Question about ultimate compound.

[PY80]

Hi everyone, I'm quite new to all this, and was thinking of getting ultimate compound. While reading the product description in a meguiar brochure, it's described as "clear coast safe and Non abrasive.."

How can it be non abrasive when it uses non diminishing micro abrasives? And what does clear coat safe actually mean? I've read many stories of people cutting through clear coast with aggressive usage of UC.

I'm trying to clean up a car that's not been polished or waxed for years. Mostly swirls, but I can see deep scratched around the door handle and drop etches in the roof.

I know I'm supposed to try the least aggressive first, swirl X etc..but given that I will likely need something like UC anyway, I thought I'd just do the whole car with it.

Any thoughts?

[PY80]

Sorry for the typos, coast = coat, it's my predictive text . Should really proof read my own post.

[Murr1525]

Re: Question about ultimate compound.

Whats nice with the UC is you can apply it more gently if needed, or more aggressively, to adjust its cleaning ability, and still usually get a good finish. If not, a mild follow up product would do the trick.

As far as the 'abrasiveness', its kind of an advertising hold-over from the early clear coat days. People were told not to use abrasive products on clear coats, because the old style 'rocks in a bottle' would scratch the paint up like sand paper, and looked terrible on clear coats.

So Meguiars had to say 'non-abrasive' so people would know it didnt leave marks behind.

[Michael Stoops]

Re: Question about ultimate compound.

Yes, the "non-abrasive" part is perhaps an odd way of describing the product, depending on your point of view. When the uninitiated think "abrasive" they think of something that will scratch the paint. And you have to believe us when we say the number of "uninitiated" buyers out there is exponentially greater than the number of folks who frequent detailing forums. But we digress.

Basically, the point we're trying to get across is that Ultimate Compound will not scour the paint the way many old school rubbing compounds will. If you've ever tried some of our competitor's paste rubbing compounds on a clear coat paint system, you know what we mean. In fact, our Customer Care Center often receives calls from people who have used those products and then call us looking for a solution, even though it wasn't our product that caused the issue! So, in a mass market situation, we need a way to quickly and effectively put a potential buyer's mind at ease that this product is perfectly safe to use on their car. Clear coat safe means simply that - the product won't damage clear coat. Now, to forum regulars this may seem pretty straightforward, but when we took that statement off of our Gold Class Wax a couple of years ago, we started getting all kinds of calls from people worried that we changed the formula and it, somehow, might no longer be suitable for clear coat. If you think about it, why on earth would we ever develop a product that is not clear coat safe? We'd be excluding 99% of the cars on the road today!!

As to your observation of others having rubbed through their clear coat using Ultimate Compound, the same can be said of virtually anything, if it's used aggressively enough for a long enough period of time. Heck, you can vigorously apply baby oil with a terry cloth towel to a small area and go through the clear coat. Obviously it's not the baby oil doing the damage, but that terry cloth towel sure can. So "clear coat safe" doesn't mean it's impossible to do something wrong with the product. Nothing in this world is 100% fool proof, and someone will always step outside the realm of common sense and do things they never should. A classic example is someone trying to remove a fairly deep, though very small, scratch from the center of a body panel. They apply a great deal of pressure in one tiny spot - we're talking an area maybe 2 inches square - and then scrub like crazy for a couple of minutes. That technique puts so much energy into such a small space that damage is inevitable, and we've seen it happen with some very mild products - albeit with pretty aggressive applicators.

[PY80]

Re: Question about ultimate compound.

Thanks guys, that clears things up. Its kinda what I suspected but its always good to know for sure. Great explanations as usual from you two !