Menzerna for Concours...?? for regular detail

I was using my SSR line up for a year or so before i discovered Menzerna.
I used the Menzerna for about 4 months then got a Metabo and those to make life great

...so if im not detailing these Benz, BMW, etc that pay top dollar...what should i use for say...a Toyota Sienna van (just did my aunts car for free, with sip, 106 with metabo for practice) or even the typical daily driver that doesnt really understand the 'detailing' aspect.

I dont have a problem using sip or 106 n spending the time on anycar as long as their willing to pay...but what about a 'secondary option' ...i was thinkin about Optimum...or may even gettin a couple bottles of INTENSIVE POLISH rather than using my SIP...

what products do you guys recommend, i'm looking for polishes similar or in place of SIP/10/85rd on those non-Concours detail...

also, how do the different polishes 'finish' compared to these Menzerna products..ive ben spoiled by their results, its hard to take anything less

-thanks!

 

I use menz al the time for the best shine i can get on the car but if u wanted less expensive polishes there is always Meguairs

 

Personally, if you find you can get the results with the Menzerna ceramiclear polishes, I would be keen to stick with them and further hone my technique and finishing with them... That said, I am not 100% sure of the prices and sizes available outside of the UK, but here they aren't notably more expensive than 3M or Meguiars oz/£.

However, if you fancy using a slightly cheaper polish, I would strongly recommend looking at Meguiars #80-series (#80, #83 in place of Final Finish and SIP). They are a little cheaper, however I would certainly not say that they are inferior in anyway when it comes to finishing - indeed, I would personally say that you can get an equivalent quality finish from these polishes.

What is different is the way the polishes work - #83 for example has a slow breaking down and slow cutting abrasive so it takes longer to remove marks, and has a longer work time to fully break it down - you need more passes per set. As the abrasive cuts longer and slower than for example Menzerna, in raw time it takes longer to remove marks, but in terms of number of sets required or correction capable they are equivalent. As the abrasives are cutting for longer, the time required to work the polish is also longer - if not fully worked, they will not deliver the quality of finish they are capable of and risk hologramming...

An example to show #83 at work on a Jaguar S-type, just to show how capable these polishes are: Here's the boot lid before:



Now, starting by dividing the boot into thirds (about an 18" sqaure area at a time), the polish was spread at 600rpm with medium pressure to ensure an even spread. The speed was stepped up to 1200rpm and the pressure lightened for two quite fast passes to start the polish off. Then up to 1800rpm for many passes (I'd say circa 20) until the residue nearly vanishes. The polish has a steady cut and keeps cutting until this stage of vanishing residue so its important to keep polishing to this stage to avoid holograms. Two finishing passes with little pressure at 1200rpm were made to refine the finish and remove any hint of hologramming. The #83 in the middle of the set, showing a residue even across the panel:



At the end of the set, the residue has almost vanished completely:



And this generated the following result under the Sun Gun, swirls and RDS gone and a sharp finish allowing the flake to ping through:



With the sun out, the excellent gloss left by the polishing stage is evident, and with the flake the paint is alive:



And, under full sunlight, we can see the finsih is hologram free and sharp - just how it should be after machining...



On to one of the deeper scratches:



After assessing the paint thickness this was given two hits of Meguiars #83 to achieve good minimisation of the mark. The results of two hits:



And for fun, another before shot this time on the passenger side rear door:



And the afters on this door:







And finally, some pictures of the car just after the polishing stage - the paint now fully prepared and ready for an LSP and left with an excellent clarity and gloss from the #83 - no glazes or LSP here, just the machine finish which at the end of the day is the finish you are going to walk away with regardless of how much you invest in a wax or sealent...





At the end of the day - machine polishing is all about technique and learning to use the polish rather than the polish product itself - results equivalent to those above can be achieved using Menzerna, 3M, Poorboys... the key is learning how to use them.

 

Dave KG !

excellent post, i will definetly consider those polishes, thanks for the excellent write up...great work by the way!

