Removing swirl using Meguiar Scratch X

[PUR157]

My mate used to have a saying, looks good from afar, but far from good.

It certainly looks good in the picture... but are you saying it's not actually that effective?

[apophis]

its only good where you can concentrate all your rubbing at one spot, but yeah it looks like the scratches I have are deeper than i thought....so the ScratchX didnt work for those ones. The minor scratches and swirl, yeah they are all gone.

[Garry]

See how it looks after a couple of washes before you get to excited. You might find the swirls that you thought were gone will magicaly reappear.

[JBT]

Garry has it in one. Check this for swirl and scratch removal

[apophis]

See how it looks after a couple of washes before you get to excited. You might find the swirls that you thought were gone will magicaly reappear.

3M cutting compound hey, might have to give it a go...

[ASE05]

Polishing your car to get swirl marks out is like using wet n dry sandpaper. Start with a heavy cut compound and work your way back to a finishing polish. If you can remove a scratch with a cut comp. you'll need to work it back withy lighter polish to get the shine back.

You can get a good result and get lustre and shine with a quick polish but to get a premium result, multiply the effort X 5 at least.

Meguiar X is just a filler and the scratches will come back over time.

I'm a detailer and for an average job, I'll give the car 1 pass with a normal light polishing compound(1hr). Dark and red couloured cars require the extra effort to get a good result.

I recently did a black 2002 BMW M5 that had spent most of it's days going through touch carwashes. The paint was farked!!! 5hrs later and several hundred $$$ from the client had his car lookin' better than some brand spanka cars after the pre-delivery detail.....it only took 6 different grades of polish and 5 different pads and 16 passes and two passes with a wax. Some would say that much polishing would remove the clear coat altogether but that's not the case at all.

The biggest thing to remember with polish is let the polish do the work, avoid using too much pressure!!!!

[apophis]

what cutting compound do you use?

[ASE05]

It's all developed, produced and supplied by Cargroomers. I'm a franchise owner in Brissie

[solo22]

my black NB is swirl city, especially the bonnet and boot.

And a bunch of chips, on the front end. The paintwork if i look too closely makes me cringe..

I was wondering if one of those $$$ decent "cut/polish/wax/whatever" at a good shop would make a decent difference for a fair while..

or does it need resprayed? i'm guessing so...


EDIT: after reading the meguires link ( http://meguiarsonline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7011), basically using the product you have to rub the living hell out of your paint job... considering the extent of the swirling on my car, i can either do that for 28 hours and receive a possibly nice shine and a totally arthritic hand, or spend $300 on a decent job done by someone else.

[apophis]

yeah my blue is swirl city as well, I am going to try the cutting compound, you wont need to use too much force, let the product do its job.
I will let you know hey, I have stone chips, long scratches on bonnet and boot. Likewise its disgusting when you look at it closely.

[DMS_Dan]

As was mentioned before ScratchX is just fillers. They will wash out. The only way to remove these marks is with abrasive polish. Menzerna is the best i have tried. They work by hand but with a rotary will give the best result, if your not experienced with a rotary then a forced rotation or a random orbital will work better