How often do you polish your car??

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Deep_Freeze

New member
We talk alot about polishing here, but I was wondering in general, how often do you polish your car? I'm always scared of taking off too much clear, and making my paint look blah. But I have seen research that suggests that in fact we take off very little clear with a PC. So far, I only polish once a year, in the spring. As fall comes, I hate to polish cause winter is right around the corner, and I don't clean my car as often in the winter unfortunately.



All I usually do for the winter is more of a seal job than removing any swirls, cause I know my car will be dirty over the winter anyway. But now I'm at a crossroads, as I do have minor swirls that I can take out now, as I did swirl removal in like late February, early March. I could get them out for the rest of the year, but I really don't know what to do.



I use DACP and SFP, I have though about just hitting it with SFP to get a few of them out, or I could go with DACP and try to get them all out. Or I could just leave them alone and be my naturally lazy self, lol, I mean they are only bad in an autopian sense. It has been 4 months since my last polish, and have 4-5 months left of good weather. What would you do or what do you do??
 
I don't find that I have to polish any more often than once per six months or so, and depending on what I use to protect, I can sometimes get away without having to re-protect for a few months at a time.



The processes we usually discuss here at Autopia are *usually* so delicate that I wouldn't worry about removing too much clear. Now, if you are a wetsanding and rotary freak, that might be a different story.
 
My routine is to polish a section of car each time I wash, which is usually one a week. That way if I wheel out of the garage on Monday morning and it is raining I have the satisfaction that I have not completely wasted my time. I keep a log book of the date and the section I polished so that I can be sure that each section is getting the same frequency of attention. Therefore it is about 2 month cycle.



I should add that I only use something like Meguiars Gold Class applied by hand.
 
Abrasively - once every 4-6 months.

Chemically (AIO, Blue PwC, etc) monthly.



Usually, I try to spot clay, strip LSP with blue PwC (used AIO before I got it), RMG then LSP her once a month. Sometimes I get lazy and just wash her with IPA instead :).
 
It depends. When I wash the car and see lots of scratches, I break out my PC and polish it. So i'd say around polish car every 3 months or so.
 
I polish it when I feel it needs polishing. The last interval has been two months, but that was because I was trying out a product with fillers. As it started to wear out the swirls started to appear so I polished it out on Monday. I guess it will be another 3 months or so before I do it again.



When I polish though I'm only using something like #80 with a green DAS pad so the amount of clear it's going to be taking off is minimal.



Ben
 
I have only polished my car abrasively twice since I joined here. Since I'm looking to get a different car, in a dark color, I'm probably going to be polishing twice per year or so.
 
Deep_Freeze said:
So far, I only polish once a year, in the spring. As fall comes, I hate to polish cause winter is right around the corner, and I don't clean my car as often in the winter unfortunately.



All I usually do for the winter is more of a seal job than removing any swirls, cause I know my car will be dirty over the winter anyway.
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My experience has been when you try to cheat it by not polishing/cleaning you don't get good adhesion of the LSP (for sealants, anyway, including NXT). Of course, this is why cleaner/waxes are so popular OTC. What I'm trying to say is if you're doing what you said above, you probably want to at least use a paint cleaner before you apply your sealant for the winter.
 
I average 2 to 3 times per year also. Im sure if I used better washing and drying methods I could cut that amout down.
 
Now that I'm all extreme about my wash technique, I seldom do much abrasive polishing. Not even once a year on the minivan, let alone the "good" cars (and Ohio winters are messy/nasty). But before I got so obsessive about the wash I'd polish every spring with some spot-repairs as needed throughout the year; that was washing like a normal person using BHBs. IMO if you have to polish more than that you oughta work on the wash technique.



Looking even farther back, when I wasn't *nearly* as careful, I'd polish more often, but since I was just using the PC/Cyclo I never took off much paint. Even with soft single-stage, I've polished *many* times without any trouble, and we keep some of our cars a long time. As long as you're not hitting it with a rotary and #83/etc. all the time you should be fine.
 
i was just thinking about this today, and i think with good washing twice a year is durable enough. until then it it just coats of p21s every once in a while or whatever i desire i guess :)
 
I usually only polish every six/seven months or so, and then it's with AIO. Any scratches I attend to when needed.

I do clay every six weeks or so before adding a layer of wax/sealant ( whatever I'm "testing" at the time ) and I do try and use a QD after most washes.
 
I seem to polish my van all the time because i am always trying new combinations and the more addicted i become, the more products i will buy and that will lead to more polishing. I have a van with 200000 miles on it so i dont really care about it I just like to practice and try new things and have a good looking van too.
 
Setec Astronomy said:
My experience has been when you try to cheat it by not polishing/cleaning you don't get good adhesion of the LSP (for sealants, anyway, including NXT). Of course, this is why cleaner/waxes are so popular OTC. What I'm trying to say is if you're doing what you said above, you probably want to at least use a paint cleaner before you apply your sealant for the winter.
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When I said I do a seal job in the winter, I forgot to mention that it includes AIO which provides the good adhesion that you speak about. All I was saying is that in the winter, in the past, I haven't used any abrasives cause I knew I wasn't going to keep my car very clean in the cold weather.
 
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