Optimum Compound and Polish Comparison

**ISLANDSBEST** · 11-08-2001, 11:42 PM

FLONI -- that`s terrible. Sorry to hear about it.

**Langley Interior Car Kare** · 11-09-2001, 01:18 AM

i used to use a car cover when i parked in the local municipal parking lot...but then they raised the fee to something insane.....but considering the car is on the street all the time...im happy with the way it is....people have it worse....and of course im so jealous of all the garages i see on here....even the driveways.....i hate u all...:p

**Don2000g** · 11-11-2001, 02:50 AM

Using a car cover can be a life saver. It`s perfectly safe to use a car cover on a well maintained car. If your car has a very light layer of dust on it then just quick detail before you place the cover on. As for dirt or wind going underneath the car cover, that`s really not a very realistic scenario. The car cover goes all the way down to bottom of the car and covers most of the tires as well. Laters.

**seech** · 04-14-2010, 01:18 AM

After my initial detail with ONR and the Optimum Polish II here:
http://truthindetailing.com/Forum/showthread.php?t=3277

I decided to do another comparison between Optimum Compound II, Optimum Polish II, Optimum Polish and Poli-Seal. Only this time I tried it out on a black car with the softest paint which I have yet to come across, a Honda Accord. (For whatever reason, the Honda paint over here is very soft.)

Started off with an Optimum No-Rinse (ONR) wash.

50/50 after ONR.

Taped up for the comparison:

Condition of the paint before:

Plenty of swirls all over and fairly consistent over all of the test panels.

First up, Optimum Compound II (OCII) with a Meguiar`s Soft Buff 2.0 Cutting Pad.

The OCII had a long work time for a compound and very little dusting. The compound and cutting pad left a fine consistent haze from the cutting.

Next up was the Optimum Polish II (OPII) with a Meguiar`s Soft Buff 2.0 Polishing Pad.

I used the OPII on the previous detail and found it to have a very long work time with very minimal dust.

The OPII was also used to remove the haze from the OCII.

The OPII finished off quite well on white paint. How will it do on the soft black paint?

The cutting marks from the OCII and the swirls were completely removed and the finish looked good enough. But..... on the soft Honda paint, some very mild hologramming was visible on both panels.

Time for Optimum Finish (OF). As the cutting and finishing ability of a product is also dependent on the pads used, I decided to try out OF with a Meguiar`s Soft Buff 2.0 Polishing Pad and a Finishing Pad.

OF is supposed to have very minimal cut and is meant as a final finishing product so it would be interesting to see what sort of correction could be achieved with OF and a polishing pad.

Most of the finer swirls/scratches were removed with the OF/polishing pad combo but some of the deeper swirls which were easily removed with OPII were still present. This combo could be used to correct paint with minor defects and it left a very nice finish.

The OF/finishing pad combo not surprisingly had the lowest cutting power and did not achieve much correction with plenty of swirls still left on the paint.

OF was also used on the first two panels with a finishing pad to remove the mild hollowgramming from the OPII.

Finally, Poli-Seal (PS). Optimum`s All-In-One (AIO) product which is supposed to polish, finish and protect the paint in one step. I have read a lot about PS on the international detailing forums and was very keen to try it out.

PS was supposed to be easy to work with and a long work time but I found that in this application with the polishing pad it tended to dry up and cake on the pad. Applying more product did not seem to help and it left an uneven finish behind.

Some more testing will be required to see which pad combo will be required for the PS.

Before and after:

The entire hood was treated to one more pass of OPII followed by OF/Finishing Pad.

After OPII & OF.

After the trials on the hood, the entire car was waxed with Optimum Car Wax (OCW) which gave the black paint a deep glossy glow. Very impressive for a spray on wipe off product.

How about some full sun shots you say?

The front fenders were not corrected and the swirls are still very visible.

My favorite shot. Capturing the full sun and some awesome reflections off the paint.

Thanks for looking. Comments and feedback are most welcome.

**imported_POPPAJ** · 05-29-2010, 08:30 AM

Thanks for posting, remarkable work! Lately I`ve been adding a little OPII to my PS and getting better results.

**bmw5541** · 05-29-2010, 02:58 PM

Great write-up seech.

You are becomming the resident expert on all things Optimum.

**seech** · 05-31-2010, 07:07 PM

Originally Posted by bmw5541

Great write-up seech.

You are becomming the resident expert on all things Optimum.

No, not an expert. Just trying out their products. Can`t wait to get my hands on their new spray compound and polish. Should be great!!!

**Todd@RUPES** · 06-01-2010, 06:46 AM

Wow, very good review mi amigo! Thank you for sharing with the forum!!!!

**seech** · 06-01-2010, 06:53 PM

Thanks todd.

**imported_Sal329** · 06-02-2010, 06:49 AM

What machine were you using? Speeds? I used PS for the first time the other weekend and I found it did not correct as well as I heard, meg d151 was a lot better but the look ps gave to the color was fantastic and it cleaned well. I used it on a meg polishing pad and pc speed 6. Thank you for the review it was great, read your blog lots of great reviews there as well

**seech** · 06-03-2010, 07:41 AM

Originally Posted by Sal329

What machine were you using? Speeds? I used PS for the first time the other weekend and I found it did not correct as well as I heard, meg d151 was a lot better but the look ps gave to the color was fantastic and it cleaned well. I used it on a meg polishing pad and pc speed 6. Thank you for the review it was great, read your blog lots of great reviews there as well

Hey Sal. I used a Makita 9227C, speed ranging from 600 to 1200 rpm.

In this test I had some issues with the PS gumming up and being hard to remove but after getting some feedback from other PS users, I tried it again using less product and it worked great. The only issue was the level of correction or rather the lack of it. Indeed the D151 had more cutting power but as far as the quality of finish goes, PS seems to finish better.