CG 721 vs CG 778 using Hexlogic Orange Pads.

[After_Shock]

Ive got a 2009 Focus which has never been looked after paint wise and had a tough life (ive owned for about 7 months) so is in a pretty dire state, a lot of the paint is too damaged to do anything with, only a respray will sort it but as the cars for bashing about im not really that fussed.

Anyways ive done a quick experiment this evening on the paint, the front and rear doors fortunately are both original paint so ideal to do a back to front so to speak comparison.

As a quick note non of the products used were purchased for this specific application, the paint work on the car is too far gone for the products ive tried in this test. I initially set out to use just the two paint correction products which are CG 778 and Cg 721 (from the range 3 products are available I had no's 1 and 2 where 3 is the strongest of them) I also only intended to use one type of polishing pad which is the Hexlogic orange pad (from the range of these pads the orange pad is the 2nd strongest for correction).

If anyone is interested the CG 778 is rated at removing down to 1700grit sanding scratches and the CG 721 stage 2 is for down to 1200grit sanding scratches.

Firstly the doors where washed with a Smartwax strong citrus based wash, then a clay bar was used to prepare the paint work and re-washed again and dried.

To give an idea of the paint before, heres the rear door:



and then the front door:



Prepped the front and rear doors with 3M masking tape to give a good before and after example.



Applying the product in an X shape on the pad, then spread it out on the paint itself before machining in:




Using the CG 778 which had the least correction ability and the orange cutting pad the results were actually very disappointing, it appeared worse than before started, to the right of the tape:



Using the CG 721 on the rear door with the same level of pad yielded better results with a visible improvement, to the left of the tape:



I then went back to the front door using CG's V36 Optical cutting polish which supposedly had less ability to correct than the 778 on the front door (this ones only rated at 2000-2500grit sanding scratches), using the same pad it actually corrected it better than the first one I used, which I wasn't expecting, to the left of the tape:



I removed the tape on the car to see the sections, the car now looking rather odd, starting at the left is the polish with the least ability to correct, then the next is the 2nd strongest of the two, then the strongest and finally at the furthest right untouched paint, all using the same strength pad (all on different brand new pads to keep it as accurate as possible)



Close up of the front panel, weakest on the left and slightly stronger on the right however the results are rather backwards not what id expected or hoped for:



Rear door now with the strongest of the 3 polishes on the left and the right untouched:



Now before going over the whole thing with the strongest of the polishes I was determined to have another go with the polish that wasn't giving any results, so I switched the type of polishing pad. This was now changed to the CG white Hexlogic which is a softer pad again with less correction abilities, the results where surprising, to the right of the tape:




Id still say it wasn't quite as good as the V36 with the stronger pad but it is curious that the softer pad actually corrected the paint better when in theory it shouldn't.

Now trying to get finished off pictures in the underground car park were not easy (I will take some better ones the next time the car is washed in daylight)




With the before shot here same panel:



Relatively clear results that can be seen. Now as a second experiment which will take some time to see the results I treated the rear door with a product that claims to never have to polish the car again, im not going to name it to save any arguments and finished that off with a 3M sprayable quick wax to give it a bit of extra protection. The front door I picked out the cheapest sealant and the cheapest softest wax I had in my collection, which were Autoglyms extra gloss protection and then finished off with Smartwax liquid wax. Be curious to see which lasts the longest. Next time I wash the car I will check the front to back to see which is lasting the longest.

Apologies its such a long post!!

Edited by After_Shock on Tuesday 3rd March 08:56

[AKA PABS]

Iv found that before when I have stepped up in cut on the pad and worked the same polish that the cut has not increased. Weird. Good level of detail and photos show the level of correction well.
Cheers.

[After_Shock]

AKA PABS said:

Iv found that before when I have stepped up in cut on the pad and worked the same polish that the cut has not increased. Weird. Good level of detail and photos show the level of correction well.
Cheers.

Many thanks, photos are never easy to show detailing work especially on a phone and in an artificially lit underground car park, fortunately the headlights off another car show up the correction reasonably well.

Agreed it is odd that a stiffer cut on the pad doesn't always work well with the polish, anyways I know for next time stick to the white pads for that one!

More interesting was that the V36 which supposedly has less cut in it did a better job on that paint.

Always shows to mask areas off on the paint trying to work on and experiment first.