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Machine polishing newbie seeks advice

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Drapoon:
After some sound advice from Stealthwolf and a few others I bought a kestrel das-6 with the menzerna polishing compounds kit & also some 3M final cut & set about my car saturday morning.

I read the machine polishing guide on detailing world & felt ready to go for it!

Got up nice & early, jetwashed, snow foamed, shampooed & dried then clayed.

I tried the medium cut polish with the orange menzerna polishing pad, then with the compounding white pad with not much of a result so I stepped it up & used the white compound pad with the 3m fast cut stuff - this seemed to go quite well & almost all scratches disappeared at a glance. I then went round the car with a finishing pad & the final finish compound before sealing with AG sealant & applying poorboys natty blue. Was pretty happy with the results for a first attempt, but I did rush as the sun was now beating down so not the best weather applying wax. The final finish stuff was realy difficult to work & didn't seem to want to come off the paint - cloudy hazeing?

I hadn't really had a good chance to take a good look under lighting as I had a busy wkend so when my car was under car park lighting last night I got to have a good look. I was pretty disappointed! I can still see most of the fine scratches but also I have some cloudy looking sections on most panels - would this have been due to polishing / waxing in the sun?

Any ideas how I can go about removing the cloudy marks & getting these frigging light scratches out, as a side note when I removed the compound with my mf cloth it seemed to leave fine scracthes behind - the cloth was clean, possibly volcanic dust?


Any help/ advice much appreciated!

After re-reading my post the only advice I can give to others is set aside a full day to machine polish - don't rush or promise to go shopping with the gf midday!


Martin

S2 Ant:
I'm yet to try this yet, but it might be that you need to work the fine polish part a bit longer as it sounds like its not been fully worked in to leave the haze.

I've read an awful lot on this stuff but am yet to experiment with it so i can only go on stuff that i've read, but from what i have read it has seemed to indicate that when people get this cloudyness it tends to be things need a little longer to work - If you havent looked already, Detailing World can give you some good info but try not to get bogged down in it all as some people over there are very anal on what they do and how they do it and are sometimes seemingly a bit OTT.

Did you not get a scrap panel or something to practise on tho before hitting the main car?! Its certainly something i'd want to practise before taking a DA to the Golf even tho it is meant to be very difficult to actually do any damage, but would help to refine technique first.

Also German paintwork is supposed to be one of the toughest around so may require more than just a single going over with the medium polish, but again, this is what i've read, not my experience - JPC is prob the best person to comment on this from the work i've seen of his on here and on DW

joesgti:
sounds to me like its been baked on by the sun.

Drapoon:
The "scrap panels" I used was the gf's pug 206 - came up a treat much to my annoyance. Her car looks better than mine! :mad:

cheers for the advice - I'll try working the final finish a bit longer next time under cover


You're dead right - vw paint is hard as nails! the scratches on mine are very light - can't feel them at all (caused by sponge-wielding prev owner) but I can't seem to rid them ;-(

JPC:
what finishing polish were you using specifically you were struggling with?

Aside from that, and you being disappointed, Im wondering if you weren't working it long enough. Its very hard to give advice when you weren't there to oversee proceedings, as there could be a million and one things not right.

It requires a sh*t load of time even just to get comfortable with a polishing machine, let alone get good results with one. Try not to get dissheartened and try again and take your time. As i said its hard to say what you were doing wrong, but with how you said you stepped straight upto white pad and fast cut plus worried me a bit.

With your previous combo, you should have seen some differences.

Always work with a light source straight on the bit your working on. If not, you might as well shut your eyes!

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