hey guys,

over this past weekend i detailed a jet black (non-metallic) 997 C4S. i've known the guy for a few months and do a lot of business with him (guy changes cars every 2 months it seems). right off the bat, i could not believe the condition this car was in. he does alot of driving so in the past 5 weeks he's put 3,000 miles on his car. the highway by his house is under construction too.

the car's condition: for a car having 3k miles on it, the front of this hood was so chipped up and there were swirl marks all over. i got most out, but not all. he's only been through the brush car wash once.

now, he's pretty down about the swirl marks not coming out completely. so i'm doing my duty to find out:

1. what i did wrong
2. what should i do to remedy this
3. what should i use

here's the low down of how i started. *keep in mind, i wasn't where i normally do my details so i didn't have ALL my tools/products available.*

normal wash with meg's gold class car wash
clay bar with griott's speed shine and clay bar
pc with orange pad klasse aio speed 5
pc with white pad *again* klasse aio speed 5.5 *no sg used b/c i didn't not have time for it to cure
s100 wax on top

when i would do this to my old e36 m3 (as well as other cars), it (they) would come out great! i figured that with 3k miles too it wouldn't be that bad.

is there something wrong with me or my technique?

thanks guys... i'm a little stumped on this one.

-mike

Orange pad and AIO are not enough to remove swirls, especially on black. I'm surprised that combo has removed swirls on other cars you've detailed. I've found AIO good enough for removing minor hazing, but that's about it.

Step up to an orange padand menzerna IP, and if that still does not help then move up once more to IP and a yellow pad.

Yeah...you'll need an abrasive polish to get rid of the marks

Yeah...you'll need an abrasive polish to get rid of the marks

i was under the impression that aio could handle stuff like that (after all, i didn't have all my products and the car was only a few weeks old). i really didn't want to bring something like ssr 2.5 or anything like that since it was so new. i would have though the aio could have handled the job.

-mike

i was under the impression that aio could handle stuff like that (after all, i didn't have all my products and the car was only a few weeks old). i really didn't want to bring something like ssr 2.5 or anything like that since it was so new. i would have though the aio could have handled the job.

-mike
Yeah it would have suprised me too...Around here I just plan on people destroying their cars

AIO's cutting ability is nonexistant. And orange pads are for very light surface imperfections. I wouldnt have expected that to get any of the swirls out; SSR 2.5 might be a little extreme depending on the swirls but it wont hurt anything. Keep in mind that even if there arent very many swirls, they can still be deep. I would take my time with something less abrasive like FI2 and a yellow cutting pad. Good luck!