Question about pads and circular polisher, experts needed.

Q

qwik

New member
Hey guys i recently decide to wetsand my car for the first time, its got a new paint job almost a year old now and it has alot of orange peel. I started off on the inside of the door because i didn't want to attempt this not quite knowing how to do it other than reading articles and videos. Anyway i picked up the vector polisher and a 7'' backing pad and a few 8.5'' "advanced" foam pads from www.properautocare.com. These pads aren't quite flat and now i know why i burned though my paint. AFter going in the learning section i see that the meguiars video they are using flat pads, and say not to hold it on the edge, i read somewhere TO hold it on the edge and not put the pad flat because regain more control that way. Anyway after i sanded a few areas with 1,000 i would use the wool pad with heavy cut compound and the shine came up real quick and everything was fine and dandy.



Switched to the medium cut cleaner and the yellow pad that isn't flat but edged, weird lookin thing found here. http://www.properautocare.com/adfoampadfor.html



Anyway immediately the surface wasn't as shiney as with the heavy cut and wool pad, it actually seemed to diminish the shine, i thought it was supposed to bring it back up more? It was difficult with this pad to polish due to the weird edge, sometimes i would catch the paint if u know what i mean. I didn't really burn through too bad, just a few spots, i know why now. Should i have gone with a regular flat meguiars pad such as the SoftBuff series? And why did the medium cut and fine cut cleaner with the yellow pads make the surface more cloudy, could it be that the pad wasn't really diminishing the polish as much as the wool pad was due to the lack of surface contact?



Regarding the softbuff pads i assume i should get the maroon one since i already have the wool pad. I have 3 compounds i use however. Heavy Cut power cleaner with the wool pad, medium and fine, should i use the medium cleaner with the maroon than buy the meguiars yellow "polishing" pad for the fine cut cleaner or just use another maroon?



How does the diamond cut compare to the heavy cut cleaner? Should i be using diamond cut instead?



I appreciate any help thanks.
 
Anyway immediately the surface wasn't as shiney as with the heavy cut and wool pad
Click to expand...



I dont have a ton of real life experience with this, but you usually have to follow up with a less intensive polish. The heavy cut basically does the majoirity of the work, and then the lighter polish will clean it up and give it its shine. Thats my understanding at least.
 
Yeah that is what i have read and have figured, which is why i am thinking the problem lies within the pads. I think that odd "advanced" pad is not hitting the surface correctly and i'm using the edge instead of lying down the pad flat. Its a bit difficult to understand about this pad but its just difficult to use IMO. I guess maybe i'll have to switch to a flat pad like softbuff. Anyone else?
 
If you are using a rotary and trying to polish the inside of the door the pads you are using are to larger. Even the Meguair's red pad will be to larger. I would suggest using the 4" pads that you can purchase. Any other pad will only buff on the edge.
 
well the door was to test, than i moved to an air lid than a bumper, not wet sanding though just using compounds to get some scratches out though. The air lid (which i did wetsand) did come out nice but i burned through at the very tip because of the edge of the damned pad. The bumper came out ok but like i said it was difficult to get the pad lay flat because it has a weird edge, should i just switch to a flat meguiars pad?
 
qwik,



One questions first......



1) What speed are you buffing at?



The RPM is important because when buffing out a new paint, especially after wet sanding, many folks tend to think thye need lots of speed to level the paint but this is untrue.



You are using a wool pad to cut the paint and you notice a nice shine comes to the finish. That's great so your next choice should of been something like DACP and a polishing pad set at about 1200 rpm's. Your initial buffing should be no higher that 2000 rpm's, which is in the high range.......1800 rpm's is perhaps best.



I have never used the Edge pads so I can't comment much on them but after your first initial cutting pass you should come back with a less aggressive product and a new foam polishing pad. Make sure you tape off ALL edges and raised areas of the body. Learn to "feather" the trigger around these areas so you are not using the full rpm.



You may want to try the Lake Country pads, especially the "orange" pad which is a cutting pad but also does a great job of polishing or at least setting up the paint to go right to a finishing pad.



Hope that helps,

Anthony
 
THanks for the reply Anthony. I wetsanded using 1,000, 1500 and 2,000 grit paper. As per many sites recommendations i used a heavy cut compound with a wool pad to remove the 1,000 & 1,500 grit sanding marks than the yellow pad and medium cut to remove the 2,000 grit and finally the fine cutting compound to get anything i missed with another yellow. I clean that than use a PC 7424 with menzerna intensive (which is stronger btw DACP or menzerna?) followed by Menzerna IP and Menzerna Glaze.



The airlid i did came out realy good with that combo, elminated just about all the little imperfections, air bubbles and orange peel in it. I was using a "safe" rpm which was always between 3-4 on my vector polisher's dial which is about 1500rpm, maybe a bit more.



I haven't seen the lake country pads but i will look into them. I would think that after i use the wool pad i would have to keep cutting the surface a bit more to remove the rest of the sanding marks, so going from wool pad and heavy cut compound to DACP would leave sanding marks right?
 
qwik,



Following the wool pad with DACP and an "orange" pad by Lake Country would most likely do the trick, thus eliminating one or two buffing steps.



I am guessing that DACP has a slight edge on the IP in terms of aggressivness.



Anthony
 
Just curious as to why some people are leading me to believe that after the wool pad DACP will take out the rest of the sanding marks created by the 1,000,1,500 and 2,000 grit sanding marks. According to meguiars videos on wetsanding aswell as a few other sources online regarding wetsanding i am doing the right thing. Not that i am disagreeing with those that have posted just merely questiong. Have you guys wetsanded and have actually seen optimal results going from wool pad directly to DACP and orange pad?? Thanks. Can you point me in the direction of an orange LC pad? I see ones for the porter cable but not a rotary.
 
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