Best products for EXTREMELY neglected paint?

[Crimzon]

Many of the jobs I do tend to be on extremely neglected paint... faded, oxidized, dry, bird-poop-etched, sometimes even cracking or peeling in places.



My primary polishes are Meguiars 105 and 205, which work great on cars with "normal" paint, but they tend to gum up really badly on cars with neglected paint. So bad that polishing is nearly impossible.



For a long time I thought I was doing something wrong, so I tried TONS of different things... using different pads, using less product / using more product, using less pressure / using more pressure, using lower speed / using higher speed, cleaning my pads better and more frequently, trying different priming techniques, etc etc...



Then I did some research here and found out that neglected paint that is extremely dry will quickly soak up the moisture from the polish and make it gum up! So... are there any compounds / polishes out there that will perform better with this type of dry paint?

 

[Dan]

M66 is the king of chalky dried up paint. Its not a great compound but it will get the first layer of crap off. I also like to use TW ICE clay in a bottle on chalky cars, it seems to get the dry crud off very well.

 

[imported_RZJZA80]

You can also spritz some water or QD on the paint as you work on it, it'll keep the polish from drying up so quickly without reducing it's working quality too much. I used to use M83 back in the day, and Klasse AIO for situations like this, or 105/205 with the water/QD technique I mentioned.

 

[David Fermani]

I'd be willing to bet that HD UNO would work great. Heavy lubes & little to no dusting make it great for long work times if you're using a rotary/wool combo.



Auto Polish Product for Car Paint, Plastic & Glass - HD Uno | 3DProducts



I would strongly advise you to completely degrease/scrub the paint prior to buffing.

 

[Scottwax]

Optimum Hyper Polish is surprisingly good on oxidized single stage paint. Odd because it was developed for use on harder clear coats.

 

[Woody Wax]

HD UNO performs brilliantly on single stage and heavily oxidised paint's



This is a single pass

 

[Crimzon]

Nice! I'll have to give HD a try.

 

[SVR]

The Xpert is fantastic for those paints with it's extra long working time and superior lubrication than M105/205. 3D may be great also



As for pads and which tools - Forced rotation or random orbital with any of todays powerful pads would work fine on those.

Rayon, surbuf or velvet perhaps. wool even as with wool, its more forgiving on those paints than foam is

 

[Accumulator]

Many of the jobs I do tend to be on extremely neglected paint... faded, oxidized, dry, bird-poop-etched, sometimes even cracking or peeling in places....

My '93 Audi was like that when I got it. Since it's b/c instead of single stage, I relied on decontamination to prep it for polishing. No real issues with my compounds/polishes gumming up after that, but I did use wool (today I'd use MF) for the initial work just to be on the safe side (seems to deal with such situations better than foam does).