I have been trying to buff out my bike and have used buffing compound and swirl remover etc.... I'm not having luck getting rid of the swirls.
What is the best way to get a great finnish back on the old girl?

 

Mcguires makes a foam pad for a buffer and a product made by 3M called Finesse(white) works good on removing swirls on black. The key is low speed with the buffer and just tapping the trigger to keep the wheel moving slow works good on the final buffing and don't use the edge of the wheel, try to keep as much pad on the surface as possible. Go back over it with the Finesse by hand to finish off any imperfections left from the foam pad.
Mcguires #7 puts the rich color back into black paint and brings the deep gloss back out, it's not a wipe on and wipe off product and takes some work but clearly the deepest shine when done.

You can also try your swirl remover with the pad, just try the slow speed method but the #7 is unbeleivable with black after all of buffing is done, put the #7 on by hand.

 

For my old glide painted with PPG gloss black and PPG Clear, I use clean and broken-in micrfibre towles and a bottle of 3M Hand glaze to get the swirls out of the clearcoat. follwed by Maquires wax to protect it...

 

Eastwood sells a product called liquid ice...uses progressively finer pads rather than compounds to produce a killer finish. Most amateur friendly system I have used.


http://www.eastwood.com/6-inch-compl...ingsystem.html

 

Depends on how bad/condition the swirls are in. I've used a random orbital polisher (Porter-Cable) on my black car. Took me 3x to make it shine and each time it was these steps:

* Wash
* Clay bar
* Wash again
* Polish
* Polish - Finer
* Wax

Total time for my car to bring back the shine was 27 hours (10, 9, and 8 hours). After the third time, my car had the "20 foot" look - after rain, from 20 feet, it still looked good. All what you want the paint to look like.

 

I second the 3M imperial hand glaze.

 

I am afraid to take a buffer to my paint. Last time I bought a freind's friend thats a body guy a 12 pack to do it. He moved to Vegas. I don't have swirls. I need to get the depth back.

 

I have a 7" buffer I bought for cars but seems too big for the bike.

I really didn't know where to start, do I use abrasives first, wax, buffing compound?????? I don't know.

 

If you are not comfortable with a buffer, use the 3M Imperial hand glaze as the guys mentioned, trying to use a abrasive buffing compound by hand usually turns out doing more damage than good. First step: Get the paint clean with the Imperial, Second step: Mcguires #7 is great for black if the paint is clean and then, Third step: put a wax on last as a protectant.
You can skip the #7 on the second step and Eagle One makes a good wax that also puts the richness back in black if you want to save some jingle and step, depends on how picky you are, I showed a large black 4x4 for 8 years and used the #7 before every show, so I have rubbed on black more than I cared to

 

Here is another vote for 3M hand glaze. It is a fantastic product.