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I have done quite a bit of testing in the last few days. All testing was done with a Flex on speed 5. I found that Compound on an Orange pad followed by Polish on a white pad will remove the swirls. I had tried this combination before with 6 section passes but it didn't get rid of all the damage. The trick was that I had to increase the number of passes from 6 to 10 plus slow down my hand speed a little. I also found that anything less than 10 passes will not remove all the swirls. Even with this, I still have some hazing that will need to be addressed. I also tried the more aggressive compound mentioned in my original post using a white pad followed by the same company's polish on a white pad. This combination also removed the damage after 10 passes but with less haze so I chose this combo to use on the rest of the car. Please note that I didn't use a finishing pad for any of the testing because I wanted to first make sure I could get rid of the damage. Based on Ray's comments, I did a section of the trunk lid (which was giving me all the trouble initially) with the new process but substituted a red finishing pad on the PC instead of the white pad on the Flex. This eliminated the hazing and really brought up the shine and depth. I've now gone back and re-done the hood and trunk lid and they look absolutely amazing. For this finish, really soft pads, lots of passes, and cleaning the pads with compressed air after every section are the hot setup. This is going to be really time consuming, but the results are totally worth it. Thank you once again for all the suggestions. They were extremely helpful and I greatly appreciate everyone taking the time to answer my questions and help me figure this out.

Thank you all for the responses! This is very helpful. I also had always thought Mazda's had fairly soft paint. We had a 2006 Mazda 3 previously that was pretty easy to correct and its paint was really trashed when we bought it. I kept thinking that there was no way I should need to use a very aggressive pad/product considering I'm only dealing with moderate swirling. That's why I decided to reach out to the experts for some help. Dan -- the car is red (see attached picture). I will try again with a soft pad and polish. FYI -- My first test spot was a white pad with Adam's Polish. I saw very little correction from that but I'm now beginning to think I should have made more section passes at a slower speed to give the polish more time to cut. I'll keep you guys posted, but it will probably be a day or two before I get to work on it again.

I am in the process of doing the first detail on my wife's 2019 Mazda 3. The paint has a lot of swirl marks in it for a 9 month old car (thanks mostly to the dealer prior to our purchase) but I've seen and corrected much worse in the past. However, I have run into quite a bit of difficulty trying to correct this particular finish. The paint was cleaned with an iron remover and Visco Clay prior to starting correction. I had to do several test spots on the hood before I found a combo that had any effect at all on the swirls. I tried Adam's compound (fresh bottle) with several different types of pad (both Adams and others) on a Flex XC 3401 with almost no effect. I happened to have an older bottle of a more aggressive compound lying around from a previous project that had really hard paint, so I decided to give it a try. The combination of the aggressive compound with my most aggressive pad finally gave me halfway decent results. I needed 6 passes per section with the speed between 4 and 5 to remove most of the swirls in the test spot. I did the hood and front fenders and got most of the damage corrected but I did need to do several sections twice. I started out today on another panel with the same technique but it now has almost no effect on the swirls. I have tried smaller sections, slower hand speeds, more pressure on the buffer, and higher buffer speed, but nothing seems to work. The weather is hot and humid (Central Florida), but it was the same as yesterday when I did the hood and fenders.I'm pretty much out of ideas as to how to proceed. Right now, I can think of 3 potential causes for my issues:1) Compound not aggressive enough. The bottle of compound I used, while somewhat aggressive, is at least 4 years old and may have lost some of its effectiveness (although it was stored in a climate controlled area). I'm planning on buying a fresh bottle tomorrow and see if that helps. I know there are even more aggressive compounds available but I'm somewhat hesitant to try that.2) The car has a paint sealant or coating that was not taken off by the iron remover. I have not applied anything to the paint previously, and to my knowledge the dealer did not either. The only possibility I can think of is a paint protectant from an automatic car wash that got applied without my knowledge. 3) This car was built with the hardest paint on the planet. Any comments or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I really don't know what to try next. Thanks in advance!Todd

I'm finally in a position where I can get back into detailing and frequenting the Adam's forums after a long layoff. About two years ago, I got a phone call out of the blue with a job opportunity that turned out to be my dream job. I accepted the position and ended up moving from Ohio, where I had lived my entire life, to Florida. It took quite a while, but we're now settled into our new home and have all the initial remodeling tasks done, so I'm finally able to set up the garage and start detailing again. Last weekend, I unpacked some of my detailing gear and did my first hand wash since the summer of 2017. I'm really looking forward to doing full paint corrections on both cars after two years of neglect, but I need to replace all my car care products first due to age. After surfing the forums and the Adam's website a bit, I see I have a LOT of catching up to do on all the new products introduced in the last few years. It's good to finally get back to detailing!

Thank you!! I'm really happy with the way the car turned out, especially for a 10 year old daily driver. This is the first silver car we've owned, and I didn't think that silver could look that deep.

