Holograms

[Iano]

Awhile ago my dealership installed a fold-a-cover on my '04 Colorado. In the process they made a scratch on one of the bed rails. They took care of it and buffed the section out. Curiously for some odd reason, there was another section that was buffed as well by the door, never understood why (maybe they scratched it and didn't tell me?). Suprisingly the area where the scratch was looks fine, but this other area does display maybe a 1 - 2 ft. radius area of "holograms" from a buffer. I was hoping polish / nxt would reduce the appearance, but it doesn't appear so. I also used ScratchX. I am tempted to try 3M S&S Remover, but thought I'd check in here first. They are only noticeable in the morning when the sun is hitting it from just the right angle, and its not really a huge deal to me, but is there any solutions you can think of to easily take care of that section? Oh.. its black btw. I can't get away from black vehicles for some reason. Also, I may be purchasing a G100 sometime in the future, so if you can think of anything that may be possible with that tool I'd appreciate it as well, but until I have extra $, its all by hand.

[Mike Phillips]

Hi Iano,

Welcome to Meguiar's Online!

There are a number of factors that determine exactly what it will require to remove the holograms from your finish. The way you describe them, these are also called buffer swirls as they were instilled with a rotary buffer.

Here are the factors,

• Paint hardness or softness
• Aggressiveness of the compound or polish they used
• Type of buffing pad, wool buffing pads tend to leave deeper swirls compared to foam
• Quality of buffing pad - Cutting pad versus Polishing pad, tatty pad versus new pad
• Depth of swirls - Deep swirls will require removing more paint than shallow swirls

Chances are good you could remove all or most of it using the G-100 with a W-8006 foam polishing pad and some #83 Dual Action Cleaner Polish. If you were unable to remove all of the swirls using this combo, this tells you that the swirls are deeper and that in order to remove them you will probably have to rebuff the area with a rotary buffer and a compound like #84 Compound Power Cleaner.

Sorry to hear to hear they swirl-out your finish, at least they didn't buff the entire car out for you as a courtesy.

Mike