 

I'm thinking that you really don't use all that much polish in the first place. After priming the pad, you're usually just using some pea sized dots going forard. In the end, the associated product cost I think would be minimal with just using Menzerna. I use Menzerna on everything from the daily driver beaters to the higher end stuff. Hard enough trying to figure out which Menzerna polish to use much less which polish brand to use.

 

dave great to see you here.

whip....I agree stick with the menzerna you have it already get use to the metabo and build your skills ...

 

I love Menzerna but I also use (and really like too) Presta UCCL. They also make UCC which has a bit more bite. they are best used with wool.

 

ya, you guys are rite, after playign with the metabo i must also add that i seem to use less product...probably due to the fact that im doing 1 or 2 passes on a typical car where as i mite load up a good amount in the past with my PC

....well, im in need for some refils, ...what to do...what to do

ill definetly consider the meguiers stuff...BMW uses that stuff and ima see if i can get my buddy to get a bottle full from their detailing port for trial.

thanks again for the replies!

 

WOW! very nice! Love that last shot!

 

When you really think about it, you use so little polish when doing a vehicle that it's not worth it for me to buy another "cheaper" polish that'll just give me headaches.

I know how Menzerna works and I'm sticking with it, expensive or cheap detail...

 

:nod: I agree to your statement P1et, after all every time you detail th eintention is to blow the customer away and to achive perfection...or at least as close as possible...well at least those are my goals everytime I detail a vehicle..but that's just me eace:

 

indeed!...you all make great points...

soo, since menzerna seems to be the answer, what other polishes out there would you say are in its 'class' - i see that peopel are using these scholl products as well as the ultra fina se stuff...never tried em myself, but id be interested in them!

 

I've used Scholl Products they work quite well but I'd say they are about the same as Menzerna, they never acted up on me but I've been told they are temperature/climate depandent just like Menzerna.

I'd go with 3M for a back up, it really does work well and best part it's not tempermental...well at least it's never acted up for me :shrug:

For me I've got Menzerna and 3M as my back up, so far Menzerna has never let me down so I hardly use my 3M products but the times I've used 3M they performed very nice, just my opinion though.

 

speaking of temermental-ism and acting up :

i remember reading something about the menzerna products and heat/sun...whats that all about...ive never had an issue YET, seeing that i got into these polishes in october/november, but we all know the so-cal heat is here, and in a few more weeks itll be in the 80/90's regularly ...

what are the symptoms/signs of when the polishes act up, what do you do in the event of....

thanks again nica!:mounty:

 

Depending if you want to dabble into the wool world. I like the edge green wool and presta 1500 polish very much.

You should be able to mail order the presta 1500 for under $55 a gallon, yes I said gallon. The edge wool double sided pads are under $20 each.

The edge green wool has about the same cut as the orange foam. So most paints with moderate defects can be cleaned up very nice with this combo. Plus wool runs cooler and is easier to control then foam is.

Follow with 106ff or 3m ultrafina/doam finishing pad and you are done.

For paints with extreme defects, I use the new megs 105 polish and a yellow edge wool pad. What is so nice about M105 is you can follow it with a finishing polish (UF or 106ff)

In the past I have used PG, 3M ECC, ect. All of those needed a middle step with the Presta 1500 and the green wool pad before Uf or 106. The M105 does not.

 

:yikes:

ahh so the wool is being exposed to me now!! as ive just aquired the metabo, i must say im starting to feel a lil more comofrtable, i also have a fine learning curve with the menzerna polishes since ive used that multipe times as well...

now for wool, if i were to invest and play with that...how do you begin to attack a car with wool, what are the stipulations and precautins one should take when using this...ya jus opened up another can of worms!:yikes:

 

One day I woke up and looked at my 6 shelves of products and went :shead: How did this happen.

I realized I needed to rightsize my aresnal and reduce from 6 of everything to 2.. As has been said, polish is not something I "upsell" on.

 

The green edge wool is very user friendly as is the Presta 1500 polish. As I noted above the paint does not get that hot at all and its easier to control.

