My ride is about a year old. This morning I polished a few areas that had some minor swirl/towel marks. Used Mothers' polish - non abrasive forumla - with a 6" random orbital polisher. Then waxed the entire car with my 10" random orbital buffer. Looks great. Can still faintly see the swirl marks, but I didn't want to be too aggressive.

Question - do you run the risk of overpolishing the car? How many times can you reasonably polish the clearcount before you have to worry about wearing it down to the color coat?

My main concern is that I had to have the hood, roof and trunk of the car polished by the body guy about 4 months ago becuase a flock of birds did their business on it and etched it. Luckily I had fresh wax on the car and washed it that night, so he was able to polish it out. But, I assume he was pretty aggressive and used a rotorty polisher with aggressive compound.

Now, I'm nervous that with the car only being one year old I'm "running out of clearcoat" Should I be concerned?

 

Nothing to be worried about. You can probably use aggressive compounds on your paintwork around 20 times by a professional. If one fine day your polishing pad has your car's color on it then you better stop! It means that it has reached the end of the clear coat. Most of the pros would use a buffer for the top three layers i.e. bonnet, roof and boot as they are the ones that are exposed to the sun, rain, dust, bird poo etc. If possible, always use a non abrasive compound...unless they can't get rid of some water marks or scratches then use an abrasive one.

 

I wouldn't worry about burning through the clearcoat, especially with an orbital. I had to have some wet-sanding done on an '04 5-series to remove some blemishes without any problems. The body guy works on BMW's and was commenting on the thickness of the BMW clearcoat system.

Menzerna makes some great polishing products I've used for removing some pretty severe scratches with a Griot's Porter Cable orbital...very effective without the risk of burning through.

 

I used liquid glass on a previous car at least once a week for a VERY long time. That car was BEYOND smooth and yes I did see some hint of the car color on the pad I was using. Visually I didnt see how it affected the car in a negative way. I will say this, there was not a single swirl mark on that car at all and it was dark dark green. You could use a crappy towel to dry that thing bare dry and you still wouldnt see a swirl mark. Damn that liquid glass is good.

 

yo I tried that when you told me to back in the day. im sorry but its not that great its a polish sealant combo which aren't as effective for reoving swirl marks due to the need of more abbrasivness of a polish on the paint. LG its more like a was then it is a polish.. but hey if it worked for your the more power to u