Has anyone polished their side skirts to remove swirls? I have some pretty bad swirls (most likely from dealership since I haven't washed the car yet) that look awful in the sun but wanted some input since the skirts are thin and close to the body so it seems a bit tricky to polish out.

 

As a novice car detailer myself, and having done a total detail on my 3 cars, I can tell you that it's not as unnerving as you expect it to be. Personally, Adam's Polishes is in my back yard and I purchased their orbital, discs, and one-step cut and polish compound. While it's not "easy" per-se, it's pretty intuitive, and unless you put your weight into the machine or just sit in one spot for an obnoxious amount of time, you can get really good results.

They sell a super small orbital and disc that I believe is 1 inch for those tight areas such as the skirts, and I bet you can get a good result with the one-step, but depending on how deep they are, you might have to do the cut compound first, and then a polish. With the difference being, the one-step is a super light cut compound and polish combined, whereas the cut compound is JUST cut and can clean up the slightly deeper swirls, but then you have to follow it with JUST a polish.

I personally wasn't nervous with using the giant 5 inch disc with the one step and was able to get extremely good results on my wife's darker blue '07 Tacoma with no damage or burning to the paint. Give it a go!

- Shane

 

I guess you'd have to remove them in order to really get at the full surface of the side sill extensions. Honestly, I wouldn't be afraid to just to do it by hand without removing anything if the swirls aren't too close to the body.

 

Damn you’ve had the car this long and you still haven’t washed it??

 

Regular carnuba car wax will remove the swirls and protect the finish in the future. It's no big deal. Wax those areas and the rest of the car a few times a year and protect the finish.

 

It takes all kinds, as they say..

Meanwhile I run my cars through the automatic car wash tunnel about 3x a week. Yes, one with actual spinning cloth things. I can live with a little swirl in exchange for having a gleaming clean shiny car every day. I’ll take that over knowing that under the dirt lies a perfect paint job for the next owner to enjoy.

But to be fair I drive my car all over the city for work and errands and have to park outside often and there are a lot of trees here. If it was a garage queen like the 911 cabrio weekend car I hope to one day own, it would just be getting hand washes.

 

Wax does not remove swirls. It fills them in and makes them less noticeable, but once the wax is gone those swirls will be visible there still. You’ll need to use a DA polisher and some polish to remove the swirls. It’s not really worth it on a side skirt though because no one’s really looking down there and that part of the car gets exposed to all kinds of abrasions.

 

I definitely understand the desire to remove the swirls, though. To me, it's always super obvious when those gloss-black side sill extensions are dirty BECAUSE they're gloss black. Same goes for the rear spoiler.

I would just get some polishing compound and some elbow grease - not too much, of course.

 

yea... just had a baby so haven't had time to get around to it