How in god's name do you get all the rubbing compound off of a paint job??

harrisonm said
Take a deep breath. I have been painting cars and using all kinds of rubbing, polishing and glazing compounds for years without any problems. unfortunately, you didn't give us much information, and it is kind of hard to render any type of help when the rest of us are in a vacuum. I see you are fairly new to the forum, so let me give you some advice on asking questions. Always give as much information as possible. For instance, what kind of rubbing compound were you using (brand and how coarse was it). Rubbing compounds are like sandpaper, some cut more than others. Plus, some are better than others. How were you applying it? Some compounds pretty much have to be applied with a machine, and some even specify a type of pad. You can spin the pad too fast and cause problems. You can try to do too large of an area at a time. This is a problem, because you wind up with dry swirls. Those swirls have a little bit of the paint in them, and they kind of bond to the paint a little making them hard to get off. Were you buffing new paint or old paint? Was the surface oxidized? Did you wet sand the surface before buffing? If you used a machine, what kind of a pad did you use? All of these questions are legitimate for me to be able to answer your question. Here is one thing you can try. Get a spray detailer. I like the one from Griot's Garage, but the MaGuires one is OK. Spray a small area and rub with a micro fiber towel. I have had really good luck with that. You can also buff it away. Use a medium to light cut compound (use a good quality liquid compound - not a paste like Turtle Wax sells) and a medium cut foam pad. You will need a machine for this. Put some compound on pad and spread it around on the pad. Some people call this "buttering the pad". Then spray the area (about 4 square feet) with a little water. Then buff on a low speed. The swirls / old compound should go away. Wipe the area with a clean micro fiber and move to the next area. I only use 3 M Perfect It compounds and pads. It is fool proof, and it works better than anything else I've used. So let us know exactly wat is going on, and We can help. If you could post a few pictures, that would help too. Good luck.

Ok. I'm using maguire's rubbing compound and then following that up with their polishing compound. I was taking out pretty big chunks. Maybe a couple square feet at a time. I'm not by any outlets, so I'm just using my muscles and microfiber towels. I've been rubbing it really hard, but it still swirls and it's damn near impossible to get it all off. So I tried hitting it with a water/denatured alcohol solution today and that really didn't work. It sort of clouded the surface of the paint and then when I rubbed it with my hand, the cloudiness cleared up. I'm still confused. I don't have a lot of experience with these compounds, but I was just getting mad because why would they make a product that you can't remove that easy?

Anyways, the car is getting a patina paint job because it was a ******* mess when I got it, but it had patina potential, so I started with a 600 grit paper and brought that up to a 3000 and it looked good. After that, I was going to apply Flood with penetrol, which I think is just linseed oil and mineral spirits mixed together. But then I got the wild idea to take some of the circles from the sand paper out with some rubbing compound, then followed with a polishing compound. I've been doing all of this by hand, so this is week number three and I'm about ******* fed up with this thing.