PC not tough enough on swirls....

L

-Lebowski-

New member
If you are limiting yourself to one backing plate and one size pad I feel that you are really limiting what your PC can do. Today I tackled some swirls and light scratches on the bumpers of my wifes car. I was using speed 6 with a orange LC VC pad and some Menzerna Final Polish II and I could not get them to budge. I was going to get the rotary out but then thought, hey, I havent used my 4 inch pads in a while.



With a quick change to a 3.5inch backing plate and a white pad with the same Menzerna FPII (remember kids, least abrasive on up) and hit it at speed 6 and they melted away. Before you say that the PC is not strong enough spend a few $$ and get a 3.5inch backing plates and some cyclo pads and give it a try. You might find that you have a whole new level of defect removal at your finger tips.



:usa
 
yeah accumulator recomended i try a 3.5 a few months back and i love it, i use them just as often as anything, heres a q though, with the 3.5 and a cycly pad is that basically the equivilent to half a cyclo polisher? never used one.
 
VaSuperShine said:
yeah accumulator recomended i try a 3.5 a few months back and i love it, i use them just as often as anything, heres a q though, with the 3.5 and a cycly pad is that basically the equivilent to half a cyclo polisher? never used one.
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I guess that I cannot speak to that because I do not know what the power is that a cyclo puts out in comparrison to what a PC puts out.



As far as the action that it takes yes I would say its half of a cyclo.
 
VaSuperShine said:
with the 3.5 and a cycly pad is that basically the equivilent to half a cyclo polisher? never used one.
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Well, I've never damaged b/c paint with a Cyclo but I *have* damaged it with a PC/Cyclo green pad. Not saying that the Cyclo wouldn't have done it too in the same situation, but I was still surprised when it happened and I've been doing this stuff for a long, long time.
 
I use 4" spot pads on my cordless drill to remove deeper scratches, then go over it with a 4" on the DA. It works great.
 
DavidB said:
I use 4" spot pads on my cordless drill to remove deeper scratches, then go over it with a 4" on the DA. It works great.
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Interesting, where do you get a backing plate that attaches to a drill?
 
1 Clean WS6 said:
Well said indeed!!!! :tribe:
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Also, I think some are scared to give the PC a little pressure, a little extra pressure on speed 6 on a 4" pad can help the abrasives work in a little better.
 
I read the thread Lebowski posted, but I also read David's Autopia guide to detailing and he states NOT to use pressure and let the polish do the work. Obviously, some of you here feel David's incorrect. So why do you think David would say not to apply pressure? It gets a tad confusing for a newbie like me!!!
 
VaSuperShine said:
...heres a q though, with the 3.5 and a cycly pad is that basically the equivilent to half a cyclo polisher? never used one.
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Hmm... not sure that's right. A cyclo accomplishes what it does partly due to the fact that it generates a lot of heat (which is also why it's not good for beginners.) A PC on the other hand generates very little heat (which makes it ideal for beginners and experts alike.)



That being said, I <B the 4" backing plate and 4" LC orange cutting pad for both serious defecet removal and working in tighter places.
 
erik7 said:
I read the thread Lebowski posted, but I also read David's Autopia guide to detailing and he states NOT to use pressure and let the polish do the work. Obviously, some of you here feel David's incorrect. So why do you think David would say not to apply pressure? It gets a tad confusing for a newbie like me!!!
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For typical light polishing situations, you don't need to use pressure.



-however-



Pressure is needed to allow some of the higher abrasives to work their magic.



If you've ever used sandpaper, you know that you can lightly sand a surface with a fine grit paper and it will do what it needs to do. However, when you move to a coarse grit, you need to "work it" a little more to get the grit to remove what you're trying to remove.



With me personally, I have the variable contact pads, so I *have* to push a little bit to get the whole pad in contact with the surface.
 
I don't find the Cyclo to generate much, if any, more heat than the PC with a 4" pad, but anyhow...



erik7 said:
I read the thread Lebowski posted, but I also read David's Autopia guide to detailing and he states NOT to use pressure and let the polish do the work. Obviously, some of you here feel David's incorrect. So why do you think David would say not to apply pressure? It gets a tad confusing for a newbie like me!!!
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Perhaps people like David have a greater concern about their advice being (mis)used by somebody who will then blame them for whatever happens. It's not (IMO) that anybody's wrong or right, but rather that there are different approaches that might produce different results.



I can say "go ahead and lean on the PC/Cyclo, I do it all the time", which *is* my advice BTW. If somebody takes that to some weird extreme and damages their paint it's not my problem; I can just shrug it off while feeling sorry that it happened. But David is running a business and a website and has to be more careful than I do about what people do with the info he disseminates.



It's like Richard Griot advocating approaches that I find so mild as to be worthless: at least his advice/products/etc. won't cause any damage.



In my experience, rotaries work fine with very little (if any) applied pressure, but ROs like the PC/Cyclo need some pressure for anything except the lightest correction on the softest paints. But note that "lightest correction" and "softest paints" are kinda vague and relative terms..
 
I just can't get the hang of using the PC, I use Rotary 100% of the time these days. Maybe I just don't have the patience or I need to take a class.
 
Slickery said:
I just can't get the hang of using the PC, I use Rotary 100% of the time these days. Maybe I just don't have the patience or I need to take a class.
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technique has ALOT to do with it. you can have two people use the same set-up and the results can be far from the same...
 
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