Bit bored so tried a bit of paint correction on poor paint..
Discussion
Ive got a 2009 Focus which has never been looked after paint wise and had a tough life (ive owned for about 7 months) so is in a pretty dire state, a lot of the paint is too damaged to do anything with only a respray will sort it but as the cars for bashing about im not really that fussed.
Anyways ive done a quick experiment this evening on the paint, the front and rear doors fortunately are both original paint so ideal to do a back to front so to speak comparison.
As a quick note non of the products used were purchased for this specific application, the paint work on the car is too far gone for the products ive tried, as an example I initially set out to use two paint correction products (from the range 3 products are available I had no's 1 and 2 where 3 is the strongest of them) I also only intended to use one type of polishing pad (from the range of these pads the orange pad is the 2nd strongest for correction) which again wasn't ideal for how badly damaged this paint is.
If anyone is interested the stage 1 product is rated at removing down to 1700grit sanding scratches and the stage 2 is for down to 1200grit sanding scratches.
Firstly the doors where washed with a strong citrus based wash, then a clay bar was used to prepare the paint work and re-washed again and dried.
To give an idea of the paint before, heres the rear door:
and then the front door:
Prepped the front and rear doors with 3M masking tape to give a good before and after example.
Applying the product in an X shape on the pad, then spread it out on the paint itself before machining in:
Using the stage 1 (with the least correction ability and the orange cutting pad the results were actually very disappointing, it appeared worse than before started, to the right of the blue tape:
Using the stage 2 on the rear door with the same pad yielded better results with a visible improvement, to the left of the blue tape:
I then went back to the front door using a cutting polish from a different range which supposedly had less ability to correct than the stage 1 on the front door (this ones only rated at 2000-2500grit sanding scratches), using the same pad it actually corrected it better than the first one I used, which I wasn't expecting to the left of the blue tape:
I removed the tape on the car to see the sections, the car now looking rather odd, starting at the left is the polish with the least ability to correct, then the next is the 2nd strongest of the two, then the strongest and finally at the furthest right untouched paint, all using the same strength pad (all on different brand new pads to keep it as accurate as possible)
Close up of the front panel, weakest on the left and slightly stronger on the right however the results are rather backwards not what id expected or hoped for:
Rear door now with the strongest of the 3 polishes on the left and the right untouched:
Now before going over the whole thing with the strongest of the polishes I was determined to have another go with the polish that wasn't giving any results, so I switched the type of polishing pad. This was now changed to a softer pad again with less correction abilities, the results where surprising, to the right of the blue tape:
Id still say it wasn't quite as good as the weaker polish with the stronger pad but it is curious that the softer pad actually corrected the paint better when in theory it shouldn't.
Now trying to get finished off pictures in the underground car park were not easy (I will take some better ones the next time the car is washed in daylight)
With the before shot here same panel:
Relatively clear results that can be seen. Now as a second experiment which will take some time to see the results I treated the rear door with a product that claims to never have to polish the car again, im not going to name it to save any arguments and finished that off with a 3M sprayable quick wax to give it a bit of extra protection. The front door I picked out the cheapest sealant and the cheapest softest wax I had in my collection, which were Autoglyms extra gloss protection and then finished off with Smartwax liquid wax. Be curious to see which lasts the longest. Next time I wash the car I will check the front to back to see which is lasting the longest. Detailers like to use the word hydrophobic these days but basically see which of the products retains the best ability for the water to bead over time.
Apologies its such a long post!!
Anyways ive done a quick experiment this evening on the paint, the front and rear doors fortunately are both original paint so ideal to do a back to front so to speak comparison.
As a quick note non of the products used were purchased for this specific application, the paint work on the car is too far gone for the products ive tried, as an example I initially set out to use two paint correction products (from the range 3 products are available I had no's 1 and 2 where 3 is the strongest of them) I also only intended to use one type of polishing pad (from the range of these pads the orange pad is the 2nd strongest for correction) which again wasn't ideal for how badly damaged this paint is.
If anyone is interested the stage 1 product is rated at removing down to 1700grit sanding scratches and the stage 2 is for down to 1200grit sanding scratches.
Firstly the doors where washed with a strong citrus based wash, then a clay bar was used to prepare the paint work and re-washed again and dried.
To give an idea of the paint before, heres the rear door:
and then the front door:
Prepped the front and rear doors with 3M masking tape to give a good before and after example.
Applying the product in an X shape on the pad, then spread it out on the paint itself before machining in:
Using the stage 1 (with the least correction ability and the orange cutting pad the results were actually very disappointing, it appeared worse than before started, to the right of the blue tape:
Using the stage 2 on the rear door with the same pad yielded better results with a visible improvement, to the left of the blue tape:
I then went back to the front door using a cutting polish from a different range which supposedly had less ability to correct than the stage 1 on the front door (this ones only rated at 2000-2500grit sanding scratches), using the same pad it actually corrected it better than the first one I used, which I wasn't expecting to the left of the blue tape:
I removed the tape on the car to see the sections, the car now looking rather odd, starting at the left is the polish with the least ability to correct, then the next is the 2nd strongest of the two, then the strongest and finally at the furthest right untouched paint, all using the same strength pad (all on different brand new pads to keep it as accurate as possible)
Close up of the front panel, weakest on the left and slightly stronger on the right however the results are rather backwards not what id expected or hoped for:
Rear door now with the strongest of the 3 polishes on the left and the right untouched:
Now before going over the whole thing with the strongest of the polishes I was determined to have another go with the polish that wasn't giving any results, so I switched the type of polishing pad. This was now changed to a softer pad again with less correction abilities, the results where surprising, to the right of the blue tape:
Id still say it wasn't quite as good as the weaker polish with the stronger pad but it is curious that the softer pad actually corrected the paint better when in theory it shouldn't.
Now trying to get finished off pictures in the underground car park were not easy (I will take some better ones the next time the car is washed in daylight)
With the before shot here same panel:
Relatively clear results that can be seen. Now as a second experiment which will take some time to see the results I treated the rear door with a product that claims to never have to polish the car again, im not going to name it to save any arguments and finished that off with a 3M sprayable quick wax to give it a bit of extra protection. The front door I picked out the cheapest sealant and the cheapest softest wax I had in my collection, which were Autoglyms extra gloss protection and then finished off with Smartwax liquid wax. Be curious to see which lasts the longest. Next time I wash the car I will check the front to back to see which is lasting the longest. Detailers like to use the word hydrophobic these days but basically see which of the products retains the best ability for the water to bead over time.
Apologies its such a long post!!
Edited by After_Shock on Monday 2nd March 05:30
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