Wow, this is a nice thread for rotary rookies like myself. I gave it my first go this weekend using a Chicago Electric 7" variable speed rotary. It did an awesome job, but the pads didn't hold up very well. This was partially due to the quality of pad, but also, I was using the wrong technique as well. I have massive swirls on my car so I opted to use
Meguiars Fine Cut #2 and a foam pad. I could only find Turtle Wax brand polishing pads so that's what I used. I destroyed two of them, only finishing half of my car. Instead of the "wet buff" technique, I tried to buff until the product was gone. Bad idea. I kept getting caked product on the panels and it was pissing me off. But after reading some posts here, I see what the mistakes I made were. But for being my first time, I feel I did a damn good job on the part of my car that got done, it looks like a brand new paint job. I love it!
I got my rotary on Saturday for $29 at Harbor Freight. I ordered my PC 7424 sunday night from top of the line, I figure it would be better on the less agressive jobs and the more frequent one's too.
Does anyone ever use terry cloth bonnets on a rotary or DA? I'm kinda thinking that I'm gonna use the foam pads for cutting, swirl removing, etc, terry for applying polish/wax, and wool for final buffing. I am totally new to foam pads, on my last RO I only used terry and wool for the same applications as mentioned above. The wool made my Civic shine like the sun, I always finished with a wool pad and QD, worked like a charm.