For my 330i in Monaco Blue, the clear is quite hard on this car. The benefit is that it’s pretty hard to scratch the paint, but the drawback is that correcting it seems to be quite a challenge. I snagged a great deal on a Makita PO5000C and picked that up, along with Hex Logic orange, white, black pads, Meguiars Ultimate line.
I’m looking to clean up the swirls and random scratches in my paint. This past weekend I took the Makita and the orange pad, set it to forced rotation, and went to work with Ultimate compound. To my surprise, it took quite a lot of effort to get all the swirls and spider webbing out of the paint. I think it took 3 or 4 passes over about a square foot area before all the defects were removed to my satisfaction. The first picture shows what only two passes with this combo looks like. You can still see a few scratches and spiderwebs.
The second picture is where I got the paint to after 4 passes.
My question is what to do with the whole car. Will the whole thing need 4 passes with this compound? Should I step up to a more aggressive compound, or pad? What are recommendations for both? Speed up the polisher (4+ on the dial)?
Also, what's the best way to clean out these pads so they don't get gummed up?
Afterwards I'll go to ultimate polish and then Ultimate liquid wax because it really makes the blue pop.
Pic of car after doing this combo two years ago:
