My daily driver recently died and I had to pick up a new one. I ended up with a 2007 Dodge Charger in superb shape save for a few minor swirl-marks in the finish. No big deal, right? So I whipped out my Porter Cable and my Meguiar's polishing gear. Five hours later after having lost the buffing pad off the backer four times and seeing little improvement, I threw in the towel.
Later that week I was on the Charger Forumz and I saw someone mention Adam's polishes in a discussion about finish care.
"Who the heck are they?" I wondered aloud. So I googled. I looked around the Adams site for a while and then I saw the 2nd generation pad system from Adams. The improved backing plate and the design of the Adams pad caught my eye. So I says to myself, "Self", I says, "I bet that would solve the little buffing pad frisbee problem you have with your current setup."
...and that is a big deal for me. One of the issues on my Charger was the sharp corners on the hood and fenders. It's darn difficult to polish adequately there because if the bloody pad isn't making full contact with the sheet metal it starts to get off center, and then it feels like you're trying to polish with an unbalanced washing machine. The thicker, more flexible backer looked like it might be just the ticket.
Intrigued, I looked around the forums for a while, trying to find out more about the pads. After a while I started to think that perhaps I should give the core lineup a try and see how they work. This was, of course, madness, as I already have a bunch of car care stuff....like several hundred dollars worth...from Meguiars that I had collected over the years. "These guys can't really be any better, can they?"
Only one way to find out. I bit the bullet and placed an order for the 2nd Gen pad special, as well as one more of each pad type. In my experience 2 is one, one is none when it comes to polishing pads. I ordered the Swirl and Haze Remover and the Fine Machine Polish package. I bought some of the cookie-monster skin towels, and a bottle of All Purpose Cleaner.
200+ bucks. Ouch. (Oddly enough, with today's ammo prices this is about how much it would cost to really bite a bullet.) This week my box arrived and I had the perfect guinea pig project....
In 2005 I did a complete detail job on an Inferno red 2001 Dodge Intrepid R/T for some friends. The vehicle had been to a "detailer" who had apparently applied wax with sandpaper judging by the horrific swirlmarks cut into the finish. I re-worked the car with some Meguiars stuff and it looked 100% better...but it still wasn't up to 100%. I couldn't get out a lot of the swirls. They were just too deep for the Porter Cable to do anything with. Still, the car looked decent.
Since then the car's finish had not been maintained. No wax. Rarely washed. Out in the elements 24/7, 365. The car looked its age.
Nice deep scratches:
Swirl marks (although nowhere near as bad as they were the first time I worked on the car...thankfully they listened to me and didn't return to that "detailer")
Water spots:
Etching from bird droppings:
...and all the small scratches you could ask for like these on the roof and on the rear deck lid respectively:
Also notice how dull the finish appears.
A badly neglected finish seemed like just the trick to find out whether or not this expensive little box was worth anything or not.
So I washed and clayed with some of my Meguiars blue clay and what was left of my gallon of Final Inspection. One sweep of the clay on the hood yielded some fairly encouraging results:
Of course, this was before I started claying around the wheel wells and noticed the tar that was all over the bloody place....
After claying, I began working with the Swirl and Haze Remover on the orange pad.
It took several passes, a fair level of pressure, and a "6" setting on the magic dial, but eventually most of the paint defects were no longer visible. This door scratch is typical of the sort of thing I was battling against:
The SHR worked very well on them:
I followed up with the Fine Machine Polish on the white pad using very little pressure and the "5" setting on the magic Porter Cable dial. The end results were pretty good. Once I had the hood done I had figured out what I probably needed to try on the rest of the vehicle. I then repeated the clay/SHR/FMP routine around the vehicle, and followed it all up with the Super Machine Wax. 15 fun filled hours later...
