Top 5 Paint Polishing Mistakes to Avoid! ATA 203

good? What we are trying to prove is that you don't need a wide range of compounds, polishes, pads and machines. They just use a good system that works well and you can do a lot with it. The point is that if I can do this with a lotion, something wasn't designed to do this and you still get that kind of finish with a liquid, a pad, and a machine. Imagine when you learn to master a little club system with the golf club that you have learned, practice it, master that particular thing that you have, you might find some little adjustments here. and there as you go, but don't throw away the whole bag of golf clubs or whatever because you missed a shot, does that make sense?

I'm happy, I'm smiling inside, it's okay, so let's move on, we have number three. Dirty

paint

, we're talking about something that was applied to the vehicle or

paint

to protect it, a wax, a polymer, a sealant, a detailing spray and it's left behind an invisible barrier of protection, but it can also affect the cutting speed. It can cover your abrasive grain, reduce your cutting speed, it can stain your pads, and affect performance because you're not actually touching the paint you're putting on the surface of whatever it is. polymer, the coating, the hit, whatever it is, you know, you go through the rain, if you go too fast, you start hydroplaning, this is essentially floating inside, being suspended by that invisible layer or wrapping around your strands and your microfiber or against the face of the foam, so it not only affects the

polishing

fluid but mainly the pads, so when people would call you number three, you know we are doing this in the top five, so number three It would be dirty paint.

What would they say? Give me an example like Hi Kevin, this is going to be shocking, but Hi Kevin, you know I didn't mean to bother you so late, but I'm working on the hardest paint I've ever worked on, it won't cut. I even had a situation where a guy has been doing this for over 20 years, he obviously knew what he was doing and says he's never come across this before. I hit it with 3000 grit, I hit it with wool and a heavy cutting compound, I said, send me. Some photos and I look at them again, it was on the phone and sure enough, I mean he sent the photos of where he had already sanded and polished and nothing happened, so I said I think I know what's going on, in a nutshell, in the range. 20 to 25 minutes of trying different things, it was a top of the line car wash coat, tunnel wash and wash, spray application for protection, oh in the end the little things that come up guys, protection that we all think of. not very good, this veteran professional of over 20 years in

polishing

and body shop work and all that thinks he was working on the hardest pain he's ever worked on when in reality he wasn't even touching the surface of the paint he used all the mist and wipes and he used wax and grease removers petroleum based products water based products detergents alcohol so he was hitting it with everything, with everything, but there's no stay time, it's not like you can just spray it on there and magically it disconnects it well because a lot of the questions I get is hey if I hit it with isopropyl alcohol or put wax and grease remover on it it's going to come off and it's like you know each one varies in the case of isopropyl. alcohol ipas or cleaning solutions that are designed to do that, they're mostly water and we're using, we're trying to remove the hydrophobic protective layer, so sometimes it just comes off of you, obviously, you spray it and it's hitting . and you're cleaning it up like that's good, no, it just sat there for moments and had no dwell time at all, didn't eat it, didn't chew anything, didn't go off, didn't go off.

You have to integrate it there, right? They didn't instill it in that protective layer or remove it, so here's our example. We have number three. What have we done? What have you done here? What we have done is what we are going to do. It's a similar type of test, but in this case it's raw or bare paint, so we're going to go ahead and we're 100% sure that when you put the polish in here, you're actually touching the paint correctly, but in this this case, we're going to use a sanding disc, okay, we're going to sand this to show you how fast it will sand when the paint is bare and then we're going to replicate what we did down here, down here.

I actually put some on, I applied a polymer sealer and a spray and a detail spray okay and we're going to sand it again and we'll see the difference between this we'll see the difference between bare paint and yeah if it cuts constantly if it's deep . If it looks the same or if it's just floating, we'll be able to tell just by looking at it, okay, let's do it, you can see it, look at that immediately, sharp and consistent, see a little bit of dust, Larry, yeah, that's normal and that's where you start to have pigtails or pilling if you don't clean it right there, but mainly you want to show that cutting speed, okay, one last cleaning, okay, now we have a new pad or sister disc, yes, a brand new disc, it is quite consistent. there and now the same thing is just going to work in the area wow look at that yeah you see it jumping it's just skimming and now we probably have some of that in our look at this yeah inconsistent look how quickly it turned white because it is playing. the clear coat and the clear coat polish this one is having trouble getting through and look at the ponytail look at that wow see how it's peeling off now it's starting to cut look it's finally starting to go so now what's happening is it's just we cut off that top layer and started stripping the paint and cleaning, look at all that ponytail, wow, okay, this one went right away as soon as you did it, so what is this?

