The Single Stage Polish – Ford RS3
It’s a common misconception that waxing your car is the best way to bring out its shine. The truth is, if your vehicle hasn’t been properly maintained, throwing a coat of wax on your car won’t solve all of your paint woes. Before I go any further, let me say that adding wax or sealant to your vehicle is a great way to add depth and gloss to your paint, but you won’t truly get the most out of the product without a first removing minor defects from your paint.
Benefits of Polishing
Having your car polished is the best way to restore your vehicle’s factory new look. Polishing involves the use of high speed machines that utilize rotating wool, foam, or foam-backed microfiber pads in conjunction with liquids containing abrasives (known as compounds or polishes) that remove paint defects. These machines and pads come in different sizes thus allowing the detailer to correct every nook and cranny of your car’s paint. Polishing a vehicle’s paint removes defects in the paint such as swirls marks, scratches, holograms, and marring. In other words, paint polishing removes the haziness, dullness, and oxidation in your paint while improving depth, gloss, and shine.
Since there are a variety of pad and polish options, detailers will use different combinations of pads and polishes in multiple steps to refine the paint’s condition. Around here, our most popular polishing option for customers is the single stage polish. This procedure typically takes between 8-10 hours, will remove 70-85% of the defects in the paint, and only requires one polish/pad combination in order to complete the work. You may be wondering, why is there such a range in the level of correction. This is due to varying paint hardnesses from manufacturers, but I’ll save this for another time. On to the results.
The Car – Ford Mustang Roush Stage 3
The car that receiving the polish was a 2012 Ford Mustang RS3 that may need a bit of an introduction. A Roush Stage 3 Mustang, in a nutshell, is a totally overhauled Mustang GT, super wide 275 series tires, stiffer suspension, bigger brakes, oh, and a massive supercharger that helps the Ford 5 litre power plant churn out 540hp and 465tq.
This particular specimen had 29,000km and appears to have suffered a rough life. Full of swirl marks and plenty of surface scratches, it was in desperate need of some love.
The condition of the paint was evaluated and all sensitive areas taped off (trim and vinyl appliques). As you can see, rough shape. A test spot is critical to the paint polishing, specifically single stage polishes. Performing a test on the paint allows you to formulate the best approach to tackling the job and tells you what combination of pad and polish the paint will yield the most optimal results. Upon completion, I determined that the optimal combination was an Adam’s Polishes Microfiber Cutting Pad and CarPro Essence polish on the Rupes polisher.
Swirls, so many swirls.
The 50/50
I’ll preface this by apologizing for the quality of this photo, it didn’t turn out quite the way I would have liked, but it gives you the idea of why paint polishing is so important to a deep shine.
The Results
Oh no, what is that you see, remaining defects! This is one important factor you need to understand about single stage paint polishing, your paint will not necessarily be flawless afterwords.
Some areas of the car are in better condition than others and for this particular customer, that is what they were after. They wanted to vastly improve the overall condition of the paint without breaking the bank.
Other areas, such as this fender, become nearly flawless.
One Final Note
It’s not only paint that can benefit from polishing. Have a look at the tail lights of the RS3 and begin to realize why a proper wash method is so important to protect all of your vehicle’s surfaces from defects.