Cleaning Your Car: Polish vs. Compound vs. Wax -

The paint on your car should be a smooth surface, but contaminants such as dirt and dust can accumulate over time and cause damage. When you wash your car, those contaminants can scratch the surface. A series of steps can be used to remove imperfections and improve your car’s appearance.

How Your Car’s Paint Job Can Be Restored

Compounding and polishing are both methods of correcting defects in a vehicle’s paint, but they remove different amounts of the surface layer. A compound agent is a liquid that is applied with a buffing or polishing machine. It acts like sandpaper to gradually remove surface layers and eliminate scratches.

After compounding, polish is used to remove any remaining defects. A handheld polishing machine has a motorized spinning head that can spread polish on a car’s surface to remove microscopic layers of paint and restore a vehicle’s smooth surface.

Polish acts like finer grit sandpaper than compound. Polishing a vehicle can reduce the appearance of scratches and get rid of remaining contaminants, oxidation, and other minor imperfections that compounding did not remove.

Once the painted surface has been smoothed and polished, it can be waxed.

Wax is used to fill in scratches and other imperfections with a protective coating to make them less noticeable. Wax can shield a vehicle’s paint from bird droppings, tree sap, acid rain, and other potential sources of damage.

Although wax can protect the paint on your car and enhance its appearance, wax is a cosmetic solution that can wash away over time.

With polishing, you can keep your car shiny longer than waxing it alone can.

Seek Professional Help with Vehicle Restorations

The process of compounding, polishing, and waxing a car requires specialized tools and training.

If the steps are done incorrectly, a car’s paint job can be damaged. This is because contaminants on the surface can cause more scratches. If you don’t have the right equipment and training, it’s best to leave the job to professionals so you don’t wind up causing more damage.

Innovative Restorations in Wallingford, Connecticut, can help you with removing imperfections in your car’s paint with our painting and refinishing services. We also offer mechanical upgrades and full restorations for classic vehicles. Our employees are well trained, and we use quality materials and appropriate tools that will ensure the job is done right.