This is just a really quick tip for people that might be waxing or restoring a finish with some compound polish. A buddy of mine showed me this trick and I have use it for many years.
When you have a vehicle with black rubber or plastic parts and you go over it pretty hard with compound polish to remove the oxidation you are left with paint that looks great but all your moldings and bumper covers and whatever are coated with a film of compound polish or wax. This is also true for tires that will end up with compound streaks that are difficult to remove.
This is really true if you are doing this with a buffer but its also true if you are doing it by hand and the results make your whole job look bad and causes you hours of cleanup.
The way to prevent this is to treat your rubber and plastic parts with some type of restoration liquid like armorall or tire wet or something else that will leave a heavy film of that siliconized grease that makes them so shiny. You should put it on really thick almost dripping off. Its like using liquid mask when you are painting.
When you are done and you do a final cleanup 95% of any over spray from the buffer will come right off with no effort.
Basically you are just preventing it from adhering to the plastic and rubber.
One note though is that you don’t want silicon products on your paint if you are sanding and buffing so take some wax and grease remover on a paper towel and go around the edges of your panels.
Another thing you can do is leave your door or hood open so your buffer won’t slip and come into contact with a bumper or molding. Anything you can do to reduce the amount of compound on your plastic will help but by applying a treatment to your plastic and rubber you are pretty much guaranteed it won’t get down into fine line cracks so you can’t get it out easy.
Final Note
When cutting and buffing your clear with sandpaper and compound you should be extra careful to keep the silicon products away from your paint as they can penetrate into the micro cracks in the paint surface and cause issues over time. Personally I don’t like any product on paint that has silicon. Yes i know these ceramic coatings and new tech coatings have silicon and even some cutting polish has silicon in it but since I was trained by Dupont Field Techs many years ago I just never took the chance and I have seen bad results that I had to fix. Its up to you but I have found that shine should come from a smooth surface not from silicon that fills the cracks for a couple weeks if you are lucky.