Unable to remove swirls -- suggestions and advice welcome

[Z51L9889]

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

[chops1sc]

I have a 4th option for you. The paint might be soft. So soft that you could be doing more damage. Japanese clear is usually regarded as being soft but there is always the exception. I remember watching a video by Larry Cosilla about soft paint. He ended up using a heavily watered down compound and a foam pad. He had to clean out the pad after each 2X2 section IIRC.

 

I am no expert so take this with a grain of salt, LOL!

Edited May 18, 2020 by chops1sc

[mdfrancis]

I had similar issues on a 2015 Nisan Centra. I got to aggrieve and burned though the clear coat. Tried to correct and only got worse. I think I can agree that chops1sc might have a very good point as I have no other issues with a Corvette.

[Dan@Adams]

I would agree that most Japanese cars I have worked on have been fairly easy to paint correct with soft clear coats - with the exception of the Nissan GTR, which has an extremely hard clear coat (at least the early model years...I worked on a first-year to the U.S. 2009 that even had a warning sticker under the hood 

What color is your Mazda 3? I don't think too many car washes out there would have a sealant strong enough that clay and compound would not remove (Iron Remover may not necessarily remove a sealant since it is not a strip wash and mainly targets iron content in the paint). If it is black, I would try a small area with a White Foam Pad and Polish/Finishing Polish to see if the paint is indeed soft like chops1sc mentions. It's possible that the compound is marring the finish and putting in smaller swirls while it removes the larger imperfections.

[RayS]

I have also had a Japanese car that was soft and I went with One Step and a White Pad and then followed up with Finishing Polish and a Red wax pad and it worked it out well.   As others have said, soft paint can make it look the opposite of what is actually going on.  If you have any Revive or Hand Polish, you can do a test spot with either a Orange or Blue pad and if you see a change, then you pretty much know it is a soft paint.

[Z51L9889]

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. 

 

 

[Z51L9889]

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.