Little bit of trouble on my detail: M105 + SIP

Hey guys,

I recently started correction on a 2005 Acura TL. The paint is definitely hammered, not absolutely tearing my hair out insane when I first inspected it, but a good deal of swirls/RIDS, and has never been polished before. Now, the problem is I don't have as much experience as I would like for full correction, mostly due to the reason that I don't have a PTG. Therefore, tackling down RIDS has been, up to this point, at my humbled discretion. Most corrections up to this point however, have been pretty easy for me, the hardest being one pass over with M105 with PFW on rotary 1800 rpm...followed up by SIP on orange or white LC ccs pads, followed by nano polish on grey LC pad. That process will usually get the results I'm looking for: 3-4 total passes with a combination of those 3 products and applying more or less pressure per pass to not have to go deeper.

Here's how I started this one out: with the hammered paint, I gambled by going straight to SIP w/ orange pad at 1700 rpm. Didn't really get anywhere with that step. So I brought out the M105 and PFW...1800 rpm, barely took a dent out. Went over another pass with the M105, got a little bit out. At this point, I'm working with applying more pressure on the paint, definitely getting in a good deal of buffer marks with the M105, but still not really touching the RIDS. Went over same areas with SIP hard pressure, good rpm, and that took care of a lot of the swirls but still a very good amount of RIDS remaining.

I'm looking for some advice on where to call it quits on this one. Not having a PTG is making me nervous, but I want to know how common is it to find yourself going over hard pressure with multiple multiple passes of M105 at a good amount of rpm and still not being able to grab those RIDS? They look as deep as all the other RIDS I've worked on before so this is really confusing me. I've read up on some other Acura TL details done, it doesn't seem to be noted as having a hard clearcoat...but it is taking at least 2 passes of M105 and a hard pass of SIP on orange to even start to clear up the swirls and leaving a lot of RIDS still left untouched. Up to now, I haven't been anywhere near as aggressive compared to all the other cars I've touched with the rotary. I'm wondering how aggressive can multiple passes of M105 be? And how often do you guys find yourselves needing to really utilize multiple M105/compound stages? Appreciate the help and advice...most likely I'm going to do the rest of the car conservatively anyways due to the absence of the PTG.

p.s. - 1 pass for me is a complete 2x2 section done with one product until it has broken down completely.

 

If 1 to 3 hits of 105 on wool can not correct its wetsanding time. I would be conservative as you plan and use your next $225 and get that Highline gauge. Do not worry about whether or not Acura paint is hard or not either, that makes no difference in your situation. Are the deeper scratches even visible in the sun? Have you rounded them off enough to hide them?

 

Thanks for the response!

These deeper RIDS are pretty visible in the sun, I can tell with the SIP and Nano, it's rounding them out a little bit, but I would have definitely expected to cut through them completely with the M105 stages. Upon really close inspection, they don't look like they are that deep at all...no where near to showing white, I can't feel them at all with my fingernail, it's just they're not budging with my aggressive process that I'm using...and this is really the first time I've been so aggressive. Overall, this should be a good learning experience, and I can really now fully understand some details utilizing 30+ hours on nothing but paint correction. Nano is doing an awesome job at getting the paint presentable though, so I'm not too worried about going above 75% correction.

 

is there a lot of them? is TL black? honda paint is pretty thick, around 120-120 average on my accord so its pretty safe to work on havent taken rotary to it yet but will when weather warms up. hood is pretty thick around 200 micron (might have been repainted but dont know for sure, it might be just way its painted since it takes most beating (i did saleen yesterday and hood was in 500-600 range and rest of car in 100-120 so probably car makes put more paint on hood)

when i did correction on my, 203 was more then enought but i was going for 95% correction, not 100% since it was my first detail. good luck, post pics

 

Are you certain it's OEM Acura paint? Two to three passes with M105 and a PFW pad is usually a good sign that wetsanding may be necessary. If you need to get more aggressive, a twisted wool pad would be ideal. However, you don't have a PTG so it really wouldn't be wise or reasonable to chase RIDS without one.

As for now, I would just do some reasonable correction work without having the possibility of burning through the clear. Do yourself a favor and purchase a Highline so you can assess and approach the paint appropriately instead of just doing paint correction "blindly". Hope this advice is somewhat helpful.

 

:ditto:Some good advice there. Screwing up his paint is not worth your friendship...why risk it w/o knowing how much paint you have to work with? Once you know, your next steps are pfw with Menz powerg gloss or twisted or black wool with either PG or 105...that's as aggressive as you can be. Just make sure if it's really hard clear that you are leaning on the rotary hard enough. I did a blue Camaro once and I could not believe how hard I had to push on the buffer. HERE is the job if you're interested.

 

If you are hitting it twice with 105 and its not removing the RDS, call it a day. Without a ptg, you're playing Russian Roulette. Its just not worth burning through. It'll cost more to paint that panel than it would have cost to buy your ptg.

As for thickness on the hoods Misha, I'd put money on both of those hoods having been repainted. My clients restored Camaro has ptg readings in the 5-600 range. It has around 20 coats of clear. Not something you'll get from the factory on any car. Even the 200 is high for a car that has readings in the 130 range everywhere else.

 

this is one of those things where i might tell my clients that it can be done, but it may just be one of those things where you can try to live with.

 

Appreciate all the comments and suggestions. I ended up doing the rest of the car with a 1 step compound, 1 step polish and 1 step finish polish. I was thinking that 3+ passes of compound is not a very common occurrence while paint correcting, and this was also definitely OEM acura paint. To top things off, SIP was back to working horribly in the florida weather of around 70 outside, even with the car in my garage...a lot of gunking and quite a lot of dusting...but the nano worked flawlessly. The customer was more than satisfied (even if I wasn't) so I'm not too worried about things. The PTG is next on my list of equipment to buy.

 

Cool, glad to hear you're going to get a PTG soon.

 

I have encountered and heard of this phenomena of not being able to put a dent in swirls...

Ask the customer is he/she used touchless washes and if he/she gets the package with the spray on wax.

Some of the touchless washes use a wax that has something in it that makes it impervious to buffing... To counter act this MULTIPLE cleansing steps with a very strong cleaner (not shampoo) would work... I used APC...

 

Jason...thanks for this info, man! I had never heard of this and would not have thought to go back to a wash stage.

 

No prob Buddy!

I know, sounds odd huh!!!???!!

I was lucky that I had read accounts of this on Autopia and other boards from such detailers as Rickrack and/or Rydawg (cant remember if it was one or both of them) and otheres....

Had it not been for me reading about it before I had the vehicle under my pads I wouldn't have know what in world was going on....

 

This could be the problem. The major car wash where many people take their cars around my area has a (teflon?) type "wax" coating that they spray over the entire car when it goes through the wash tunnel. I believe they call it either "double-bond" or "weatherguard". I'll look more into what the exact coating is, I'm very familiar with people buying this option when they take it through that specific wash center. Thanks for this information!