I've got a black 95 M3 respray (but a pretty good one) with hard water stains/etching. It's taking me three, often more, passes (lots of time AND product) with Swirl and an orange pad to get to "not great, but acceptable" condition. I have a yellow cutting pad but no Cut compound. Would Swirl on a Yellow pad speed things up (followed by Swirl on an orange pad, etc), or is that pointless?

Should I just buy a bottle of Cut? I'm going to have to buy another bottle of Swirl either way. I'm new at this and always fearful of going too aggressive.

 

I would pick up Cut and an Uber Yellow Pad.

Are you using a PC?

 

Yes

 

I would step up to the yellow and the cut.

 

At my last Wednesday clinic, we had a BMW with severe hard water stains and etching. You need to first realize that taking these kinds of defects out takes time even with a rotary buffer and compounds.

A PC can do it as well, but it will take some effort. On this BMW, we did 3 passes on each section and removed about 90% of the etchings using just a 7424XP, LC Orange, and Prima Swirl. He wanted further correction, so I suggested the LC Yellow pad and Cut. With several more passes, he most of the visible etchings out...taking it to about 95% removed.

However, this is an aggressive combo and the paint will be slightly hazed, so he followed the Yellow/Cut combo with Orange/Swirl to restore the gloss.





The water spots may be hard to see here, but they are clearly visible around the bright white edges of the overhead light.

Although the spots are gone in the next photo, you see how the light "glows"? That's because the paint is now hazy from the Yellow pad and Cut.


To solve the haze, just step down to a less aggressive pad. In this case, it was determined that an orange pad was sufficient.