Dan@Adams

Just brainstorming and I could be wrong, but you might be missing some of the slickness on the surface since you sprayed the foam right onto the dry vehicle surface. I will usually do a pre-rinse with the water hose or pressure washer, and then begin foaming. Maybe pre-soak your wash pad with some water too if you want to try the One-Bucket option again. I will admit that I still do a Two or Three Bucket Wash even if I'm using a foamer though - like you I'm guessing, I like the added feeling of safety with having a Soap Bucket and a Rinse Bucket even when using a foaming device 🙂

Just make sure to be very careful if you ever machine polish PPF. A lot of the newer films are self-healing and typically should not need polishing for quite some time. PPF can heat up fast from a machine polisher, and it can be quickly damaged. If you do machine polish, test in a small area, using a slower machine speed and no downward force on the surface.

Yep, nearly every C5 and C6 Corvette I have worked on have had hard to very hard clear coat, other than one Mag Red C5 that was a repaint from a wreck. Our blue Compound with a Microfiber Cutting Pad followed up with a White Foam Pad and our white Polish will get it looking great - you may need to use a Blue Foam Pad with Compound as a middle step, but on such a bright color like Torch Red, that may not be necessary. You can find the Compound & Polish Combo HERE if you are looking to purchase it. Along the same topic, I detailed a centennial edition Z06 in Carbon Flash Metallic about 3 years ago now - that was one of the more challenging vehicles I've ever machine polished! Most of the C7's I've worked on have been more forgiving, and seem to have clear coat in the soft to medium range. I haven't had a chance to polish a C8 yet - @BRZN, myself, and a few others cleaned several C8's using Waterless Wash and Detail Spray at Carlisle and the National Corvette Museum last summer. We used a clay bar on two of them, but unfortunately there wasn't enough time to get a machine polisher out to see how they correct. One of our VP's just recently purchased a C8 in red, so I'll see if he will let me work on it whenever I'm allowed to travel out to Colorado again. Hopefully there will be a few C8's at Carlisle later this summer for us to work on too 🙂

So glad to see you back here! I hope you are staying safe, and thank you for everything you do with the Fire Department in your community

Congrats! For what it's worth, I like to reapply Ceramic Spray Coating about every 4-6 months on my daily driver just because I like how easy it is to apply and remove 🙂

Hey Mark! I don't believe our supplier changed for the deluxe air fresheners, but I can certainly bring this up for discussion with the product development and marketing teams. Was it a particular scent deluxe air freshener that you noticed was less potent, or the deluxe in general? Like Rich, I haven't noticed any difference, but I haven't tried them all out yet either.

@GXPaycheck sorry I'm late to respond here, but no, not without some engineering. The Adam's Air Cannon hose has a plastic twist and lock coupler at the end that inserts into the Air Cannon. This coupler diameter is about a quarter-inch larger than the outlet on the Master Blaster, so you would need to remove the whole plastic assembly and then somehow clamp down the larger diameter hose to make it air-tight; however, the Air Cannon hose is very flexible in terms of self-expanding and moving around, but the outer diameter of the hose is very firm and will not squeeze in at all with just my hands, so I'm not sure a clamp would secure it down tight either without cracking the hose itself. I think the best way to try to make this work would be to use some thick rubber o-rings inside of the hose to make the opening a smaller diameter, and then some type of clamp, but it could still potentially come loose from the Master Blaster.

Hi Chris, we have received an overwhelming influx of orders for Hand Sanitizer and Hand Soap over the past few weeks, from people all over the country in urgent need for these items, many of which are new customers. Social media is a very powerful thing, so a few re-shares of posts by a few celebrities and other large Instagram accounts saw our orders increase dramatically. I just heard from @Chris@Adams yesterday that the FBI in West Virginia recently put in their second large bulk for Hand Sanitizer, and that is just one example of bulk order requests that we are receiving from companies and emergency services all over the country. They must observe social distancing practices at headquarters, staying 6-feet apart in the pick, pack, and ship lanes, so this slows things down a bit as well for safety reasons. Our team members that are processing, packing, and shipping orders have been working in shifts for a few weeks straight now, with order processing running 16+ hours each day to try to keep up with orders. The operations manager also hired 12 new people to help keep up with demand. I want to give credit to our Customer Service team members too, that have been putting in some very long days to try to catch up with all of the email requests and phone calls. If anyone needs an order urgently, I would recommend to call or email first to see if we can expedite in some way - please keep in mind that we cannot currently expedite Hand Sanitizer. These are indeed different times this past month, and hopefully we will get back to more normal processing times soon. We do appreciate the understanding in shipping delays, and we certainly thank you all for your continued support and business

Always good times at Carbones! Please stay safe out there as well friend!

Yes definitely! I updated the original post last week with Wheel & Tire Cleaner recommendations: Wheel & Tire Cleaner 2:1 - Fender wells and engine bay 1:1 - Maintenance cleaning of lightly dirty wheels and tires I can save I have tested it at about 25% diluted with water and 50% diluted with water in my 16oz bottle and it still gives nice results, though you obviously want to use it at full-strength if you have very discolored tires or dirty wheels. It's one of my most used products now!

I looked around in my storage and unfortunately I don't have them. If I do find them somewhere else I will post an update here.

Yep, absolutely! You can reuse all of the machine pads. I have some pads that are 5 years old now. I wash them after every use. I use some Eco All Purpose Cleaner or Microfiber Revitalizer & Brightener to scrub the pads with my thumbs or the Pad Conditioning Brush, then rinse very thoroughly with water and squeeze them until just clear water is rinsing out of them. Then I like to let them air dry or I'll use the Blaster Sidekick to dry them out - this seems to create less dust during the next use too.

