polishing over fresh sealant

K

kf4915

New member
I am progressively trying to work out the micro swirls out of my black paint that appear in sunlight reflecting off the hood and trunk. My method has been to work in the evening with the pinnacle polish, WG glaze and WG sealant.



My question is...do I need to remove the sealant with prepsol &/or Dawn every time I want to polish, or can I work the polish directly over the sealant thereby taking it off while working the finish. I work on it in the evening and it is harder to check my progress, the next day I notice the marks in the sun while at work etc., if I notice them then I work the polish and glaze in the evening.
 
The Polish will take down the sealant and any wax esp. if you have fresh coats and not a heavy buildup.



The real benefit of "preping" a panel before polishing is that your left with just the clean paint so you can really see what defects are in the panel that the LSP's might be filling/hiding.
 
Yeah, if you don't have any problem "polishing through the sealant" then just do that. I have had some instances where polishing through it caused very hard to remove residue (this happens most often with PI-III MG cutting through KSG), and when that happens I use rubbing alcohol to strip the sealant off, saving my PrepSol-type stuff for, uhm, I dunno what...touch-ups maybe.



EDIT: I'd get a cheap incandescent trouble light that takes a high wattage bulb (2-300W) and use that to inspect your work. These lights really show the flaws and then you won't have to guess at whether you got them out or not.
 
I would suggest to polish over the sealant if removing the scractches and swirls is taking so much time. After you are happy with removing all the scratches and swirls you want removed then reapply the Wolfgang.
 
Not to sound like a jerk, but I wonder why would anyone want to use a oil removing product just to start polishing the car. I mean to me removing oils from your paint is not necessary and may be damaging to the paint, especially just to repolish the car for maintance. If polish can remove small micro scratches don't you think it would easily cut through the wax layer you have on.
 
jetskie said:
Not to sound like a jerk, but I wonder why would anyone want to use a oil removing product just to start polishing the car. I mean to me removing oils from your paint is not necessary and may be damaging to the paint, especially just to repolish the car for maintance. If polish can remove small micro scratches don't you think it would easily cut through the wax layer you have on.
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If you ever get the polish+sealant residue stuck to your paint you'll wish you'd removed the sealant first. And yeah, some products can really gum up the pads when they get mixed with the polish. If that doesn't happen, then sure, just polish through. That *is* what I usually do, but it's not always the optimal course of action so I'm just pointing out options.



You don't really "remove oils" from today's paints when you use a solvent on them. The paint is stable and doesn't soak up/give up stuff like oils the way it did back in the day (*way* back). Something like rubbing alcohol (let alone an alcohol/water mix) won't do *anything* bad to today's automotive paint. Even "harsh" solvents like PrepSol won't hurt it. I'd worry a lot more about the frequent abrasive polishing that people do than the use of wax/sealant-stripping solvents.
 
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