Here's a quick pic of my work area:
The tools of the trade:
As you can see from the pictures, I definitely had my work set out for me. The car had its share of RIDS, swirl marks, and holograms that inhibited the paint's gloss at its full potential. Before taking the buffer to the entire car, its important to first utilize a test spot and figure out the least aggressive process that will remove all the defects without sacrificing any more clear coat than needed. In this case, I chose a ~18x18" area on my rear driver's side door.
FYI...Subaru's paint is soft. STUPID soft. As in the type of paint that will scratch if you look at it wrong. This meant that great care needed to be taken when wiping off the excess polish residue in order to avoid inducing a new scratch onto the paint. However, the good thing about it was that the paint was able to get corrected with relatively mild abrasives.
The process that worked for me went as follows:
Rotary Application (Major parts of the body):
Meguiar's M105 Ultra-cut Compound on 6.5"
Lake Country White Pad
Menzerna 106FA
Nano Polish on 6.5"
Lake Country Blue Pad
3M Ultra-fine Finishing Polish (Ultrafina) on 6.5"
Lake Country Blue Pad
DA Application (Front bumper, Rear deck, Spoiler, and Trunk)
Meguiar's M105 Ultra-Cut Compound on 4" Lake Country White Pad
Meguiar's M205 Finishing Polish on 4" Lake Country Black Pad
Here's the test spot after
M105 and 106FA (Ultrafina was used at the very end of the detail to remove any holograms left behind by the rotary and further enhance the gloss of the paint)
After developing the system to be used around the entire car, I proceeded to compound the entire car. This removed the deepest scratches on the paint, and the non-diminishing abrasives found in M105 made the process very efficient (roughly 1-1.5 hrs, 8-10 seconds each pass @ 1500 RPM). However, since the compound is a very aggressive polish, it left behind marks of its own that needed to be removed with a milder polish (similar to sanding). What amazes me is that there are a few people out there that are able to work M105 and leave the paint's finish nearly ready to apply wax. As you'll see in the next couple pictures, I'm not quite there yet
:.
After compounding:
Notice that although there are a large amount of swirls/holograms present, they are very mild and uniform relative to the scratches that they removed. This made it much easier to follow up with a milder polish to further level the paint.
The sideskirts were particularly scratched up, and decided to do a quick application of M105 on a LC 4" orange pad followed by 106FA on a LC 4" white pad.
Once the entire car was compounded (I was even more motivated to reach full correction since the car looked terrible at this point), I proceeded to do my second time around the car with 106FA on the blue pad. This process took significantly longer, since the polish used diminishing abrasives that needed to be fully broken down to reach it's maximum potential without leaving any marks behind. Each application took about 2 minutes per 18x18" section, starting at 900 RPM to spread, 1200 RPM to work in the polish, then slowly decreasing the RPMs down to 600 RPM to refine the finish.
After finishing this process, I went around the car a third time with 3M Ultra-fine finishing polish to remove any minor traces of holograms and further enhance the gloss of the car. In fact, the finishing process took longer than the other two processes, since the polish stayed wet for a long time and allowed me to really work the polish to produce a mirror-like finish.
Here's the result:
Linear Mode
