage to put into the paint without removing any spider swirls or other defects....or any bonded contaminants. Needed a lot of claying on the horizontal surfaces and the back of the trunk and rear bumper.
Even through the trees, you can clearly see the swirls.
Before:
I tried a few combos and what seemed to work best was Optimum Compound cut about 30% with
Meguiars #105 using a yellow
Meguiars polishing pad at 1200-1400 rpm. Gave it a little more cut than the new version of Optimum Polish with only minimal dusting and holograms.
You can still see a couple minor RIDS. This is a daily driver so the owner preferred I stick with just polishing instead of also doing some wetsanding. The car also has a couple areas that got egged so it won't be perfect without repainted a few sections anyway. We agreed that I should bring the paint to a level he can maintain easily with proper washing methods.
Trunk lid before:
After using OC/105 with a yellow pad at 1200-1400 rpm, followed by the new Optimum Polish using a blue Propel finishing pad at 1200 rpm (had to use the OP/blue combo on a few areas but not the whole car).
I then stepped down to a combo that has worked well for me on black cars, 3M Ultra Fine Machine Polish (Ultrafina) using a yellow
Meguiars polishing pad. 1000-1800/2000-1000 rpms. As usual, there is some slight smearing visible after this step.
A few whole car shots after this step:
I then let the car sit in the sun while I went and grabbed lunch. By then the streak evaporated and I got a better view of how the paint was coming along.
Linear Mode
