welcome back to stauffer garage guys in today's video i'm going to be showing you how to remove
any swirl marks or light scratching on your car's paint so the first step is make sure you have your
car washed your car is clean of any contaminants or dirt and then what we're going to do is we are
going to clay the surface here i'm spraying a soapy water which is just actually dawn dish
detergent probably three or four drops in a full bottle of water and we're using that more as a
lubricant to slide the clay back and forth across now if you've never heard of clay barring clay bar
is not actual real clay like you would think it is it is a specific type of material but what
it essentially does is it's a moldable piece of putty that you slide across the surface of your
paint to remove any contaminants or dirt that is clinging to the surface i'm going to be showing
you here in a second how dirty this clay bar is but you're using essentially light pressure to let
the bar slide across the surface and when you hit a contaminant or any sort of particle on the paint
surface you'll feel the bar drag a little bit and you'll kind of slide it back and forth across that
area until it goes away that is a really crude way of explaining it but it's essentially just
trying to remove anything on the surface before you polish you're not scratching the paint more
here is the bar after just doing half the hood you can see how dark it is what you'll want to
do is then just fold and knead the bar over and essentially you're locking in all that contaminant
and dirt inside the bar revealing a fresh clean surface to continue doing the rest of your hood
now the whole hood is done being clayed usually you'll want to go across the whole car
for this video i'm just kind of doing a demo of the hood itself but once you're done cleaning
i'm just using a quick detail spray to spray the surface before i dry it off to kind of clean any
of that soapy water and any dirt that might have been left on the surface off before we polish
now with the surface completely dried off and ready to go we are going to begin machine
polishing today i'm going to be using a da polisher it's so a dual action orbital polisher
polisher that i have is from harbor freight so it is a budget friendly economical option for people
i will say though that i'm going to be doing a video soon where i'm going to be comparing it
to a roops 15 millimeter throw polisher which i am super super excited about because that is supposed
to be the king of polishers uh from a dual action standpoint i'm really excited to use it
but today i'm using a gray polishing pad with a one step type polished product there are tons
of different polish types out there i'll leave all the products that i use in the description
box below if you're interested but you know kind of do your research figure out what polish works
best for you this is a polish that i've been using for a little while now i've been trying
out several different types but this is a good one step type polish if you will that allows
you to clean the surface remove a lot of the swirl marks but it's not super super aggressive
now when you begin polishing usually put about dime sized circles of polish onto your pad
i usually put about seven or eight and usually spray the surface of the pad
one time with a quick detail spray because the pad is new the pad is fresh i haven't used it yet
and it hasn't soaked up any of that polish after doing a large part of the car that way i just
feel that there's a little bit extra lubricity on the surface before i throw it on the paint
now for a dual action polisher i usually kind of dab the pad around on the paint to kind of spread
the polish onto the surface because if you turn it on full blast right away what will happen is
you'll fling it everywhere and we don't want that that just gives you extra work so usually start
off at a speed one or two and then for this type polisher i'm cranking it up to about a five or six
speed which is about re relatively comparable to any other orbital polisher in terms of speed now
one thing to remember with a da polisher orbital polisher you can't really burn your paint i'm
sure there is types and examples where you can but for the most part moving it slowly back and
forth in a uniform pattern overlapping with your previous pass you'll be able to remove most swirl
marks pretty easily but just not as quickly as if you had a circular polisher for the most part
with the orbital polisher for anybody that's doing this as a weekend hobby it's a great option
including this harbor freight example which you can pick up for for fairly cheap
when you're doing your polishing make sure you're doing enough of the pass and you're
going slow enough to break down the polish itself the polish itself is
supposed to dry up it's supposed to become chalky it's supposed to do the work for you
in this example here i'm actually figuring out that the amount of polish i used was just a
little too much based on when i was drying it you could see some of the streaking of the polish it
wasn't coming off super super easily now with any flashlight you can typically see there are
certain detailing flashlights that pull and show better the different scratches and swirl marks
here you can see just after one pass how big of a change
i was able to accomplish with this polish and this orbital polisher
now i'm going to be performing a second pass on the same surface area
and once again cranking up the speed to six or seven and slowly moving
the polisher back and forth doing horizontal and vertical passes to break down the polish
so this is a one-step polish which i've enjoyed using so far but i have used different polishes in
the past especially poor boys ssr 1 2 and 2.5 that i've enjoyed a lot more so i'm not completely sold
on the polish that i'm using this video so if you do have recommendations of a one-step polish kind
of like the sonax perfect finish that is kind of one that i'm looking forward to trying here soon
so if you have any product recommendations please let me know in the comments below
the good thing about orbital polishers especially on cars with a lot of you know curves or edges on
it like my hood here you can see the different ray surfaces an orbital polisher really can't
burn through the paint in those different high spots whereas a circular polisher
you have to be really really careful with that and you have to be you know a really good detailer and
know what you're doing but with an orbital polisher kind of coming up on those edges
kind of eliminates some of the risk and concern of damaging the paint excessively
always be careful and always keep the polisher moving but with an orbital you do
minimize the amount of heat buildup compared to a circular polisher
i highly recommend gloves and i highly recommend that if you are working in enclosed space
you know maybe wear a respirator as well just for the long-term health benefits
now the amount of pressure that you typically want to apply with a polisher
is very minimal so in the orbital here this polisher itself i'm not super super happy
with it does have some imbalances it does need a little bit more extra control and
firmness when holding it compared to some other nicer polishers out there but this
one in particular does a pretty good job it just requires some extra hand control and
firmness going over some curved areas to make sure it doesn't jump around
i think one of my favorite things about polishing a car is actually putting that tape line down the
center of a panel and polishing one side and then removing the the tape
to reveal the difference between what you've polished and what you haven't i think that's
one of the most rewarding parts of the whole experience because then you can truly see
how much work you've done and how well it's turned out
i do recommend that after you're done polishing just kind of top it
off with a quick detail spray what it kind of does is lifts any of the oily
residue from polishing off of the paint before you do any last step products
now for the reveal so once i remove my tape i do need to use the quick detail spray again
uh just from the residue that was left over underneath the tape edges
the transformation just with doing one light pass and i will say that this is not a perfect
polished deep job but you can quickly see with about 30 minutes of polishing
how much swirl marking and damage i removed from the paint and leveled out so here's the
line here's the right side being the polished side and the left side being the unpolished side
it is a drastic difference in just doing one pass with the orbital polisher
and here is the after i am just following up with a quick detail spray of what the paint job looks
like just with a polish on the hood this is no product put on top no wax no sealant no nothing
but you can see the mirror-like finish that was obtained just by doing one pass with an orbital
polisher and one step final polish so if you guys liked today's video make sure you give it a thumbs
up i am going to be doing a full exterior detail this car and i'm also going to be trying out the
new mcguire's hybrid ceramic sealant i've actually tried it on a different car that i haven't videoed
yet and i am super pleased with the results of it so far so if you guys want to see that
let me know in the comments below or any other videos you want to see next and make sure you
hit that subscribe button so you don't miss out on new videos and i'll see you guys next time