I attempted my first paint correction over the weekend on my 2006 Pacifica. We have owned it a bit over 3 years, and I'm ashamed to admit that I have never waxed it. In general, the paint is in decent shape. It does have spider and swirl marks but they are what I would call moderate at worst. Other than the original dealer prep, the car either has been washed by hand or in a touchless wash.
I washed, clayed, and dried the car with compressed air Friday night. I then went inside and got ready to work by watching both the Adam's CD and the Junkman series as well as reading a bunch of the threads.
After spending two full days on the car, I have gone over every panel at least once with SHR and FMP. I did get a noticeable reduction in swirls etc, but I am by no means swirl free. I tried several different techniques and nothing really seemed to work all that well. I spent literally the entire day on Saturday on the hood. After a full day with mixed results at best, I went ahead and did SHR/FMP on the rest of the car as best I could. Here is a partial list of what I tried on the hood:
Worked in small sections, no bigger than 2 ft x 2 ft. For example, I did the hood in six sections, each door was two sections, and so on.
For the area described above, I used a thin continuous circle of product applied about 1/2 to 1" in from the edge of the pad.
I worked the product until I had a uniform greasy looking haze and did at least two full cycles of criss-cross motion. I was using a very slow steady motion. For grins, I timed myself at 30 seconds to travel the width of the hood.
I started with SHR/orange, heavy pressure on the PC (enough to almost stall the pad and really heat up the buffer) at 5K OPM. I did two passes and maybe 1/2 the marks came out. I cranked the PC up to 6K and did two more passes with no change. I then tried FMP/orange with no change in technique with no change in the finish.
By that point, my arms were so tired that I tried the Junkman's technique of letting the action of the buffer do the work with moderate pressure. I did two passes of SHR/orange this way and noticed some difference in gloss but no difference in the number of scratches.
Since the Junkman indicated in his videos that he got better results with FMP with his technique, I tried that too. Again, I didn't notice much difference.
At this point, I had spent almost 7 hours just on the hood and corrected maybe 60-70% of the damage. I was so discouraged I called it a day. On Sunday, I decided to do the rest of the car with SHR/orange and FMP/white and take whatever improvement that got me.
At this point, the paint is clean and shiny, but I still have noticeable scratching. I did a coat of MSW on the roof for protection reasons but I left the rest of the car as is because I figure I'll go at it again after I get some advice.
I know the problem is with my technique and not the products. Nevertheless, I'm extremely frustrated. I tried both popular methods shown in the videos and repeated them exactly. I know that I applied more than enough pressure using Adam's method -- I was pushing so hard during a couple of passes on the hood that the PC was really laboring and got extremely hot. I also tried lesser amounts of pressure.
I washed the pads several times during the course of the ordeal just to make sure I got maximum effectiveness in addition to varying the amount of product I used. Nothing I tried seemed to work.
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Z51L9889
I attempted my first paint correction over the weekend on my 2006 Pacifica. We have owned it a bit over 3 years, and I'm ashamed to admit that I have never waxed it. In general, the paint is in decent shape. It does have spider and swirl marks but they are what I would call moderate at worst. Other than the original dealer prep, the car either has been washed by hand or in a touchless wash.
I washed, clayed, and dried the car with compressed air Friday night. I then went inside and got ready to work by watching both the Adam's CD and the Junkman series as well as reading a bunch of the threads.
After spending two full days on the car, I have gone over every panel at least once with SHR and FMP. I did get a noticeable reduction in swirls etc, but I am by no means swirl free. I tried several different techniques and nothing really seemed to work all that well. I spent literally the entire day on Saturday on the hood. After a full day with mixed results at best, I went ahead and did SHR/FMP on the rest of the car as best I could. Here is a partial list of what I tried on the hood:
Worked in small sections, no bigger than 2 ft x 2 ft. For example, I did the hood in six sections, each door was two sections, and so on.
For the area described above, I used a thin continuous circle of product applied about 1/2 to 1" in from the edge of the pad.
I worked the product until I had a uniform greasy looking haze and did at least two full cycles of criss-cross motion. I was using a very slow steady motion. For grins, I timed myself at 30 seconds to travel the width of the hood.
I started with SHR/orange, heavy pressure on the PC (enough to almost stall the pad and really heat up the buffer) at 5K OPM. I did two passes and maybe 1/2 the marks came out. I cranked the PC up to 6K and did two more passes with no change. I then tried FMP/orange with no change in technique with no change in the finish.
By that point, my arms were so tired that I tried the Junkman's technique of letting the action of the buffer do the work with moderate pressure. I did two passes of SHR/orange this way and noticed some difference in gloss but no difference in the number of scratches.
Since the Junkman indicated in his videos that he got better results with FMP with his technique, I tried that too. Again, I didn't notice much difference.
At this point, I had spent almost 7 hours just on the hood and corrected maybe 60-70% of the damage. I was so discouraged I called it a day. On Sunday, I decided to do the rest of the car with SHR/orange and FMP/white and take whatever improvement that got me.
At this point, the paint is clean and shiny, but I still have noticeable scratching. I did a coat of MSW on the roof for protection reasons but I left the rest of the car as is because I figure I'll go at it again after I get some advice.
I know the problem is with my technique and not the products. Nevertheless, I'm extremely frustrated. I tried both popular methods shown in the videos and repeated them exactly. I know that I applied more than enough pressure using Adam's method -- I was pushing so hard during a couple of passes on the hood that the PC was really laboring and got extremely hot. I also tried lesser amounts of pressure.
I washed the pads several times during the course of the ordeal just to make sure I got maximum effectiveness in addition to varying the amount of product I used. Nothing I tried seemed to work.
I'm out of ideas. Please help ......
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