Black Crew Cab Halo Marks!

S

Shawn F.

New member
I wanted to get some idea of how long it takes you guys here to fully clay bar, buff, polish, seal and wax a lifted black crew cab long bed truck covered in 7 years of hard water spots and halo marks from improper washing and automatic car washes... Just a rough estimate would be great. I am doing one now and have literally 14 hours in on this truck. It's close to being halo free but not completely... I'm just curious here is all. I have done hundreds of black vehicles covered in water spots and halo marks and had no troubles until now. I just can't seem to remove all the halo marks and no the pad is not dirty, they are all brand new and cleaned after every panel in the pad washer. I started with a wool/foam blend pad and Optimum Polish II. I then moved onto white pad with the polish and then grey finishing pad with Optimum Finish Polish.

In natural light and fluorescents it look great. Under halogen light and spot lights you can see the halo marks.



Thanks for any info!
 
20+hrs would seem in the ball park without seeing the truck. you will need to provide a little more detail (ie. machine used), is the wool/foam pad the purple foamed wool from lake county, guessing your talking about lc white and gray pads. who's black paint (ie ford, dodge, chevy), year. pics are worth several hundred/thousand words.
 
Sorry, yes a dewalt rotary buffer is being used. It's a Ford with their horrible brown looking black paint and hard clear. All lake country pads as well.
 
you might need to get/use a da to get rid of the holograms which are more than likely being left from the rotary. finishing hologram free with a rotary is very difficult but it can be done. you may find it easier to remove the holograms with a da. you can try using the the dewalt at its lowest speed with the white or gray pad and optimum finish and do a test area to see if you get rid of the holograms.
 
The truck has actually been finished for a few days now and I finally got almost all Halo marks out. There are still some very faint ones left but I think it's due to the truck being neglected for 7 years and only gone through auto washes and not hand dryed either so it was beat to hell. The truck looked grey and everyone who came to the shop thought it was and didn't know it was black until they came in when it was done. The clear coat on the truck is very hard but also pretty thin. As for using a rotary, it's all I've ever used for about 9 years now but once in a while I come across something odd. Usually with halo marks they do take a while to correct but with this truck they were just stubborn and much tougher than I've had before (except a Lexus I once did with just as many Halo marks).

Anyways, thanks for the info! All I did was use LC foam/wool blend pad with buffer on 1200-1400 and Optimum Polish II. Followed it up with White LC pad and Polish II and some 3M Ultrafine then Grey LC pad and Optimum Finish Polish. Came out great, customer was very happy!
 
I missed this thread before... but now I'm thinking; Is this truck still owned by the original owner or was it purchased used? If the latter, fine. But for the former it seems like a 3 step correction might have been a little overboard without knowing if it can be maintained at that level. In so many cases I have found that my obsession with a flaw here or there was pointless after the owner decided to shortcut the wash a month later.
 
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