Optimum Polish - Less than Optimum....

Hmmm I thought the Optimum polishes/compounds were the easy ones....bought them for my new cyclo for use with the cyclo pads. Maybe I should use the 3M PF III line that I have instead. Oh well, gotta try them sometime.
 
I think you're selling yourself a little short, Accumulator. To paraphrase a bit of what others have said about the Optimum compounds and polishes in the past, and combine that with some of my own experience, I'd say the primary function of the Optimums is less compound/polish and more lubricant, letting the pad do the work (particularly with the older versions of the OHC and OC). If you use too much, the pad just floats on a layer of the product and doesn't do any work (or break the product down). I think Bence was the first one to explain this and others have intoned, as I will, that you use virtually nothing once the pad is primed. You'll notice the Optimums have a very solventy smell, moreso than any other polish I have used, and I think that is the key, that the solvent is the key ingredient more than the abrasives. I'm not sure if I'm making sense, but what I'm trying to say as opposed to other polishes, where you are primarily trying to deliver abrasives to the surface, the Optimums are trying to lubricate the interface and let the pad do the work, so you use much less than traditional products.
 
The first and foremost primary reason of Optimum Polish and Hyper Compound is for then to fill wide range of use which we tried to demonstrate in our wetsanding video I posted up.



Yes Optimum was designed for the rotary first and this is where it really works best but it can be used with an orbital also.



SuperBuick



Sorry for your troubles so far. As others have noted using too much Optimum can leave you with a cushioned buffing barrier of sorts that may not allow the product to work as designed. Try cutting back a bit, about a quarter size for half a hood and work in well. I use OP on all my cars and I do a lot of black Porsches but never had OP leave me with micro-marring.....and if I have it always comes down to my error not the products.



I wish I did more Vettes with Optimum as I'm sure there is a variable to it but sadly I don't.



Anthony
 
Nothing against Optimum but if it doesn't work for you try Mothers Powerpolish. It's fairly idiot prooof and leaves a nice finish.
 
Frito Bandito said:
Do you find the same to be true with Poli-Seal or does it typically take a little more product since its an all-in-one product?
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I use a little more since the product does two jobs. Still, it doesn't take much product.
 
I'm going to have to re-try OP and OC again. I had the same problem with hazing (PC and rotary) on my C5 (red) Vette. I repaired it with FP and Z-PC.

I too may have been using too much product. :confused:



Live and learn. :xyxthumbs
 
Accumulator, thanks for the kind words, but I don't think that I could compete with your levels of expertise/experience.



Frito, exactly what Scott said.
 
Interesting... I used the Optimum polish for the firs time the other day and found it worked beautifully. But my paint is fairly new so maybe the clear is a little softer.



I also used only a small amount as well.



But I only have the shop lights (flourescent? ) on a stand to look at the finish and it looked great... don't know what I would see with another light.
 
I've had great results with OP on a PC and rotary. I start with 4-5 pea size amounts on the pad to prime it, once it is primed I will only use 2 pea sized dots to do 1/2-3/4 a door.

Sometimes I just blot the pad over the area I need and add 1 pea sized amount. You would be surprized how much the pad holds once it has been primed.
 
Setec Astronomy & Bence- Oh stop it you guys :rolleyes: There are things that others do better than I do and things that I do better than others. Heh heh, I have a pretty favorable opinion of my abilities (and an ego the size of a small planet ;) ), but I'm a realist about this stuff.



For the little bit of polishing I do, I guess I'm getting more and more adamant about nice steep learning curves. And you can't get much steeper than having already become familiar with a product ;)



Setec brought up a good point about the pad-centric nature of the Optimum line, that's a bit antithetical to how *I* approach correction; I'm more product-centric overall. People doing a scad of vehicles in a commerical setting might very well benefit from getting the hang of something like OP.
 
Thanks to all who have provided input.



I still find it hard to believe you can use so little!!!! It would seem the pad would be doing most of the work with that amount of polish on there. I guess this does bode well from a business perspective...I can see my 32 ounce bottles of OP/OC lasting for DECADES! :)



One comment I noticed was that the finish looked perfect under flourescent....mine did too. Perhaps it is more the nature of silver paint, as I recall Accumulator addressing this topic some time ago, but the flourescents did not show any micromarring on my silver paint. It was only with an incandescent light that the marring became VERY evident.



