New to detailing, bought Kit, what am I missing?

SiegeX

New member
Hi all,



I just got a 2007 5-series BMW w/14K miles a week ago and overnight became a detailing enthusiast. I also have my wife's '98 mustang in pretty bad shape as far as the exterior goes. There has definitely been some serious etching by overhead pipe water from our previous parking garage. There is also quite a bit of swirls and haze as you can imagine.



My first step in becoming my own detailer was to purchase an all encompassing kit. I stumbled upon Adam's Polishes by the way of his video tutorials and have read some decent reviews on his products. For this reason I bought Adam's Absolute Essentials Detailing kit as well as his Porter Cable Kit. Ive watched his video tutorials numerous times to make sure I do all the steps correctly.



My first question is if there is anything that you guys feel is a must have/do that the kit doesn't provide? (besides brushes, I bought a boar's hair and fender well brush elsewhere.)



Reading some of the posts here it seems that my PC 7424 is not really that capable of removing anything but the lightest of scratches/swirls and perhaps some minor etching. I don't know how much cutting ability Adam's orange pad (most aggressive) provides along with his swirl and haze remover but I have a feeling I'm going to need a decent amount to get the mustang to shine. Am I screwed without a rotary buffer? I'm cautious of going that direction due to its ability to burn through paint, although I could always use my wife's car as a guinea pig :2thumbs: Any suggestions on what I can do and stick with the PC? Is Adam's product sufficient?



Finally, my BMW seems to have what you guys call 'orange peeling.' I understand this is quite common for later model BMW's. Ive read that the method to rid these micro-bumps in the clear is to wet sand them flat. Now there is a saying that goes "The perfect is the enemy of the good." I have a feeling wet sanding a BMW with 14K miles on it might fall into that category, especially for a newb like me. Thoughts?



I appreciate any and all advice on these topics.



Thanks!
 
Just as a follow up, I did my first detail on labor day weekend on my wife's '98 mustang. The result I got was great by her standards but just good by mine. The car had a mirror finish that it hasn't seen in a decade but I wasn't able to fully get rid of all the swirls and scratches.



I don't know if there is a color standard for pads as far as aggressiveness goes, but I'm hoping the pad is fine but the polish wasn't up to snuff. Will this Adam's orange pad plus this M105 I've been hearing about do the trick? Will I see M105's true potential with a PC, or would I need to get a Flex or Rotary to see results? It would bum me out to have to cough up more money to buy the former and I'm too inexperienced to use the latter.



Also, as mentioned in my first post, these pads seem to be fairly large compared to the rest of the competition, 7.5" to be exact. At speed 6, my PC must have hit some resonant frequency because it felt like holding a jackhammer. Speed 5 was much more manageable but even with that, the next day my right hand was all gimped out like I just put it through a workout from hell. I'm not positive what size counterweight the PC comes with by default, but I've seen 6" counterweights sold online. Is the counterweight in respect to the size of the pad or the size of the backing plate? If its the pad then I'm still off by 1.5".



Sorry for the long winded text/questions, and if you read this far I really appreciate it, honest!
 
Hey, I'm surely no expert on any of this. I myself am looking to buy a PC with the right pads but cant really get anyone to answer my question lol. I think my taurus is in about the same shape as your Mustang...small scratches and such, I have a few water spots too.



You say you were using 7.5 pads, and ive done a lot of reading on here and it seems to me that the 4 inch pads with the PC seems to be the way to go. The 7.5 kills your power...its distributed thru out too large of a space. With a 4", it focuses on just that area. So maybe you can give that a try and see if it does a better job knocking those scratches out. I've seen the 5" and 6" backing plates but i havent come across the 4" one yet.



Hope this small amount of advice helps...with the 4, i also think you can crank it up to speed 6 no problem. Good luck, keep us posted!
 
you should be fine with the PC. I've never used adam's polish or pads but I noticed a good difference when I went down tot he 4" pads, particularly when using orange lake country pads. for finishing polish I just use my 5.5 pads. I have a few 6.5 inch pads but I try to stay away from them completely. they're just too darn big to work with. I persoanlly like having a good slection of pads both 4" and 5.5" with the 2 backing plates for both of those sizes.
 
OK, so it looks like I have everything I need from the kit, but the Pads are just not up to snuff. I've had great customer service with Adam's so far, I think I might be able to tell them I'm dissatisfied with their pads and get my money back, we'll see.



Here is what I think I'm going to get:



Compounding/Cutting: Yellow 4" CCS & Orange 4" CCS

Polishing: 5.5" White CCS

Finishing: 5.5" Blue CCS



I think having the both the yellow and the orange is important so I don't over or under kill anything. I'm not sure if I need multiple polishing pads, like the green or black. Same thing for the Finishing pad, there is a softer red pad but I don't have any car that has super sensitive paint that I think warrants it.



Any comments on my choices?
 
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