On 80-90% of the cars out there, I can use a green wool pad and P1500 polish to start. There are a few softer clears on black porsches that might not need this cut if the defects on the paint are not that bad. Like this 08 black porsche I polished. On that one I used a blue wool which has a very low amount of cut.

The only difference is using the dual sided edge wool is you need the edge adapter for your rotary. The edge system does not use velcro. Your pad is perfectally centered. I have used the edge wool and system on over 70 cars in the last 14 months and never had an issue.

This is what it looks like in action, don't mind the ugly mug on this guy. He is just some no name detailer who does a bunch of Ferrari's in South FL. :applause2: :giggle:

 

Well to be honest Neil, Menzerna has acted up for me once or twice and the symptoms I experianced were the polish not breaking up properly, guming up on the foam pad and you get these little balls of polish well that's what I experianced. As to what I did, well see I've noticed (again just me) that Menzerna seems to like heat so what I did is I just kept on using the polish. It tends to cause the pad to skip, hope and well makes it a bit hard to control but what I did was just slow on the passes and let it heat up just a little..once it heats up it goes back to normal... again that's just what I epxerianced with it..I know a few other detailers in the UK have experianced this and much worse, so worse that they can't use the polish for the detail and need to use an alternative.

Well I hope this helps, not sure if I'm explaining it properly but that's just what I experianced...i'm sure there are others here that have experianced teh same thing if not worse.

Oh keep in mind though that when Menzerna acted up for me it was in the middle of winter and in a bay that had a heater but it wasen't that hot. In my garage I have a small heater, enough to heat the garage to a reasonable working ambient temperature but what I do is I put the Menzerna bottle right in front of the yeater to keep the Menzerna nice and worm. Clark from Polished Bliss gave me this tip and it workes great :thumb:

Oh as far as wool goes, wool pads are wicked absolutely love using them :wicked: they have a wicked cut, well depending on the wool pad you end up using and they completely flaten the paint..but I've still yet to master finishing off LSP with a wool pad, so I only use wool pads to cut and then give it one or two other passes with a foam pad. As to which wool pads are good, not good..ect...ect...I've used quite a few of them. Edge, 3M, Menzerna and even LC um...I think....out of all the ones I've tried I personaly like the Menzerna wool pad, the size is 6inches, after that I would have to say 3M makes some wicked wool pads..not cheap but you get what you pay for...but that's just my opinion.

 

Regarding the issues with Menzerna working sometimes...

There are two main issues which I have experienced with Menzerna polishes on the rotary polisher, one is easy to fix and the other less so...

First of all - problems with the cold. Menzerna uses a waxed based lubricant, and in cold temperatures this can clot up which stops the polish from spreading evenly... Instead is spreads in patches. When this happens. make more passes at a slower speed to get the polish up to temperature and as the heat builds the polish will spread more evenly and once evenly spread, up the speed and work as normal. Keeping the polish warm in the garage will help, but if the panel is very cold and ambient temperatures are low, then you may still be faced with this problem.

The other issue is a harder one to know why it happens... the symptoms are the rotary hopping and sticking to the paint. It feels as if the pad is sticking, and this generates a lot of heat very quickly. This in turn dries the polish out and further magnifies the sticking and the heat just climbs. The polish dries and flashes white on the paint, the pad starts the squeal (dry buff) and you have no choice but to stop. This seems to happen in warm and humid conditions, and also seems to happen more often on softer paint types. What I think is happening is that on soft paints, the pad is caused to stick by the cutting abrasives and this increases the heat and generates the problem above. Certain conditions dont seem to help. No scientific explanation of what is going on alas. Solving it can either be done in my experience by adding an oily paintwork cleanser to up the lubricants in the polish (eg Meguiars Deep Crystal Paint Cleaner), or by switching to a different polish such as the Meguiars #80-series which have been consistently reliable for me.

We should remember that the Menzerna polishes were designed to be used in controlled conditions on specific paint types, and taking them far from these control conditions can cause issues... Its worth it though because in the majority of cases where Menzerna works faultlessly, it is a superb product to use.