VCCA Home Forums TECHNICAL - GENERAL Body - Sheet Metal, Paint & Wood How do you shine?

I haven't seen this discussed here so I am asking for some of you to share what you use to polish and wax your car finishes. My '34 has a black acrylic lacquer finish that is 20 years old. It sat in a dusty garage uncovered for most of that time until I got it two years ago. Needless to say the finish needed a lot of work to bring it back.
After some fine (white) rubbing compound, I used Meguiars 3 step cleaner, polish, and wax. It looks really good but I'm wondering if there is a better product or process. What have you used and what do you recommend? I still have some minor swirl marks that I would like to eliminate. Thanks for any and all replies!

Hi Young Falcon

Your 34 is truely a thing of beauty.If it runs half as good as it looks you must be very happy.

Regards

Ray

If you want to continue to make your 34 std 3 window coupe GLOW, you started by using the meguiars **step one** cleaner which was a good move as it will remove a lot of surface oxidation and micro imperfections.

I would re wash the car a couple more times, getting the area on the cowl under the rear of the hood. Also the door sills.

Take the door handles, hood handles, trunk lid handle, front and rear bumpers, headlights and head light bars off the car. Makes it so much easier to do the polishing. Tape off the grill trim ring and door ferrules

Without actually being able to see the car first hand, i would consider cafefully water sanding it with super fine 2000 grit. Use a flexibal 2 1/2" wide x 4" long dense styrofoam pad that will easily conform to the body surface shape. You just want to clean the surface of slight imperfections, not block sand it.

Get a medium size plastic container fill it with clean warm water and add a few drops of dishwashing detergent. This helps to break the surface tension of the water. It also helps to keep the water paper lubricated and stop the build up of paint particles ON the paper from water sanding. Its important to keep the BOTH the surface of the paper and the body , free of particles which when building up will scratch your surface. I keep a second seperate small bucket to rinse the paper in & get the particles off.

After water sanding until the whole surface is now dull your ready to start. Wash surface again and blow of to remove any possible residue.

I purchased a meguiars *dual action* polisher G110V2 that has 6 speeds....your only going to need 1--2--3. Also purchase their sponge/foam polishing pads ...RED color #7000 use this with either their #1 medium cut cleaner or #2 fine cut cleaner. I use a different pad for each cleaner grit. Follow the fine cut with polishing pad #8000 and use swirl remover #9 and lastly use machine glaze #3 with polishing pad #9000
. Do not load the surface with this stuff as it reacts to high humidity and may act funny and get congealed. Talk to Meguiars tech if your having a problem.

To inspect your progress as your doing the small area use meguirs #34 final inspection. Meguiars has a toll free number listed on the back of their products for technical advice.

Because these soft foam pads work fantastically you should not need to worry about buffing thru your finish like if using a non orbital regular polisher and wooly pad. That requiars a more skilled hand. You can get into the body side line above and below the line easily to dro a great job.

Keep this in mind.......EDGES ...have the least amount of paint on them and are most vulnerable to thin paint problems.

Hope this helps.

mike

I agree...gotta go w/sand paper...Rubbing compound comes out "Blotchy" at best on heavy oxidation...

Guys,

Thanks for your replies (especially Mike for the lengthy post). I guess I was misleading in my post about the condition of the paint on my car. It has been color sanded and professionally buffed already. It just needed some TLC after sitting so long with no maintenance. It looks great and I can easily see a clear reflection. I would be happy to show it just as it is but what I was looking for were some suggestions of brands and methods to prepare the finish for waxing. As I said, I used some fine compound on a few places and then the Meguiar's 1-2-3 process to get it looking good. But with the light just right I can still see some very faint swirl marks. I may be too anal about this as others have told me it looks perfect.

I'm just curious what others have done and brands used to complete the final steps. Thanks again for the posts and any to come!

Then use the meguiars #9 swirl remover, it does a great job. Works best with orbital polisher.

In a quality black nitro or acrylic lac job you should be able to see yourself clearly . Maybe even count nose hairs ??

Meguiars MTX ??? wax their new wax ,or their #7 (?) yellow carnuba wax gives a lot of depth to black. Mothers carnuba wax would be similar or even same result.

Phone their tech line for free assistance and get their opinion & guidance.

mike