Typical correction

N

neomatrix

New member
I ordered the Blackfire Kit but from reading the reviews it seems that the Blackfire Polish is a very mild cleaner at best and people have used PPCL to prep the car before using the polish. I don't have the PPCL and I missed :mad: the sale at autogeek and Pinnacle.com. Anyway, I want to use Blackfire as soon as I receive the package and can't wait another week if I order PPCL. Any alternative that I can use and get from local stores?



Thanks :)
 
Alternatives, Try P21S's paintwork cleaner, or Zymol's pre-wax cleaner.



Other than those products I can't think of a locally available product. Meguiars Body Scrub and bodyshop hand polish come to mind but I have no experience with these products.



What do you want to do to the finish of your car? Do you want to clean it to make it really smooth? If so try a clay bar. Are there swirl marks? If so, try a 3M polish from NAPA and such.



Hope this helps,

Jason
 
I happen to think that Liquid Glass Precleaner is a very good product. Some people here have said it has some abrasives, but the product info says no abrasives, it cleans chemically. I wouldn't use it every day, but once or twice per year can't be any more abrasive than SMR. I apply it by hand and it wipes off much easier than PPCL. I use both products, depending on the cycle of the moon....



H
 
Prehaps Mother's or Meguiars Step 1 Pre-Cleaner? I believe they dont have any abrasives or fillers... but I'm not sure.
 
For my money, I still think PPCL is the best. Very low abrasive. Excellent non-petro cleaners. Easy to use. Leaves paint squeaky clean. No complaints.



I used it prior to testing both BLACKFIRE and Zaino Z-5. Excellent results with both.



db
 
Locally Meguiar's products like Medallion paint cleaner , #2 or #9 ,

Mother's pre wax cleaner , or 3M products like Perfect Swirlmark remover. Just to be safe wash the car with Dawn after polishing.
 
i thought pinnacle paint cleaning lotion was abrasive free?

Paintwork Cleansing Lotion uses d-Limonene, a natural cleaner made from the rind of oranges, along with lemon oil, natural clays and sea kelp to polish without abrasives
 
<blockquote class='ipsBlockquote' >

<em class='bbc'>Originally posted by HeftySMURF [/i]
<strong class='bbc'>i thought pinnacle paint cleaning lotion was abrasive free?
Paintwork Cleansing Lotion uses d-Limonene, a natural cleaner made from the rind of oranges, along with lemon oil, natural clays and sea kelp to polish without abrasives [/b]</blockquote>
The clay <strong class='bbc'>is[/b] the abrasive.
 
And also the Z-1 (has cleaners) should remove any remaining oils or other <strong class='bbc'>minor[/b] paint problems.
 
BW... that's not my experience with Z-1. Z-1 seems to set up a necessary base for ZSCP. I cannot find evidence of cleaning beyond mechanical wiping. If it were a cleaner, it would remove previous coats of ZSCP... which it does not. I applied Z-1 on top of 6 coats of Z-5 to see what would happen. No damage to the Z-5 layers, and the next layer of Z-5 went on easier.



In my testing, clay followed by PPCL was an excellent cleaning step for BF and ZSCP.



db
 
I agree David.



Z1 does not really clean, well maybe it cleans the surface so the other products will adhere to the surface IMO.



Paint prep is the most important step in any protection scheme!
 
Z1 is a mild cleaner. It will not strip zaino, it actually helps tighten the polish bed after 5-10 coats. It really works!



It does clean mildly, I noticed a dirty applicator after z1-ing most cars.
 
I have posted before on this so I suppose you could do a quick search with my username and z1. Actually, I just did the search. Please click here

Zaino z1 does have some cleaning properties and it sure smells like it has some solvents in it.
 
With the "typical" (uh huh...is there such a thing? LOL) paint correction to rid the car of swirlies, etc. about how many pads to you go through? As you know, I'm new to all of this, and I'm trying to learn a little of what to expect. I'm not sure how to tell, yet, when I need to change pads. Also, how many passes of each do you usually do. 3 passes on the entire car of the M105, and then 3 more w/M205, etc.?
Thanks again, in advance, for all the helpful advice! I love this forum!
 
tmwfla said:
With the "typical" (uh huh...is there such a thing? LOL) paint correction to rid the car of swirlies, etc. about how many pads to you go through? As you know, I'm new to all of this, and I'm trying to learn a little of what to expect. I'm not sure how to tell, yet, when I need to change pads. Also, how many passes of each do you usually do. 3 passes on the entire car of the M105, and then 3 more w/M205, etc.?
Thanks again, in advance, for all the helpful advice! I love this forum!
Click to expand...

Well,

As you already know, every job is different and requires different procedures. It also depends on the size of the car you are detailing. Obviously on a mid-size car you will use up less pads then you would if you were doing a over-sized SUV. I think as a general rule of thumb, you could use anywhere from 3-6 pads per car.

The way to tell if you need to change pads (or just clean them on the fly), is if the polish starts to cake up on the pad. I don't have as many pads as I would like (although that will change shortly), so I tend to clean them after each section on the fly. That consists of turning the polisher upside down and holding a terry clean towel on the pad and turning on the polisher. This will enable you do do more sections with the same pad.

As for the question of how many passes. It depends on how bad the defects are. If you can get them out with one pass, then that is all you need. You need to do do small sections ( 2 sq. ft) at a time and inspect your work. If you still see the defetcts, then you need to do another pass. I tend to do a minimum of three passes, then wipe off polish and inspect. The nice thing about 105/205 is that you can work them as long as you need to.

I hope this helps.

Let us know how it turns out.
 
To try and help explain what I'm talking about, since I don't know the proper terms, here's how I define what I'm doing:

One "Pass": performing the back-and-forth, then side-to-side pattern, 1 time, in a 3ft x 3ft section

One "Round": performing 3-4 "passes", then wiping the polish off to inspect

I'm not working on anything other than my own car right now. I was curious because, as I was testing on my hood (2006 Black Cadillac CTS-V), I had to do 3 rounds, for each the M105 and M205 just to get most of the swirlies out. So, in total w/the M105 and M205, I did 6 "rounds" on my hood and it still wasn't "perfect". That seemed excessive but I don't know what is "typical" (I understand "typical" is a relative term) for a daily driver, etc. Am I making any sense?
 
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