Polishing compound

Being practically 15 years old, the BMW has some defects in its paint job. Ignoring the handful of dents on the passenger side and the occasional paint chip, it nevertheless had lots of smaller scratches and horrendous swirl marks in the paint. A wax would make these a little less obvious, but every time I washed the car they would jump right back out at me.

So I finally bought a random orbital polisher for $25 at the newly opened Harbor Freight¹, two microfiber bonnets, and a bottle of polishing compound.

First, I've heard bad things about the cheaper $23 polisher (not listed on their website) but the $25 model worked just fine. It was powerful enough to keep cranking through the job and didn't leave my hands shaking.

Second, the polish worked fantastically at removing the smaller swirl marks, but didn't take out the larger scratches and definitely didn't do anything to the chips or gouges. I suspect I'll have to hit those with a non-random polisher (buffing head on an angle grinder, anyone?)

Lastly, this was a good deal of work. It took more armwork than a typical wax job, and I had to spend half of Saturday washing and polishing half of the car, and half of Sunday finishing the polish and doing the wax.

The resulting shine is great, however, and even though it took down a little bit of the clear coat, it did take out most of those awful swirl marks.

¹ Harbor Freight wooo