Is BMW Paint considered Hard or Soft?

[fhaze3]

I have some definite swirl marks all over on my e90 M3 AW. I have Griots Machine Polish 3 and Meg's swirl remover. I have only washed and quick spray detailed it 2x. I am going to be doing a full iron-x, clay, swirl remove, polish, and wax soon.

I know it's basically trial an error, and I will use the GG machine polish 3 with a Griots Orbital, and orange pad first and check results. The question is if I don't get the results I desire, do I try again with the same stuff or drop to a stronger remover? Is Meg's swirl remover stronger than Griots 3?

Is the paint considered Hard or Soft?

[IzzyGray]

BMW's paint is considered soft but not like a single stage paint. Recently I just did some paint correction and even with the most aggressive pad and compound, it still took multiple passes. You can also mix compounds if you're trying a one stage correction.

If after one pass it looks untouched, then I'd go up. But if it improves, I'd try another 1-2 passes.

[4M]

+1 for sure. I love a number of Griot's products and use them. For paint correction however, I have moved on from the Griot's orbital (which is simply branded in any event) to Rupes "Bigfoot." It is an excellent tool. It is available from a number of Forum retailers.

[AnisotropyIsKey]

I don't have experience using either of those polishes. But I believe Griots Machine Polish 3 is fairly mild and Meg's Swirl remover is more of a cleaner/filler and has hardly any cut to it.

Of course it all depends on the amount of correction you need. If you are using an orange pad with good technique and adequate pressure and still not getting the results you want, I would bump up the type of polish.

I just polished my AW e90 and through trial I stepped it up to Menzernas fg400 compound. As I found the lesser abrasive polishes weren't achieving the correction I wanted. Plus, I wanted to decrease my working time...

[Drop the hammer]

Compared to my F350, my grey and black nissan titans and my white armada, my AW E93 paint is hard. I usually use a Porter Cable DA with orange pad and med cut compound (maguires D300 or Maguires cut compound), and could not achieve the cutting action i wanted (normally this does the trick on my other vehicles for correction of swirls/spider scratches). It did correct about 50% of the minor spider scratches, but not any of the deeper ones. To get the deeper damage off I had to switch to the old rotary (which i don't use too often since it's a Makita tank and i'm old). Then I used the DA with a lighter pad and polish to get a perfect finish prior to seal and wax.
IMHO and experience it's pretty hard but I guess it's all relative based on ones experience. Probably could have gotten it with 2 or 3 more passes of the DA.