Once buffed, always buffed ? please help
 

I have never had a car professionally buffed until recently. I have always taken care of my cars , 94 Alpine Silver Supra, 03 Silverstone 350Z, using products from Zaino, Meguiars, etc. I bought a 2009 370Z in Magnetic Black back in May. They told me it had been professionally waxed and buffed just before I picked it up so I am assumimng they used a porter cable or something similar. The car looked great on delivery. I was going to wax it this week so I tried a small amount of liquid Meguiars Ultra on a small spot. When I wiped it off I could see a definite difference between the buffed paint and the spot I just did which looked duller than the rest of the car. Am I doing something I shouldn't do? Does the car have to be buffed from now on. The black is tricky anyway and I don't want to f**k the paint up. Does the porter cable really bring out that much more shine than hand waxing? Thanks for your help.

I was in the same boat as you are. I thought i was doing something wrong too. We just dont have enough elbow grease compared to the buffer. I went to Walmart and bought a $49 hand buffer let me tell you it was like night and day.

Check my pix out. All taken the same day. You can see the difference it makes. The few that the car is on the street are the after buffing pix

The large 9 or 10" buffers carried by a lot of parts strores and big box retailers usually don't have the power to remove scratches without some heavy abrasives. I'd steer clear of those.

Thanks for the replys. Okay , what kind of buffer did you get at Walmart? I have read that you do not want a buffer that simply turns in one direction, but one that kind of orbits around and around at the same time.

Wal mart 6 inch orbital works fine. You don't need to be a magician to get the same results as a paid professional. You don't have to spend a ton of money on product either. Just do your homework and learn the techniques. Black is beautiful but a PIA.

In most cases, you're you're not using a PC (or rotary or Cyclo or a similar professional tool), you're not really removing scratches - you're just filling them with the products. Most of the polish products you can buy at retail like Walmart or auto parts stores have fillers and oils. Most professional polishes do not. Look to see if the polish says 'Body Shop Safe'. If it doesn't, it's got fillers.

So it's not really the buffer that's doing anything - it's the product that's filling in the swirls. And the product fill will work for a while, but eventually it wears off and you have to polish again (even though you're not really polishing).

Some guys posting in this thread need to check out the first 5 videos in this thread. You will learn a ton.

Check out some detailing websites...you'll learn a ton!

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We Are Car Care -- Car Wax, Car Polish, Auto Detailing Supplies, Car Buffers & Car Accessories Store
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That should keep you busy for a while. :D

Plus one:tup: Bear in mind that your removing the clear coat when your buffing it with any polish machine. This in not necessary a bad thing though. When the clear coat become thin; it time to respray several layers of clear coat. Next, start the machine polishing again in order to eliminate fish eyes/uneven clear coat.