Good product for fine scratches?

[Nicolai]

What would be a good product for removing fine scratches? I have fine scratches on all my cars and would like to polish them out but I am afraid of using any power buffer so I would like to find something I can do by hand. My cars are all blue, one is lapis blue with clear coat (dark blue matalic) one is Laguna Seca Blue no clear coat (non-metalic bright blue) and one is Baltic blue with clear coat (medium blue metalic) Any recommondations?

Thanks,
Nicolai

 

[JHZR2]

there are products that fill the fine scratches to help hide them. You would use these prior to a wax or sealant.

Often they are polishes with no abrasives.

 

[Audi Junkie]

Try just a cleaner wax. Meg's cleaner carnuba wax or maybe the mother's, which is very stiff and hard to apply. If that does not do enough, next time hit it with meg's paint cleaner, the mildest one I know of, and then the wax again. Use a bunch of water with it and rub in by hand or a orbital buffer helps.

 

[GMBoy]

You will get the best results with a random orbit. buffer. But since you specify hand use - this is VERY good stuff that I used before moving up to the buffer and his machine polishes.

http://www.griotsgarage.com/product/car+...+hand+polish.do


Otherwise, if you're looking for over the counter, the meguire's heavy duty car cleaner, like Audi Junkie said, is a very good product. I still use it here and there.

 

[RTexasF]

Trying to remove marring by hand is a difficult and almost impossible task. Since you are opposed to using power equipment that leaves you two choices:

Pay a pro to do the machine work or use a product that fills and hides the imperfections. Look into Poorboy's Black Hole for dark colors and White Diamond for light colors.

A good carnauba wax (NOT a cleaner wax) can be applied atop either one for protection and bling. Collinite insulator wax will last as long or longer than many expensive sealants and is reasonable in price.

 

[Mike-in-Orange]

Meguiar's has three new products out for 2009, all of which make use of very specialized abrasives technology trickled down from their high end professional products. These products are just now arriving on store shelves and should be available at most larger auto parts stores as well as Wal-Mart and Target.

In order of aggressiveness, from least to most:

SwirlX
ScratchX 2.0
Ultimate Compound

All three are highly effective when used by hand, but still require some elbow grease. Those of you familiar with ScratchX will recognize the name only - the new 2.0 version is a totally different animal. The abrasives used are micro fine, extremely hard, and incredibly uniform in size and shape. This gives them the ability to not only cut relatively quickly but also impart a very high degree of clarity to the finish.

It is recommended to use a soft foam wax applicator pad and avoid terry cloth. Terry cloth has some bite and since any of these products need to be applied with some elbow grease terry cloth has a high potential for marring the surface. As the paint color gets darker this becomes more and more critical.






Disclaimer: yes, I work for Meguiar's

 

[RTexasF]

Thanks for the disclaimer. It sounded like a commercial and then I read the last line..... sure enough it was. They do make some good products but you know d a m n good and well this gent will not get the results desired without power equipment regardless of the product(s) used. That is assuming he wants to remove and not cover the paint marring as I suggested for a cheap fix. The company you work for also has some "cover up" products that do a decent job. Why not suggest some of those? Nothing wrong with covering up if you don't have the knowledge or equipment to remove the problem completely.

 

[sunfire]

Originally Posted By: Nicolai
What would be a good product for removing fine scratches? I have fine scratches on all my cars and would like to polish them out but I am afraid of using any power buffer so I would like to find something I can do by hand. My cars are all blue, one is lapis blue with clear coat (dark blue matalic) one is Laguna Seca Blue no clear coat (non-metalic bright blue) and one is Baltic blue with clear coat (medium blue metalic) Any recommondations?


Fine scratches like the one HERE?

IMO, no amount of polish is going to "cover" scratches like that. You need a good compound that cuts to "remove" it.

 

[Mike-in-Orange]

Originally Posted By: RTexasF
Thanks for the disclaimer. It sounded like a commercial and then I read the last line..... sure enough it was. They do make some good products but you know d a m n good and well this gent will not get the results desired without power equipment regardless of the product(s) used. That is assuming he wants to remove and not cover the paint marring as I suggested for a cheap fix. The company you work for also has some "cover up" products that do a decent job. Why not suggest some of those? Nothing wrong with covering up if you don't have the knowledge or equipment to remove the problem completely.


I recommended the new products because they really different from anything else on the consumer market today. I'm not a fan of just covering things up, and not everyone wants to invest in a buffer - even a D/A - and learn how to use one. There is no doubt that removing swirls and fine scratches by hand is a lot of work, but it can be done. And it certainly doesn't have to be done in one session either. Plus, simply covering/filling swirls is a very short term solution at best.

Take a look at http://meguiarsonline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=29753 to see what Ultimate Compound can do when applied by hand. I think you'll be shocked.

 

[RTexasF]

I am in agreement with you. I only wanted to offer an alternative to possibly days of hard work by hand. Meguiar's has some wonderful products and no doubt the new ones you recommended work well.

Even removing marring is a short term solution if you think about it.....it has to be done often due to many variables in poor washing techniques, etc.

 

[1 FMF]

for clearcoat I use and would recommend poorboy's SSR2 and SSR2.5 polishes. I've used these by hand before i purchased my porter cable buffer, and I think it is an exaggeration to say it's a lot of hard work to do it by hand or will take days.
Get a hand applicator like this
http://www.autopia-carcare.com/vk-101.html
If you don't use something similar, at the very least use a foam applicator. I've done my camaro a few times by hand which is black and have had cats on the hood and rear spoiler and got results just as good as now when i use my buffer. When you use the SSR2.5 you will feel it scratching when you polish, it has a lot of abrasive in it which is good, it gets results fast. The SSR2 is a step less and will take longer to remove scratches by hand but still good. I recommend getting both and start with SSR2 on the applicator, if it doesn't get results fast enough then use SSR2.5. With the SSR2.5 it may not leave enough of a mirror like shine so then wash your applicator and use SSR2 to get out any haze left. Don't buy the SSR1, it is too fine a polish and will waste your time to use it by hand.
After the polishing, if you have some problems left then maybe give meguiar's scratchX a try, I've used that and it fills and hides pretty well.