I have not been able to do any sort of vehicle detailing work for about the last 4 years due to disc issues in my neck and several pinched nerves. I was unable to hold a PC (much less my Flex) and was barely able to wash cars. The combination of pain and struggling to do even simple everyday things with my hands and arms (like turn a doorknob) led me to go see a surgeon last year, where I found out I had 7(!!!) pinched nerves in my neck and arms. I had surgery last fall on both hands and elbows (ulnar nerve and carpal tunnel release) to relieve the pressure on the nerves and it worked beautifully. I'm able to do things now that I had to give up, so I decided it was time to see if I could once again detail a car. My wife and I bought a 2006 Mazda 3 from a neighbor about 6 months ago. They were the original owners and had cared well for the car except for the finish. He waxed it religiously twice a year but never clayed it and it either went through a car wash or he washed it with an old rag and dish soap. The car is silver so it hid the damage pretty well and looked OK from a distance: Up close, it was a different story entirely. The paint was rather dull and oxidized, plus it had a TON of swirls and scratches that you could only see if the light hit it just right. If the light was right, they just leaped out at you. I had some SSR, SHR and FMP left over from about 5 years ago that was stored in the house so I decided to use it up. A pass of SHR removed a fair amount of oxidation but it did nothing for the scratches. I settled on two passes of SHR with a microfiber cutting pad followed by FMP. I did the hood and it looked pretty good so I did the correction steps on the rest of the car but found I just couldn't get rid of the scratches. They were really hard to find but if I got the light right they just leaped out at you. I then tried several other combinations including SSR on a green pad and a microfiber with no real improvement. I was getting desperate when I read in one of the threads that Paint Correcting Polish had quite a bit more cut than the older versions I was using. I had purchased PCP and PFP this spring so I broke them out and gave them a try. One pass with PCP/microfiber and PFP/white pad did the trick. I followed this with BG and LPS and this was the result: Best of all, I can use the buffer for hours on end, clay, and hand buff, etc., with no pain at all. I'm so thrilled to be able to get back to detailing. You really don't realize how much you miss doing something until you are physically unable to do it ...

Chief Development Engineer for a shock absorber manufacturing company.

My MB revolution arrived this week and I can't wait to try it. I have two cars that hold an insane amount of water in the trim and crevices compared to past vehicles I have owned. It currently takes me 30-45 minutes to blow all the water out of those areas with a compressor and blow gun in addition to the time needed to dry the rest of the car. The weather is supposed to clear in a couple of hours and be nice for the rest of the weekend so I'm planning on playing with my new foam gun and the MB.

I spray them with a 50% APC solution and wash in hot water with a second soak cycle. This method even works to take the stains out of the waffle towel I use with WCW.

Done.

Looks great!

http://forum.grrrr8.net/showpost.php?p=147477&postcount=37

I used it on the G8 when it was much dirtier than I thought it was. I too was worried about micro scratches. I do have a few very small ones on the car now but given how dirty the car turned out to be, I'm surprised that the scratching was as minimal as it was. I think you will be fine with using this on black as long as the car isn't really dirty.

I tried it about a week ago on the G8. I ended up using about 12 ozs. to do the whole car. It was much dirtier than I thought it was (I drive through several interstate construction zones daily) and the WW towel got extremely filthy, but it worked wonderfully! The bug guts literally ran off the car when I blasted them with the waterless wash. I hit the car with detail spray afterwards and it looked like I just waxed it.

Incredible job, Dylan! :drool:

Nice ride! The shine is eye-popping! You guys who keep posting up pictures of Vettes are going to get me in trouble .... I'm about to tell my wife the H3LL with the house projects and head out to the garage to work towards getting mine back on the road again.

Title of the thread says it all. It has been pouring down rain here (northern Cincinnati) all day long, and Louisville (about 70 miles west along the Ohio river) is getting clobbered even harder. The news says that Louisville has gotten about 10 inches of rain today and that there is quite a bit of flooding. The JunkCave is just a few miles from the Ohio River in the area where the flooding is supposedly taking place. I heard reports that the water is high enough that cars are under water. Hopefully A.J. has been able to get to high ground ......

Riiiiiiight ......... :rolleyes::jester:

Cool, more videos! I'm really interested to see these, hopefully I'll get a chance in the next few days. The only bad thing I can see so far is the picture of your ugly mug holding the Adam's bottle -- you're going to scare off all the customers! :lolsmack: When will you be passing through or near to Dayton next? It's time for a feed .....

Welcome to the insanity!

Eewwwwwwwwwwwwww! Bad burrito from Taco Bell ?????? :jester::lol:

You've made a billion dollars detailing ????? :jester::lolsmack: I'm in the wrong career field ......... :bow:

I think everyone's eyes are bugging out over this one. Incredible job, Taig!

Nice work!

I tried this today. It worked great. Thanks for the tip.