First time with a rotary

S

seracis

New member
I only spent about 20 minutes on 1 side of my truck's cab area. It's not perfect, but it's been a long day and I am beat, so the full deal will have to come later. I bought the only rotary with 100 miles (GMC {Global Machine Company} from Lowe's) for $75 about a week ago but had to wait on some pads. Thanks to CMA for getting me a yellow cutting, white polishing and wool leveling pad, as well as a backing plate. I had to try it all out just a little tonite, so here's what happened:



QD ( barely spotted from rain yesterday)

Meg's #2, yellow on rotary (left a little micro marring)

SFX-2, Sonus DAS orange on PC

Meg's #9, Sonus DAS green on PC

Meg's #20



I probably could have skipped the SFX-2 step but I wanted to see how big of a difference each step made. There are still some deeper scratches left, but I want to get it out in the sun to get a better look at it before I go hog-wild. It's no April Extreme Detail entry, but it's a start.



before:

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after:

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before:

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after:

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before:

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after:

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for a newbie with a rotary i'd suggest staying away from Megs#2 as its fairly aggressive and was designed for single stage paint-the rotary does make the work faster:)
 
I've used the PC for probably 6-8 hours total since I got it. Only had the rotary turned on for maybe 4-5 minutes and it did more than I was expecting. I think I'm in love with what the rotary can do in such a short time. I kept it on it's lowest rpm (1000) and made sure to spin off of the angles (sounds right in my head). I think I need a step more aggressive and my paint would be about as perfect as it's gonna get. I'm thinking about DACP or PB SSR 2.5. I can't get much at all locally. We have 2 auto paint stores and 1 of them is O'Reilly's. That's where I got #2, #9, #3 and #26. My buddy gave me a new bottle of #20 tonite, so I thought I'd try it out. My truck is a rolling guinea pig. It has #16 on the left side of the hood, Wolfgang sealant on the right, and WG topped with #16 in the middle. I wanted to see what both looked like after a while. I don't know how much longer I can stand the dusty spots from the rain. I don't want to QD because the wax content could alter the outcome. Now my truck has #20 on the left front fender and driver's doors. I can't see much of a shine difference but the slickness is very obvious.



As for my experience with the SFX line of polishes, I'd have to say that the SFX-3 removed most of the swirls from my hood via PC, the SFX-2 removed the micro marring from the PC/orange/#9, and the SFX-1 has only been used once on my wife's Odyssey with no noticable difference (I wasn't near the Autopian I am now, which isn't much), but now I might notice something different. Her paint is in near perfect condition. I put a fresh coat of #26 on it 3/29. We'll see how it holds up. I want to try the SSR line as well as Menzerna IP, but the wife says I gotta take it easy on the product collection for a while. Anyone out there wanna trade some SSR/IP for something I've got? Check the list in my sig.
 
Check you local yellow pages for some auto body supply shops. You'll never know so many of these places existed and most of them do carry some decent stuff from Megs and 3M. DACP with the rotary at 1200-1400 works great; follow up with some #80 or #82 and you are good to go.
 
Actually, I can name every single body shop in town and none of then carry (sell) anything. I've seen the work they do and it's nowhere near autopian, so I don't need any advise from them. The yellow pages list one place, O'Reilly's. This is a town of 50K people and you see what kind of selection I have. Thank God for the internet.
 
The 3M PI-III stuff is pretty user-friendly with the rotary too. I like the RC (05933) and the MG (05937). These also work great by PC/hand.
 
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