We had a box of pumps in one of our show rigs a few years back. I can't remember if I took them or if they got shipped back to HQ. If I have the box I'll send you and Alex some no problem. I'll check and let you know 🙂

If the trunk has heavier imperfections, work in a smaller 1-foot by 1-foot area at a time, using the speeds that The Guz suggested - about speed 4-4.5 with slower arm movement, moving the polisher about 1" per second or so - almost like a slow-motion movement. Do 50% overlap with a small amount of downward pressure on passes as well, just a little bit more than the weight of your hand on the machine - not too much that it prevents it from oscillating and rotating. Make sure to monitor the temperature of the panel. Feel the panel every so often with the back of your hand to make sure that it is not getting too warm or hot - heat is what will cause clear coat strike-through. With the Microfiber Cutting Pad, brush it back up after every work-area when you power off the machine. When you apply Compound to the pad, I like to spread it around on the pad with my finger some before even putting it onto the panel, to help distribute the Compound more evenly across the pad face.

Sorry I missed the replies to this thread over the weekend. Is it the Polish or the Heavy Correcting Compound that is drying on the surface? Heavy Correcting Compound will tend to do this, as it is more aggressive and will also dust some. It can leave a hazy appearance as you work in it - do 2-3 passes in each direction (left-right and up-down) in your work area. Wipe off as much as you can without straining or using too much effort to possibly scratch the surface, then the orange Correcting Polish and Orange Foam Pad will take care of the rest. The orange Correcting Polish and white Polish (current formula) should be very minimal effort to easily wipe them from the surface. If polish is slinging everywhere - there's a few possible reasons. Before you power on the machine, always spread the compound/polish around on the panel in your 2-foot by 2-foot or smaller work area. Only turn the machine on and off when the pad is contacting the paint surface - if you turn the machine on in mid-air, it will instantly sling polish everywhere. If you pull the machine off of the surface too early when powering it off, this can also sling polish. Make sure to always "walk-off" the machine, meaning that when you disengage the trigger or click the power button off (on the Mini), you continue to walk the pad on the surface as it slows down and stops. You need to keep the pad moving, because if you shut the machine off and keep it in one spot, then you will have a large buildup on polish in that area and it will be more difficult to wipe away. You do not want to keep the white Polish on the surface for very long, especially if you aren't planning to do the next step until the weekend. Leaving it on the surface for 10-30 minutes might be ok in some temperatures and humidity, but best practice would be to remove the residue after you finish polishing a panel. For example, if I'm polishing a door and I have it split up into 2-4 sections, I will do one section, wipe away the majority of the polish while just leaving a small outline of the edge at where I stopped. Then when I go to the next section on the door, I know where to overlap the previously polished section. Then I'll wipe down the full door when I'm done.

Sweet Camaro! I always loved the grunt and torque from the LT1...it was so much fun autocrossing my buddies '96 when he had it. I think you'll be very pleased with the Swirl Killer. Which one did you purchase, the 15MM or 15MM Pro? Either option should work great!

Hey everyone, quick update here. I edited the original post of this thread to include dilution ratios of some of our newer products and added them to the list. The rest of the post is a bit outdated now with old pictures and so on, so I'm working on a new Blog write-up for the website as I type this. I'm planning on explaining dilution ratios similar to this thread, but also including percentages of mixtures since some people find that much faster and easier to make some custom mixtures. If you have any other suggestions, thoughts, or questions, please post them here and I will see if they can be incorporated into the new write-up! Thank you!

It's doubtful that we will bring these specific pumps back, as they clogged up and leaked too much with certain chemicals. This was the main reason we discontinued them and went back to the normal pull-top caps for non-spraying products.

Moved this topic to the Detailing Library section since this contest is now over. Stay tuned for more videos and giveaways in the near future!

Got it Tom! You should see an order confirmation email shortly (make sure to check your spam and junk folders in your email too). Thanks again everyone for watching and participating 🙂

Thank you so much for the fast fix Gerry!

Hi Mike, you should be able to use pads interchangeably, but keep in mind that competitor color schemes for pads may not match the color-coded pads that we offer for our products. If your polisher has a 5" backing plate, our 5.5" pads would be compatible with it, whereas if it has a 6" backing plate, our 6.5" pads would be the pads that you could use for it. Our pads use a hook-and-loop Velcro system, so the backing plate is the hook-and-loop portion, and then the felt Velcro on the pad attaches to that. Most pads perform from different brands perform well, but we specifically design ours to work optimally with our compounds, polishes, etc. For instance, our new Blue Foam Pads have a different cell structure to the foam that allows the blue Compound to distribute more evenly across the pad, and the foam does not squish down as much as our older Orange Foam Pads once there is a little warmth in the pad from Compounding. The hole in the center of our pads also helps to keep temperatures down while allowing you to align it perfectly centered on our backing plates. I hope that clears things up!

Sorry for the confusion there @nutdriver You're correct in that for now, the login only works with your username. I just messaged someone that can hopefully update the login screen to remove the "or Email Address" wording.

Yep, you'll be fine then if the surface has already been cleaned and clayed. The Heavy Correcting Compound will cut through any remaining protection on the surface.

The random number generator has selected this week's winner as... @67's Congrats! Please send me a PM with your current shipping information and I'll get a few home care items out on the way to you as soon as we can 🙂