What's up guys Joe here so today were working on a ¬Classic 1984 #Mercedes #sl380, a client called and said there was some hard water spots on the hood and asked if I could remove them. Now When dealing with water spots you need to know that there are two types of water spots, the first type of #waterspots is a mineral deposit that gets left behind on the surface after the water has evaporated.

Normally This type of spot can easily be removed with a clay bar or use of a dedicated water spot removal product

Then there's the second type of water spots. These water spots have etched into the vehicles paint those will need to be polished out. Cleaners like 3ms water spot removal or even a water and vinegar mixture are great to remove fresh mineral deposits, but cannot undo the etched in damage the deposits have already caused like in this case.

Each car that comes into my garage goes through my paint evaluation process which consists of checking each panel to see the depth the paint and on classic cars a test is also performed to deuterium if the paint is a single stage paint job or a basecoat clearcoat paint.


If you're unsure of the paint type, take a few minutes to do a simple test.

Apply some of Megiuars Deep Crystal Paint Cleaner on a pad. Next, you'll want to rub the paint cleaner to a number of different places on the car to check and make sure the entire car is using the same type of paint system. It is possible to have a car in which some panels are clear coated and some panels have a single stage paint depending upon whether or not it's been repaired and how it was repaired. for this reason, you need to inspect or test a few different panels to get a good idea of what you're working on After rubbing the paint cleaner against the paint turn the pad over and inspect it. If you find color on the pad this is an indicator that the paint you're working on is a single stage finish and the color you're seeing is the pigment transferring from the paint to your applicator pad.

As for how to treat a single stage paint compared to a clear coat finish, in most cases but not all, a single stage finish will be softer than a basecoat/clearcoat finish so you want to take this into consideration when doing any cleaning or correction work so you don't treat it too aggressively and remove too much paint.

remember as a detailer it is our job "Use the least aggressive product to get the job done"

This is where you'll want to test a few products to see which products will remove the defects best for what you're trying to accomplish.

single stage paint tends to absorb and react better to polishes oils. pure polishes really do a good job of bringing out the full richness of color in a single stage paint were with a clear coat paint would increase the clarity of the clear coat.

Older single stage paint tend to be more open or more porous and thus will absorb the rich polishing oils in pure polishes better than a clear coat finish which tend to be harder, denser and less able to absorb any kind of chemical so products tend to be more topical on clear coat paints when they are new and in excellent condition. As clear coat paint age and are exposed to wear & tear they do tend to open up more than when they were new but they're still pretty solid or dense.

Ok now that we have determined what type of paint were working with I m going to start with m205 Polish with a yellow foam pad working a small section at a time I'm going to work the polish into the panel and wipe and inspect when completed notice the pad is slightly changing color after a pass or two you’ll need to blow out the pad quite often when color correcting. A dirty overused clogged pad will not produce the results you’re after.

So with the m205 polish, we went from this to this and seems like this method is going to achieve my desired results. Or so I thought! Here on the top of the hood, you can clearly see the etching is more apparent. So I switch to a microfiber cutting pad with the 105 polish and that seemed to work well. There were some cases where instead of priming my pad I dropped a few bigger than your recommended pea size drops of the compound on the panel some people call this the “MOW-DOWN” TECHNIQUE there are only a few circumstances I needed to use this technique on this being one of those cases.

In theory, a mow down is what it sounds like. Were using more buffing product to remove the defects. Once the defects have been removed ill follow with the 205 finishing polish to remove any leftover compound haze.