The big hood scratch was no more:
The roof scratches were gone:
The rear deck lid which looked horrible before started to look a bit better:
The finish was darker, richer, and clearer than it had ever been:
All in all, not too bad. The pics don't really do it justice because it's been cloudy all day today in my area. I've been playing peek-a-boo with thunderstorms and gale-force winds all day. Still, the sun did peek out from behind the clouds just long enough for me to catch this:
I can live with that.
The experience overall wasn't as big of a pain in the neck as it was the first time. The Adams pad system made life much easier on this car. These Intrepids are shaped like a jellybean that's been cut in half. There's not a single right angle or straight piece of sheet metal on the whole bloody car except for the rear deck lid. This made using the old Meguiars pad system about as pleasant as a home root canal kit.
On top of that, the Dual Action Cleaner/Polish compound I was using didn't like warm weather or a warm finish...and by "didn't like" I mean it hardened into a powder that then was practically welded to the finish. It took a routine of polish a little bit, clean off the welded powder, try to polish more, stop, put the pad back on the center of the backing plate....repeated enough times to make the experience pleasant enough that if we made the Gitmo detainees do it, we would be tried for war crimes.
In similar weather I found (to my VERY pleasant surprise) that the Adams stuff was much easier to work with. The SHR did create dust, but the "dust" was the result of buildup working toward the edge of the pads and then slinging off of the pad. This could be because I was just using too much product, but I had to go over several areas a bunch of times to get the results I wanted. The "dust" however, wiped right off with no fuss. When working the SHR and the FMP into the finish they remained liquid and useable...unlike the Meguiars stuff that went hard the minute they touched the finish.
The sentiment that drove me to google Adams polishes in the Charger Forumz thread was that it was easy to work with even on a hot finish. Since I have no way to put a vehicle in any shade, that's another biggie for me. Working with the SHR and the FMP was easy even when the sun occasionally peaked through and heated up the finish. It was nice. I spent the better part of 10 hours polishing this vehicle and I didn't contemplate committing seppoku once during the process. That's progress.
All in all, at this point I'm reasonably certain that the Adams stuff (especially the pad system) is a step forward for the Porter Cable equipped car nut.
Question
carrya1911
My daily driver recently died and I had to pick up a new one. I ended up with a 2007 Dodge Charger in superb shape save for a few minor swirl-marks in the finish. No big deal, right? So I whipped out my Porter Cable and my Meguiar's polishing gear. Five hours later after having lost the buffing pad off the backer four times and seeing little improvement, I threw in the towel.
Later that week I was on the Charger Forumz and I saw someone mention Adam's polishes in a discussion about finish care.
"Who the heck are they?" I wondered aloud. So I googled. I looked around the Adams site for a while and then I saw the 2nd generation pad system from Adams. The improved backing plate and the design of the Adams pad caught my eye. So I says to myself, "Self", I says, "I bet that would solve the little buffing pad frisbee problem you have with your current setup."
...and that is a big deal for me. One of the issues on my Charger was the sharp corners on the hood and fenders. It's darn difficult to polish adequately there because if the bloody pad isn't making full contact with the sheet metal it starts to get off center, and then it feels like you're trying to polish with an unbalanced washing machine. The thicker, more flexible backer looked like it might be just the ticket.
Intrigued, I looked around the forums for a while, trying to find out more about the pads. After a while I started to think that perhaps I should give the core lineup a try and see how they work. This was, of course, madness, as I already have a bunch of car care stuff....like several hundred dollars worth...from Meguiars that I had collected over the years. "These guys can't really be any better, can they?"
Only one way to find out. I bit the bullet and placed an order for the 2nd Gen pad special, as well as one more of each pad type. In my experience 2 is one, one is none when it comes to polishing pads. I ordered the Swirl and Haze Remover and the Fine Machine Polish package. I bought some of the cookie-monster skin towels, and a bottle of All Purpose Cleaner.
200+ bucks. Ouch. (Oddly enough, with today's ammo prices this is about how much it would cost to really bite a bullet.) This week my box arrived and I had the perfect guinea pig project....
