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Old 07-17-2006, 04:36 PM
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Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: San Jose, CA
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Neglected black paint

Greetings all,
I'm in detailing hell and it's all my fault. In addition to my beloved MCS, I have one of the last US Mazda FD RX7s in black/black. I have never learned how to properly care for a car's paint and this poor RX7 shows it with bird poop that dried on it for a long time, scratches everywhere, and various hard water stains. I used to take it to a car wash place that did hand wax jobs (I watched, no power tools were used), but their towels must have been dirty because of all the scratch marks.

A while back, I made a significant investment in most of Griots Garage various detailing kits including a PC. I've learned a lot from them, but I'm really struggling with the RX7.

I washed, applied paint prep (who knows what was previously applied), clayed, then used (as per Griots instructions) machine polish 3 (fine), then 2(semi-fine), then 1(medium?) since I wasn't making any progress on the scratches and hard water spots. I made three passes with machine polish 1, then back to 2 and finished with 3. Then applied best in show wax. The surface looks a bit better, but is still a 10 footer car.

Now the paint from Mazda sucked to begin with on these cars, so a repaint is being considered for its future. At this time however, I'd like to save some change and put some elbow grease into this project to get her down to maybe a 2-3 footer.

Is this possible?
Does anyone have recommendations for a more aggressive machine polish I can try?
Would photos help explain what I'm up against?

Thank you for any recommendations you can offer.
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