buffer marks

[ahunt01]

Ahhh, I see in your post now what F/M is.



I see properautocare.com says "This is a more aggressive polish than the 3M Perfect-It Swirl Removers."



So that being said, should I try the 3M Perfect-It Swirl Mark Remover for Dark Colored cars first since it's more gentle, and then work my way up to the F/M if I'm not pleased? Or would that just be a waste of time, because it's probably just made of fillers and won't remove the swirls?



Or should I do what you said, use the F/M, then follow up with the Perfect-It Swirl Mark Remover for Dark Colored Cars?



And I see that the F/M is a machine polish, but it will still work by hand right, just will take a lot lot longer to get the same results?



Hehe I'm sure you all can tell I'm a noob at swirl removal. I miss the good ol' days of slapping 6 coats of Z5 on my car and it looked good for months

 

[neoprufrok]

My question is: what did they do to make it look that bad? Uneven pressure? Didn't work the compound in long enough? Didn't remove it properly? What do the body shop gurus think?

 

[imported_turbomangt]

Greetings all, I jumped in here because recently I had a minor accident and the shop I used (which has done some really outstanding body/paint work for me in the past,) left some swirls in my car. However you can't see them when you show artificial light on it, they show up only in direct sun light. Since this is my car, and like guitarman said, when it comes to perfection, you should do it yourself. I plan on using my new Xmas present, the cyclo. I love this machine. By working with the mentality "less is best" I will start with green pads and a light polish, maybe Hi Temp light cut, or poorboys swirl remover. Then a glaze, and wait till it cures to seal. I may have to work in the sun to see how it improves. Gary

 

[jr weeks]

Haven't checked this post for a while...



ahunt, your approach is fine, like turbomangt said, start out with the finer polish and if that doesn't cut it (pun intended) use the F/M. You'll have to work ANY polish longer by hand than if you had a machine.



neoprufrok; I wish I could say for certain why they left the paint that way. My best guess is they merely had one of their "apprentice" shop guys compound the car with a rotary, in poor light (indoors) and never final polished it out.



You would *think* they would know better, but hey, seems more and more common for people in a business to cut any corners they can. Cheers.

 

[ahunt01]

Oh yeah they cut MAJOR corners with my car. I asked for a total re-paint so that the car would completely match (we all know that repainted black panels will never match). Well the idiots didn't look under my mirrors, they have "L" and "R" stickers stuck underneath them, and so I know they didn't paint them because the stickers are still there, and I can see that my mirrors don't match the rest of the car completely. They also pulled dents and used filler where I told them to just give me a new panel, I can tell because they don't sound right when I tap on them where the damage was. But I really don't care at this point, the car looks good with the exception of the swirls.

Point of all this rambling is that I'm not supprised that they skipped a step, the final polishing.

 

[ahunt01]

Well fellas, I put about 5 coats of the new Z5, and so far...wow. I looked at it in the sun and it looked stunning, I'll have to wait until a really sunny day to really tell, but so far I'm very impressed with Z5.

Here are the After pics, refer to the before to see the difference. I know it's not the exact same angle and lighting, but it should still give an idea on how it looks now. Sorry for the large pictures, it's as small as I could make them so they still showed detail.