I'm fairly new to this level of detailing / paint correction so I figured I would share some of my lessons I learned along the way.
So last night I was finally motivated to finally test out some of my new stuff. I wanted to try to rotary again. Last time I was all over the place with it! I had a really hard time controlling it and was just a frustrating experience overall. So I came across these videos last night on the MOL forums:
Meguiar's Online - How to Introduction to Wetsanding and Rotary Buffing. (Video)
So after watching all 5 of these videos I was motivated and feeling confident on what I needed to do to get that rotary to work for me. I went all out! Here was my process. I only did the hood for time’s sake and really because that is the worst part of my car and need the most correction.
-Cleaned the surface with
Meguiar’s
Final Inspection QD (Car wasn’t that dirty. I washed it yesterday)
-Clayed in spots that needed it with Mother’s Clay Kit
-OC with wool pad on rotary at about 1800 rpm (lubed with QD every pass)
-SSR1 with white pad on rotary at about 1300 rpm (lubed with QD every pass)
-DG TPP #105 applied with a blue pad with the Ryobi DA (let cure for about 45 minutes and buffed with microfiber bonnet on the same blue pad)
-DG FCS #921 this morning to clean off some sap that the trees decided to deposit on the surface
-DG AW #951 after the #921
Here are my conclusions:
1) I’ll never use anything but a rotary for correction.
2) I like Poorboy’s products better for foam pads on a rotary and Optimum products for wool pads on rotary.
3) DG products ROCK!
4) I love the Ryobi DA for LSP application.
(Sorry for the crappy pictures… they are with our engineering community camera here at work.)
I now LOVE the rotary! Once you get the hang of it it’s so powerful and quick. The key that really helped me is the little side conversation in I think part 4 of those videos where he is talking to the guy about floor polishers and how you tilt them to steer them. That REALLY helped me. With that technique I wasn’t fighting the machine because it wanted to drive off its own merry little way. I was now using the power of the rotation to steer it. VERY helpful!
Previously, after my compounding steps I always look at the surface and was ike, “Shoot! This looks ready for LSP!” Well that tells me that I wasn’t correcting enough. I mean when I think of it, if I am stripping a layer of CC off to correct blemishes then I wouldn’t think the surface should be looking perfectly shiny. Well with the wool pad and OC it didn’t! It was this dull but yet very smooth surface. You can see that the minor blemishes were cut away but it left this hazy finish. That’s were the SSR1 and the white pad kicked it! Man that stuff made it POP! I loved that stage more than anything! So fulfilling and satisfying.
I want to pick up a bottle of SSR2.5 for lighter correction with a foam yellow or orange pad on the rotary. It would be less aggressive but still more aggressive than OC with a DA. I tried my new yellow pad last night with the rotary and OC and was getting decent results and might have finished the whole project with it but I dropped it on my muddy driveway. So I switched to the wool pad. Now I’m glad I did because of how effective the wool pad was for me! I wasn’t crazy about the OC on the foam pads though. I figured out the reason too… the OC is much thinner, more liquefied than the SSR polishes. So, on a foam pad it tends to get absorbed into the foam much quicker. Then you have to worry about the pressure you are applying too much because with all that product soaked into the foam. If you lay into it, you’ve basically applied fresh product again to the working surface. With the OC and the wool pad it wasn’t like that… it just broke down so fast you didn’t even have to worry about it. But I had to be really careful with that combo… it generates heat quick!
The SSR1 on the other hand is really thick. So I liked it on that white foam pad. Just a little bit and it worked very nicely and broke down perfectly. You can tell when the abrasives were gone and you were only working with the oils. Very nice!
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