first time using the PC last night

Spawne32

New member
My buddy came around with his car, and his paint is just a WRECK on his GTP, i mean were talkin deep scratches in some spots from a dog scratching the fenders, massive chips in the front, swirl marks all over. He had taken it to a place to have it proffesionally buffed in cherry hill nj, mainly he wanted the fine scratches taken out, and the imprints from the badges taken out as well. The guy told him that would be impossible to do with a buffer.

Well I had all the brand new buffing equipment in my garage and I had never used it because after the winter time my brand new paint job started peeling in various places on my car, needless to say that angered me greatly but I wasnt gona invest the time in rubbing the car if it was only gona have to be fixed anyway.

So he wanted me to try the buffer on one of his front fenders, needless to say it was probably the easiest thing ive ever done on a car with the porter cable, and took all but 20-30 minutes to bring that fender up to a ridiculously high shine. I was extremely nervous about jumping into it on someone elses car but i was stunned at how easy it actually is to do.

I used yellow and orange lake country ccs pads, my porter cable, and megs 85 and megs 205 and basically we just rubbed the fender down with prepsol prior to testing it out since he only wanted to try it on one panel. Not only did it bring up the shine on that panel but i was able to get out all of the imprints the badges had left on the car with relative ease.

Needless to say im pretty impressed. :yay
 
Not sure about this, but aren't yellow and orange pads cutting/compounding pads? I'd think that would need to be followed up by something a little less coarse.
 
yellow is the heavy cutting pad, orange is the light cutting pad, says you can use polishes with it, like i said this was more experimenting then anything, i also have lake country white pads for finishing glaze, etc.
 
You would be amazed at the finish you can get with M205 and an orange pad.

Not saying you couldn't get a nice finish with that combo - but why stop at using a finishing polish with a cut pad. Why not just use a polishing pad with less cut? Kinda like the fly and bazooka situation - the name of this game is using the least aggressive method possible to achieve the best results. That mantra appears to be lost here in the last couple of years, and I'm not real sure how that happened. Seems like everyone starts a detail out now going straight to sanding paper or a heavy cut pad of some type. :confused:
 
Not saying you couldn't get a nice finish with that combo - but why stop at using a finishing polish with a cut pad. Why not just use a polishing pad with less cut? Kinda like the fly and bazooka situation - the name of this game is using the least aggressive method possible to achieve the best results. That mantra appears to be lost here in the last couple of years, and I'm not real sure how that happened. Seems like everyone starts a detail out now going straight to sanding paper or a heavy cut pad of some type. :confused:

I agree that you will likely get an even better finish with a finishing pad.

As for the mantra, I was wondering how many M205's with say an orange pad equals the correction of M105 with a white pad? If you use M105, you should follow with M205 so why not just do two M205's. You just are not removing paint as fast.
 
I agree that you will likely get an even better finish with a finishing pad.

As for the mantra, I was wondering how many M205's with say an orange pad equals the correction of M105 with a white pad? If you use M105, you should follow with M205 so why not just do two M205's. You just are not removing paint as fast.

I've always read into it that 105 & 205 a pretty diverse in their level of cut. I know you can look at it from any angle, but I generally prefer to gauge my cutting power by the polish I use and tend to stick to either polish pads specifically or PFW for correction. I hardly use any foam cutting pads anymore.
 
And you would be amazed at how much better it would look if done right instead of stopping with the orange cutting pad.

No I wouldn't, I never said to stop at that point... I was pointing out that M205 and the orange pads leaves a better finish then one would think.
 
im gona bring my camera next time to show what im working with, i did his rear quarter panel tonight, just the orange pad with the polish is as far as i got, still learning the methods etc but i have to admit its coming out much better then i expected, hes just thrilled with it.
 
im gona bring my camera next time to show what im working with, i did his rear quarter panel tonight, just the orange pad with the polish is as far as i got, still learning the methods etc but i have to admit its coming out much better then i expected, hes just thrilled with it.

That's the whole idea! Sounds to me like you might be saving this friend a repaint and that is certainly a good thing.

I think maybe some are being a bit too harsh here. You did say this was your first time with the buffer and pads. Play away mi amigo and try a whole bunch of different combos and see WHAT YOU LIKE! It takes time. I will also simply SUGGEST you try to refine out the shine and gloss with some milder combos and see what you get. Get good lighting conditions and get a feel for what refining does. Sounds like your planning to do that.

I'm excited for you because I remember the first time I ever used a PC! It took me a while and several cars to really finesse the finish and you'll get to that point.

Congratulations and enjoy the moment and the results.
 
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