Welcome back to Detail Garage.
Today we're going to show you how to use a microfiber pad to cut and polish your paint
to remove any swirls, scratches, oxidation and other defects.
Now you might be used to using foam pads on your car.
Now foam pads come in many different stiffness levels and that stiffness determines how hard
the pad will cut and how deep it will remove defects from your paint work.
You can also use a microfiber pad.
So if you have paint that is very hard like a German car or with fiberglass body panels
with very hard paint you may need to use microfiber pads to cut through heavier defects.
Microfiber kind of simulates wool pads.
Wool pads are very old school but they don't work very well on modern clear coated paint
finishes.
You'll get a lot of marring and holograms.
Manufactures developed these microfiber pads instead.
So the way microfiber pads work is you have the foam backing and a split weave of microfiber
material on top.
It's the same material that goes into your microfiber towels to get scratch-free wiping
around the car but when used on a cutting or refining pad you get more heat that increases
cutting power to remove defects.
The Black Optics line of microfiber pads from Chemical Guys comes in two different stiffness
levels.
You have an Orange Pad to cut away defects and heavier swirls and scratches and a softer
foam Black Pad.
The microfiber weave and material on top is the same between the two pads but the difference
is in the foam backing.
It's the same stiffness levels you get in the Hex-Logic series of foam pads to cut or
polish.
Orange is to cut away defects, black is to refine away any fine marring and restore a
deep gloss for a perfect shine.
So today I'm working on this Mini Cooper, it is a beautiful green but the hood has a
lot of swirls and deeper scratches.
It looks like someone put something heavy on the hood and it slid leaving deep marks
in the paintwork.
I'm going to try and remove those and refine the finish as close to new as we can.
I'll be using the TORQ 10FX Dual Action Polisher and a 5.5" Black Optics Microfiber Cutting Pad.
To get started I'm going to setup the machine with some V36 Cutting Polish.
I don't want to go too aggressive in the beginning, I just want to see if I can get the scratches
out with a less aggressive combination of pad with a polish.
So I'm not going to start with a compound just yet.
Priming a microfiber pad is a little bit different than a foam pad.
Right off the bat I'm going to skip putting a few dots on but I'm going to put four big
thick lines of polish all over the pad.
From here i'm going to spread out the polish all over the pad.
After this first round of priming this pad, once I have all of these microfiber strands
coated with polish, that is when I will add five to six dots of polish on subsequent passes.
For this first one I need to coat every one of these fibers as best as I can.
You'll notice that this new Black Optics line have a center cut hole in the middle of the
pad and that is to help separate the machine and the pad a little better and reduce heat
which helps the pad last longer and gives you better results.
i also have some Pad Conditioner just mist a couple sprays on the pad to help lubricate
on our first pass.
I'm going to work in a two by two area.
I'll focus on the middle of the hood because that is where we have most of the deeper scratches
so I'm going to dab out the polish with the machine.
It is faster to work in smaller sections because polish has a work time and you need to let
the machine break down the abrasives in the polish and they are designed to work in a
specific amount of time.
It's better to work in a smaller area and you'll get done quicker.
I have my TORQ machine setup and I'll turn it on, right now it's at speed setting zero
so it won't fling product all over when I'm not prepared.
I'll turn it on to speed setting one and spread the polish into the area.
Once I have the polish spread out and worked into the paint work I'm going to go ahead
turn on the machine on speed setting six while applying a little bit of pressure til I hear
the pitch of the machine lower and that's how I know i'm putting enough pressure down.
I'm going to work the polish in a grid pattern to have even paint removal over the surface.
You'll notice as I work the polish over the paintwork it started off thick and white like
lotion and as I went on the polish broke down and turned more and more clear as the abrasives
break down.
I'll take a microfiber towel and buff off the residue to check the results I got.
You can see there are still some of the deeper scratches but we've removed a lot of the superficial
wash marks, marring and swirls and scratches that were all over the hood.
We also have removed a lot of scratches from whatever happened on the front end of the
car but there is a light haze.
That is too be expected when you use a heavier compound or tougher cutting pad like a microfiber
pad you're gonna get some marring left on the paint.
That's from the abrasiveness of the product or the pad you're working with leaving behind
some minor scratches which is to be expected.
What I'm going to do now is switch out from my Black Optics Cutting Pad to the Black Optics
Microfiber Finishing Pad.
This is a softer foam which will give less resistance on the car and be less abrasive.
It is going to be gentler and it is going to refine the finish rather than cut a lot
of paint away at once.
Just like before I'm going to prime this pad by placing four thick lines of polish over
the microfiber.
Then work it in.
Make sure I coat every single microfiber strand on this pad.
If this were a full blown polishing job and if I didn't have to explain this on
camera I would polish the entire hood or entire front end or whole car with one combination.
I would finish the job with the Orange Pad over the whole vehicle before switching to
my next step.
That just helps to save time without having to do a lot back and forth and changing pads.
It also ensures a more even job and helps me reduce the chance of slinging any heavier
products on areas that I've already finished.
I'll spread out my V38 Finishing Polish much like the same way we used V36.
After spreading out the polish on speed setting one I'll bump it up to speed setting six to
get rid of any marring caused by the previous step to restore a lot more gloss and reflection
on this Mini Cooper.
You'll also notice that I did this step the same exact way that I did with the prior steps.
I still moved the polisher using the same amount of pressure in the same exact way as
you do with any other step whether you're compounding away heavy swirls and scratches
or refining it all you change is the combination of pad and compound to get different results.
You want to use these microfiber pads on a dual action polisher.
These are designed to work with more of a scrubbing motion which is what you get with
the two separate actions of a dual action.
If you put these on a rotary it is going to get matted down so it won't give you the desired results.
We've removed all of the marring and light haze that we saw after the polishing steps
with V36 and the Cutting Pad and now we have a lot more gloss and reflection.
It's looking a lot better we've taken out a lot of the scratches and heavier marring
caused by whatever happened on the hood.
It's looking a whole lot better.
So if you want to use microfiber pads I recommend using it on either paint finishes that are
either harder like on German paint.
So I would use microfiber pads on softer paint that has a lot of defects and you don't want
to do any wet sanding you can use a microfiber pad instead.
It is a great in between foam and wool pads to get the job done in a much gentler way.
So if you like what you've learned about the Black Optics Microfiber Pads you can check
them out on our website.
If you want to learn more polishing tips and tricks subscribe to our YouTube channel, we
have over nine hundred videos showing you how to do just about anything.
You got a nice car lets keep it clean with Chemical Guys.