Thinking its time to move up

[Chan]

PC is just too tedius for me, I need something faster. I`m thinking of a rotary but am unsure if I have the skill to do it. I`m thinking of going to a junk yard and buying a panel to practice on. Still unsure about what rotary to get, the Hitatchi is looking nice though, and affordable.

[David703]

IMHO you are going to need more than a panel to practice on. When I first started using a rotory I had three practice cars... beaters where the paint was shot. Each car comes with its different dangers. Just because you can buff a junkyard door panel, doesnt mean you can polish one that is vertically attached to a car. Around mirrors, trim, antennas, etc..And at a vertical angle instead of a nice horizontal one.



Each car is different, has different paint and different curves. An example... If you are polishing a hood of a car and come to the edge where it meets the fender, IF that fender is a little mis-aligned and is raised slightly, you will get a nasty surprise of breaching the clearcoat or digging into the primer on the fender.



When I started with a rotory a few years ago, I asked friends/girlfriends/neighbors that had really bad paint on cars if I could polish them. I made my share of mistakes. But with each mistake, I then learned how not to burn the paint "that way". And little by little I did beater cars and eventually didn`t make a mistake. BUT that doesn`t mean you are finished making them! EACH car you do, you run the risk of making a mistake. So if you are doing customer`s cars, you must be very very careful and not be distracted. Example: I was doing a beater car (luckily) and I thought my mistakes were behind me. I was polishing out a small scratch on the passenger door, near the window. I was carefully polishing and making sure that I didn`t burn the paint. I was watching carefully to what I was doing. My mistake was that I was watching the top of the pad where it was making contact with the paint, but I was unaware that the bottom of the pad was touching the painted door handle! Door handle paint and primer were stripped! Burned it right off!

So my point is that I learned correct pressure and angles over time, but I still made a mistake by not watching all areas of the pad and what they were contacting.



Don`t forget, pad selection, polish selection, speed of rotation, angle of rotation, pressure, time spent over a select area, etc.... are all important factors to learn. And each one of those has to be used correctly so you can properly correct paint defects.



Hope this helps.

[imported_themightytimmah]

I`d reccomend a Cyclo. I never could get far with a PC either, but I`ve had really good luck with my Cyclo, and it avoids all the risks of a rotary.

[s2skimon]

a few hoods, trunk lids from the junk yard sufficed for me.



a lot of time, patience and not expecting a HUGE increase in results right away should be your goal. I tell people the rotary is not the be all , end all. Its simply a tool that helps me remove swirls and defects a lot faster than a pc. Also practice "ruining" finishes so you`ll know where and how pads and compounds affect, adversely affect finishes. Burn some paint, try different things on the test panels to see how both pad and compound work. Move slowly and with a few months you`ll see better and better results. Be sure whatever passes you made with the pc won`t work with the rotary.



to this day i still get hologramming which is normal , which my PC takes care of, so do keep it around.



search and post your findings here as we can all help..

[Chan]

I`ve been also thinking about getting the adapter to turn a rotary into a DA machine. I`ve been looking at the cyclo and its a nice machine, but I think I`d be happier with a rotary.