Today was Bryan and I's first run out with the new CCS Technology pads from LakeCountry. Many thanks to Tim at CYC for the excellent service in sending out these pads. :thumb:
The pads use periodic recesses in the foam where the foam is closed cell to help prevent the polish from soaking into the foam so in theory you can more thoroughly work a polish as it doesn't soak up into the foam... The design of the pads is shown below, for the white foam pad:
The scrap panel of choice for testing today was a nighthawk black CTR door, so very soft paint was expected here. The door was masked up into three section to initally try out three pad and polish combos. The door before:
General marring here, not parituclarly bad with medium swirls... To tackle this, out first port of call was
Menzerna PO106FF Final Finish on the White CCS polishing pad.
A line of polish was applied to a raised section of the pad, and spread over the area at 600rpm. The polish was then worked in at 1200 and then 1500rpm until the residue went clear and finising pass made at 900rpm to refine the finish. The white polishing pad would be roughly equivalent to the
Meguiars W8006 Polishing pad. It felt easy to use, the rotary felt comfortable with the pad and it worked the polish very nicely indeed. Buffing off the residue gave the following results:
Defect 99% removed using this combo which would be expected given the reputation for soft Paint on modern Hondas... However, to test this theory (and the orange CCS pad), we decided to use PO85RD3.01
Intensive Polish on the orange CCS pad, followed by PO85RD on the black CCS pad to refine the finish. To start with, the orange pas was pretty stiff and thi made it a little awkward on the rotary with the pad skating a little, but it soon softened up a little and the pad became much easier to effectively control. One at this stage, I personally found it a little easier to control than the burgandy
Meguiars pads (both pads being easy to control). The following results were achived:
All defects were thoroughly removed, but at what cost? PTG readings showed on average a clearcoat loss of 10-15um for just the passes with IP! On soft paint, this is a pad and polish combo that you want to think very carefully about before using! Its highly effective, but also removes a lot of paint.
Since the paint was soft, we tried out the lowest abrasive combo we had available for fun too - PO85RD Final Finish on the black CCS pad and it achieved the following results:
90 - 95% defect correction, showing excellently the importance of the "less is more" approach to machine polishing as clearcoat removal to achieve this was within the error of the gauge (+/- 2um).
An important lesson for soft paint here, and we got the steel wool back out to highlight it... Just how little abrasive you need even for more severe marks on softer paints providing you correctly work the polish. Using wire wool, Nryan damaged the door again:
Deeper scratches and swirls this time, along with more general marring as well... One hit of PO85RD Final Finish on the black CCS finsihing pad rmeoved all of the general marring and a good number of the deeper marks as well, leaving a finish 70 - 80% corrected:
Stepping up to PO106FF Final Finish on the white CCS polishing pad yielded nearer 90% correction:
This highlights the importance of trying out low abrasive combinations first before cracking out the big guns as if the paint is soft, light abrasives are all that are needed for a great finish and excellent correction... whethrer you then step up to Intensive Polish and remove 10+um of paint to get the finish 100% defect freee is something you (and the owner if applicable) should think long and hard about, with a full set of thickness readings in front of you to help you decide.
Finally, for those of us kneeling on the ground to get to lower panels on a car, Bryan went all Blue Peter this morning and made a kneeling pad! Take some foam, wrap it in a clear plastic, and seal at the back with stick back plastic (sorry, black tape!
: ), and you have yourself a nice cusion that keeps your knees comfy while kneeling and also helps to keep your jeans clean:
Note - only kneel on the pad when it is on the ground, not on the car...
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