Recommended OTC polishes

M

mikebai1990

New member
I'm looking to buy some polishes for my PC, and I'm interested in finding out whether there are any good polishes that can be bought in local car stores or Walmart/Target stores. Or are these polishes so specialized they can only be bought online?
 
Occasionally, I've seen Meguair's Show Car Glaze at AutoZone and ordered some of their professional line from Carquest.



But I agree with SteveO -- it's worth the slightly extra cost to order some of the higher quality polishes on the Internet. Besides, a bunch of the detailing sites have some 'end of year' sales going on right now, so you won't pay as much as you think you might.
 
Check local auto-body supply stores for the Megs MG line (#83/#80) or the 3m Perfect-it III line (now discontinued but a lot of places still stock it - get the RC and MG).
 
I really like the old school #83/#80 combo from Meguiar's - does not the get the pub that it use to but it's tried and true. You have to purchase these from car part stores like NAPA (no Wally-World or Target availability). For the occasional touch-up polish, I like Scratch-X as well - available practically anywhere these days. Mother's makes Power Polish but I have no experience with it so I can't really comment.
 
firegate said:
... or the 3m Perfect-it III line (now discontinued but a lot of places still stock it - get the RC and MG).
Click to expand...



3M replaced that line with Perfect-It 3000 products, though the P-III is still available in many areas. I know I can still buy plenty of it locally and have read that others are finding it both locally and online.



The Meguiar's 83/80 combo is a winner. I still use it quite a bit and have gallons of each in my basement. M80 is especially good for someone new to using the machine because it is so forgiving.



Not to slight the 3M recommendations, but I wouldn't think they'd be as easy for someone just learning. When I don't use Meguiar's, I use 3M and like that it seems to cut more and finish a bit quicker than Meguiar's.
 
Gotta give another tumbs up for Mother's Powerpolish. Very flexible and a nice long working time.
 
Yep...in my experience, PowerPolish is excellent. It maybe OTC, but it works as good as most boutique polishes. The only other polish I'd defer to is Menzerna.
 
I too was very impressed with Mothers Power Polish!! I did a really bad older truck last weekend and ended up using Mothers PP over the top of ScratchX with LC Yellow pads ....worked really well!
 
Wow, Power Polish seems very highly rated! So how does the Mother's Power Polish compare to other polishes in terms of aggressiveness? Also, is it a single-step polish?



I was looking on Amazon and was very happy to find that they sell the Meguiars 80 and 83 for pretty reasonable prices (~$13). Also free shipping because the order is larger than $25.



I really want to get some Menzerna polishes, but that would involve getting the whole set (3 or 4?) polishes which would be quite a hit on the wallet, not to mention the shipping charges also.. If I have a chance in the future, I'll definitely try the Menzerna line of polishes. For now, I'm probably going to stick with the Meguiars.
 
If I use an aggressive pad, it's between #80 and #83 in cut. Then swap to a white pad for finishing off. One polish - several different pads. It works similarly to the Optimum polishes, but I'm not sure which one its equivalent to...maybe OP. OP/OCP is cheaper than MPP if you want to go to the new style polishes.
 
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