The situation actually worked out well, because since the car was new (and prepped properly by myself) it was totally swirl-free. Only that one area was swirled and very slightly so. That enabled me to polish that area only, and, conversely, have a good litmus test as to how the polishes were working - since it was only a part of the hood, I could see the light relefting from the same angle on the non-marred part as well as the marred part....



What I think is disappointing is the finicky-ness of the OP/OC. I don't mind putting in the time for proper technique, but I must say I've become a bit spoiled with the menzerna products which, for all intensive purposes, have been very technique-independent.



With regards to poli-seal, I've had decent luck with it as an AIO, but there are 2 issues I've had - one documented and another I haven't read too much about. The first is that it "disappears" - you just have to trust it is there. The second is the work time. I've read that it has some swirl removing capabilities, but I've yet to see it make a dent in any type of swirling, no matter how minor. This may again come down to work time, as we've been discussing here with regards to the OP/OC. Perhaps my impatience is to blame for all of this disappointment!!!



As far as rotary goes - that makes sense as a rotary completely changes the dynamics of how a polish is worked/broken down, but at the same time, I'm reticent to use a rotary on a job that I know can be easily accomplished with a PC - I guess that goes back to the whole theory of using the least abrasive product for the job - I view tools for the job the same way (pads, buffers).



Another thing I've been thinking of is the color of the paint itself. Being that it was silver, it makes the product harder to see on the surface, which may have contributed to me using too much. With Menzerna, I already know how much to use, so it didn't matter what the surface looked like during buffing - I knew I was working the proper amount. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it) I've sold my black car, and don't anticipate owning another black car again, so I'll have to find a willing friend or colleague with a dark vehicle to test the Optimum on, as I'm still nervous about using it on a customer vehicle, due in part to my lack of familiarity with it.



I saw some mention of buffing videos, does anyone have a video of the optimum polishes being used by PC and/or Rotary? I'm determined to become proficient with these products!



T
 
SuperBuick said:
I must say I've become a bit spoiled with the menzerna products which, for all intensive purposes, have been very technique-independent.
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me too.....:xyxthumbs



Menzerna IP with an orange LC pad and PC at 5-6 finishes down wonderfully on my C5....
 
Before I ever had used Optimum, I had read here that...er...optimum results would come from using very little, so I didn't really have any appreciable learning curve, although I was working on a fairly light colored car with horrible swirls. I'm wondering if the lumpy polish episode also lead to some inconsistency in the product (bottle to bottle) which might account for differing user experiences.
 
How does the amount of Optimum polish and compound used compare to the amount of Menzerna PO106FF and PO85RD you should use?
 
All I've tried are Meg's, WG, and XMT. I want to find a brand and stick to it, learn it and get good with it. From what I'm hearing here, Optimum takes less to do the same amount of work as Menzerna and from comparing prices at a couple web sites, costs less per ounce too. Now, I know both products have their supporters and hey - I ain't tried either yet, but I'll try Optimum first.
 
Setec Astronomy said:
...I'm wondering if the lumpy polish episode also lead to some inconsistency in the product (bottle to bottle) which might account for differing user experiences.
Click to expand...

I strongly feel that inconsistancy has been an issue for a few people, including me. The first bottles I tried worked well. The price was right, so I stocked up and bought a half dozen more bottles. I found it on sale again, so I bought a half dozen more bottles plus a couple bottles of their compound, a half dozen gallons of their tire shine, protectant plus, OCW, etc. There was a ton of work stacking up for the summer and I decided to use nothing but Optimum. Big Mistake! Many of the OP bottles were so clumpy that I couldn't squeeze anything from them. It was suggested I take the lid off the bottle and pour it onto the pad, but clumps & chunks poured out. Why should I take the time to put this in a blender when I can reach for many other brands of product that have never caused me these kinds of problems. When I called Optimum and spoke to David, he sent me a new cap with the larger nozzle opening, which made no difference. In fact, I could stand on some of the bottles and nothing would come out of the nozzle! Some of the clumps were soft while others were far from what I would consider soft and some of this polish would marr the finish. I gave some away, threw some away and found that I still had some new unopened bottles of the old OP on hand.



The new version of OP hasn't given me any clumping issues, but some of the old OP I used was definitely a huge dissapointment to me. Optimum told me nothing was wrong with the old product and it worked just as well as their new version except for being clumpy. It's been over a year since this happened, but it's not something that I'll likely forget, especially since there was no satisfaction guarantee to replace the product.
 
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