This is it, that is the painting, that is the painting that is coming. yeah, and we have less even though you did basically the same amount because you were fighting the polymers on top of it, so describe what it really is now that you've cleaned it up, what's really going on here, you can see it was a little bit clear in the medium, but I tend to lean a little towards the edges to get a good cut, but look at the difference here, it's much more prominent where the shiny areas weren't sanded to the same degree and look how evenly flat it is. but look here, it's just bouncing and jumping and jumping and writing on the polymers and writing on the built up paint residue, so it's as easy as we can show you on film that the effects are fine, so mistake number two its alot.

The amount people do when polishing their paint, like the ones we have here, are unreasonable expectations. Give me a little example here. Well, one of the most common ones I get calls for is someone saying Hi Kevin, I have a new car and my friend says he has it too. a lot of orange peel texture so I need to sand it, so what do I need to be able to sand my paint smooth? And while we're at it, he also said that I can't get the same results with a random orbital that I need to have. a rotary, what do you think of that?

Yeah, and I was like, "Wow, there's a lot going on with brakes." Yes, those are two things you shouldn't delve into right away as a beginner, since your only car doesn't need to make it that slow. down, don't let anyone convince you that what you have isn't good enough, right, don't let them tell you it's mediocre, there are actually some benefits to having a certain texture that we talked about before, a lot of the protections ultraviolet on that. The place where you put a box and slide it through the car, the top gets scratched, it's easier to get it out right, so change your thinking, slow down, don't let someone convince you that you need to do something to your car you don't do.

I don't necessarily have to talk to guys who have been devastated because they cut, well, they don't know what exactly they're doing, they don't understand how much paint they're removing, so they're rotary polishing and they're sanding and they're using IPA and they're using wax and grease mirrors. to check it and they're doing all these things but every time they're doing multiple passes and changing pads and fluids and cutting paint it's getting thinner and thinner and thinner and more sensitive and spongy feeling and it's just frustrating and eventually An accident happens and they cut the fender off the hood of the door and now we're talking about a lot of money so the first thing to

avoid

when you're polishing your paint, we've heard it a million times and it flows into all the other five four three two and now this, of course, is the waste control, so before we answer that just Define well what a waste is, it's easier to show you and to do it we will use wood and sanding, so I'm going to turn on this sanding machine this wood and as the wood is removed you can see the dust.

So here we go, it's wood waste, can you see? Yeah, okay, that's basically what's happening with paint, except in the woodworking industry, to control the debris, they vacuum it up and keep the sanding disc clean. Look how, look how dirty. that record is basically an imitation, let's say this pad here's a dirty, very dirty pad, uh, you know, now we're going to turn on the vacuum cleaner, do the same thing and I'll take my hand, clean it and look at the record. nothing on my fingers and nothing on the puck so dream come true is basically what you're saying hey if we could create a paint polisher that had a vacuum cleaner or something that would be cool that would be cool but unfortunately we don't have that technology right now, so our residue settles into the polishing fluid and into the pads, so when we start polishing everything is as good as it will be, the compound is refined, it's a perfect size and shape, the Pads are soft, contourable and fluffy. and they don't mess up the surface but as you start buffing or buffing you get paint you take off the paint and the paint residue and it settles into the fluids and into the pads and this is actually a pad that I confiscated from someone I was polishing with this, I'm not sure why we're not scrubbing or buffering or my cutting speed slowed down considerably.

Looking at that sanding disc, you can imagine how all that wood covers up the abrasive grains and stops the ability. to cut well, so maybe I said another way to focus on working clean, yeah, we don't have the vacuums, okay, we're living with it right now, working clean is to use a microfiber towel to clean the pad, use air compressed to use, you know. Fill in your surroundings that we talked about earlier, don't work on such large areas or use more fluid if you are doing a large area, so control the waste as best you can by keeping the percentage of waste compared to your polishing fluid very low, so I would say the most impactful element of something to

avoid

moving forward when you see that something is not, you know, not quite right, would be waste control, I think after this whole episode, if you, yeah, if you take one thing away, this is the number one thing you should always consider absolutely in the next episode we're going to talk about paint buffing machines and everything you need to know, that's Kevin, it's Larry, as always, thank you very much. to watch and stay tuned for more from you