In 2005 I did a complete detail job on an Inferno red 2001 Dodge Intrepid R/T for some friends. The vehicle had been to a "detailer" who had apparently applied wax with sandpaper judging by the horrific swirlmarks cut into the finish. I re-worked the car with some Meguiars stuff and it looked 100% better...but it still wasn't up to 100%. I couldn't get out a lot of the swirls. They were just too deep for the Porter Cable to do anything with. Still, the car looked decent.
Since then the car's finish had not been maintained. No wax. Rarely washed. Out in the elements 24/7, 365. The car looked its age.
Nice deep scratches:
Swirl marks (although nowhere near as bad as they were the first time I worked on the car...thankfully they listened to me and didn't return to that "detailer")
Water spots:
Etching from bird droppings:
...and all the small scratches you could ask for like these on the roof and on the rear deck lid respectively:
Also notice how dull the finish appears.
A badly neglected finish seemed like just the trick to find out whether or not this expensive little box was worth anything or not.
So I washed and clayed with some of my Meguiars blue clay and what was left of my gallon of Final Inspection. One sweep of the clay on the hood yielded some fairly encouraging results:
Of course, this was before I started claying around the wheel wells and noticed the tar that was all over the bloody place....
After claying, I began working with the Swirl and Haze Remover on the orange pad.
It took several passes, a fair level of pressure, and a "6" setting on the magic dial, but eventually most of the paint defects were no longer visible. This door scratch is typical of the sort of thing I was battling against:
The SHR worked very well on them:
I followed up with the Fine Machine Polish on the white pad using very little pressure and the "5" setting on the magic Porter Cable dial. The end results were pretty good. Once I had the hood done I had figured out what I probably needed to try on the rest of the vehicle. I then repeated the clay/SHR/FMP routine around the vehicle, and followed it all up with the Super Machine Wax. 15 fun filled hours later...
The big hood scratch was no more:
The roof scratches were gone:
The rear deck lid which looked horrible before started to look a bit better:
The finish was darker, richer, and clearer than it had ever been:
All in all, not too bad. The pics don't really do it justice because it's been cloudy all day today in my area. I've been playing peek-a-boo with thunderstorms and gale-force winds all day. Still, the sun did peek out from behind the clouds just long enough for me to catch this:
I can live with that.
The experience overall wasn't as big of a pain in the neck as it was the first time. The Adams pad system made life much easier on this car. These Intrepids are shaped like a jellybean that's been cut in half. There's not a single right angle or straight piece of sheet metal on the whole bloody car except for the rear deck lid. This made using the old Meguiars pad system about as pleasant as a home root canal kit.
On top of that, the Dual Action Cleaner/Polish compound I was using didn't like warm weather or a warm finish...and by "didn't like" I mean it hardened into a powder that then was practically welded to the finish. It took a routine of polish a little bit, clean off the welded powder, try to polish more, stop, put the pad back on the center of the backing plate....repeated enough times to make the experience pleasant enough that if we made the Gitmo detainees do it, we would be tried for war crimes.
In similar weather I found (to my VERY pleasant surprise) that the Adams stuff was much easier to work with. The SHR did create dust, but the "dust" was the result of buildup working toward the edge of the pads and then slinging off of the pad. This could be because I was just using too much product, but I had to go over several areas a bunch of times to get the results I wanted. The "dust" however, wiped right off with no fuss. When working the SHR and the FMP into the finish they remained liquid and useable...unlike the Meguiars stuff that went hard the minute they touched the finish.
The sentiment that drove me to google Adams polishes in the Charger Forumz thread was that it was easy to work with even on a hot finish. Since I have no way to put a vehicle in any shade, that's another biggie for me. Working with the SHR and the FMP was easy even when the sun occasionally peaked through and heated up the finish. It was nice. I spent the better part of 10 hours polishing this vehicle and I didn't contemplate committing seppoku once during the process. That's progress.
All in all, at this point I'm reasonably certain that the Adams stuff (especially the pad system) is a step forward for the Porter Cable equipped car nut.
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