E300Diesel
New member
Finally had a nice weekend to play with the Makita on my daily driver, '05 Taurus. Overall the paint was in great condition, but there were some RIDS and I wanted to bring the shine up a notch and try to "jeweling". I went over most of the car with a LC CCS white pad and Optimum Polish. Result looks great. When I got to the hood, considering it takes a lot of abuse, I decided to try the Optimum Compound with an orange pad. It was already darker by the time I got to the hood, so I had the exterior lights on and this is where I noticed the difference.
In the daylight the rest of the car looked great, nice reflection, shine, etc....
I had a great reference point as there was a lamp above the car which I could see reflecting off of the bottom of the good. After one pass with the orange CCS pad and Optimum Compound, I had the perfect (looked so to me :wow: )finish as the lamp that was perfectly reflected on the hood, like a crystal clear mirror. Only issue I had was that at times the compound would clump up and discard littel rolls of product. My running speeds were 1-2 to spread the product and ramped it up to 3 to break down, then back down a couple clicks with no pressure passes. While running at speed 3 I was applying medium pressure to get the correction that was needed.
I am assuming that:
a) I may have been using too much product
b) too large of an area being worked (i.e. I worked the hood in 2 halves, rather than 4 smaller areas)
c)?? (Fill in here) :hifive:
BTW: As a newb, I was surprised that a rather moderatly aggressive approach was able to bring out a perfect reflection and shine, LSP ready for sure.
Safe to assume the paint is rather hard?
Pix hopefully to follow
In the daylight the rest of the car looked great, nice reflection, shine, etc....
I had a great reference point as there was a lamp above the car which I could see reflecting off of the bottom of the good. After one pass with the orange CCS pad and Optimum Compound, I had the perfect (looked so to me :wow: )finish as the lamp that was perfectly reflected on the hood, like a crystal clear mirror. Only issue I had was that at times the compound would clump up and discard littel rolls of product. My running speeds were 1-2 to spread the product and ramped it up to 3 to break down, then back down a couple clicks with no pressure passes. While running at speed 3 I was applying medium pressure to get the correction that was needed.
I am assuming that:
a) I may have been using too much product
b) too large of an area being worked (i.e. I worked the hood in 2 halves, rather than 4 smaller areas)
c)?? (Fill in here) :hifive:
BTW: As a newb, I was surprised that a rather moderatly aggressive approach was able to bring out a perfect reflection and shine, LSP ready for sure.
Safe to assume the paint is rather hard?
Pix hopefully to follow
