Hello everybody! Recently I received the new Lake Country Ultra Fiber pad and wanted to share my experience with you. It was a true honor and much thanks goes out to Lake Country and Eric Dunn!
The test subject was a 2005 Dodge Neon SRT-4 ACR that belongs to the owner of Realtune Performance. Since the car was black I figured it would make the perfect showcase for this pad, good or bad. To start off, here's a shot of the true condition of the paint on the entire car:
I'm not going to cover the details of the pad, that's best left for Eric Dunn and Lake Country to release. I will say though that the material the microfiber is attached to is much firmer than the other pads on the market.
Here are a few shots of the pad and in comparison to a used Meguiar's 5" cutting disc:
For my test, I used the Meguiar's W67DA backing plate mounted to Griot's Garage Professional 6" ROP, Meguiar's D300 microfiber correction compound, machine speed 4, and paint was cleaned with my home brew cleaner.
Paint before:
After:
Before:
After:
I was having a tough time capturing the true condition of the paint with my phone, which was used so that I could send pictures right away without waiting. Here's the best picture I have that shows how well the pad finishes down:
As you can imagine, the polishing step was an absolute breeze and required very little effort. Talk about saving time! This alone should pay for the pad.
Now I did not capture a true 50/50 picture and I apologize for that. I will be using the pad again soon and plan to run a test with it using M105, the machine at various speeds, as well as working on polishing with M205 and Optimum Hyper Spray Polish. My first attempt at using M205 was not pretty at all, so I stuck with Lake Country tangerine hydro-tech pads!
Final Thoughts:
In my opinion this is the absolute best microfiber pad for compounding. With the low profile and firm center, it almost feels like you have the microfiber material mounted to just a backing plate. I didn't use nearly as much pressure as I do with the other cutting pads on the market. I experienced zero issues with this pad from start to finish. It's much easier to keep clean using a pad reconditioning brush or compressed air (my favorite), and clean up is really easy because the center material doesn't hold residue like the other foam cores. I really loved the Meguiar's cutting disc due to the lower profile center and still love the Optimum polishing disc for the cushion while finessing the paint after compounding. However, once I get the hang of this pad with a polish I think it will be a cost saver in the future.
Well that concludes my write up. Thanks for reading and I'm open to all comments and questions.
The test subject was a 2005 Dodge Neon SRT-4 ACR that belongs to the owner of Realtune Performance. Since the car was black I figured it would make the perfect showcase for this pad, good or bad. To start off, here's a shot of the true condition of the paint on the entire car:
I'm not going to cover the details of the pad, that's best left for Eric Dunn and Lake Country to release. I will say though that the material the microfiber is attached to is much firmer than the other pads on the market.
Here are a few shots of the pad and in comparison to a used Meguiar's 5" cutting disc:
For my test, I used the Meguiar's W67DA backing plate mounted to Griot's Garage Professional 6" ROP, Meguiar's D300 microfiber correction compound, machine speed 4, and paint was cleaned with my home brew cleaner.
Paint before:
After:
Before:
After:
I was having a tough time capturing the true condition of the paint with my phone, which was used so that I could send pictures right away without waiting. Here's the best picture I have that shows how well the pad finishes down:
As you can imagine, the polishing step was an absolute breeze and required very little effort. Talk about saving time! This alone should pay for the pad.
Now I did not capture a true 50/50 picture and I apologize for that. I will be using the pad again soon and plan to run a test with it using M105, the machine at various speeds, as well as working on polishing with M205 and Optimum Hyper Spray Polish. My first attempt at using M205 was not pretty at all, so I stuck with Lake Country tangerine hydro-tech pads!
Final Thoughts:
In my opinion this is the absolute best microfiber pad for compounding. With the low profile and firm center, it almost feels like you have the microfiber material mounted to just a backing plate. I didn't use nearly as much pressure as I do with the other cutting pads on the market. I experienced zero issues with this pad from start to finish. It's much easier to keep clean using a pad reconditioning brush or compressed air (my favorite), and clean up is really easy because the center material doesn't hold residue like the other foam cores. I really loved the Meguiar's cutting disc due to the lower profile center and still love the Optimum polishing disc for the cushion while finessing the paint after compounding. However, once I get the hang of this pad with a polish I think it will be a cost saver in the future.
Well that concludes my write up. Thanks for reading and I'm open to all comments and questions.
