[fordomatic]

This will be long, but shows how different paint reacts very differently to different products and pads.

Had an interesting one yesterday. I was doing a correction on my venom red AU. The car overall is very straight for a 20 year old car.

So I did a full decontamination. Wash, then I used Bowden’s 3 way as I was out of Iron X and I used the 3 way as lube for clay as well, very impressed with 3 Way. The reaction was minimal and the paint was already pretty clean, just very swirled from years of washing.

Plan was to do a single stage correction as the paint was only swirled with no significant scratches and I only had the day to do it. I was aiming for an 80% defect removal result.

So I had Scholl S20 + and The Last Cut, along with my 12” RO and 12” rotary and 3” rotary mini with a massive selection of pads. Using the RO I first tried with The Last Cut on a yellow pad. It removed 95% of defects but left hazing so that combo was out as I was only doing a single pass. Next was Scholl S20 + with a yellow pad. Using an inspection light it looked great and about of 90% defects gone.

So I go ahead and do the bonnet, spending extra time finessing as they always take the longest and always have the most defects. I used the Rotary 3” on the areas the RO 12” couldn’t get to. I do a thorough inspection and notice that there are micro marks and hazing. I do a test and realise it’s the microfibre marking the paint, damn this paint is soft, so I change to super plush microfibre, do another pass and all looks good, so I thought. So I do the roof and do another inspection and now see hazing and micro swirls, especially where the rotary has been used.

I then spend the next hour working out that a Scholl blue pad, with Scholl S20 +, on a speed of 4 using the plush microfibre worked perfect. Everything goes smoothly and the car looks great but i wasted about 4 hours finding the combo that works, I ended up working into the night to get it done, 13 hours all up.

So looking back I learnt heaps. First, the least aggressive combo ended up getting the best results. The other combos all cut almost exactly the same but didn’t finish down nearly as well. It’s also the first time I’ve had microfibre mark paint, this was a learning curve as I’d read about it a few times on soft paint. I usually do a two step correction, using something like The Last Cut or Scholl S3 and then following that up with a finishing pass. It showed me how awesome S20 is as a one step. 99% of people will look at this car and not notice that I saved about 10 hours by doing a one step correction with about 80-90% of defects gone.

This is the first car I’ve ever corrected that has had soft paint, I’ll have to be really careful in the future with my washing regime as it’ll be super easy to introduce imperfections.

No pictures sorry as I only had the day and just needed to get it done.