Mike Phillips
Active member
- Dec 5, 2022
- 51,004
- 6
NEW! Meguiar’s Foam Buffing Discs
Jason Rose a long time friend and peer in the professional detailing industry approached me back in March of 2014 after Autogeek’s Detail Fest had concluded and asked me if I would like to do some testing with some prototype foam pads he was working on for Meguiar’s.
Of course I said yes!
He handed me a box and I opened it up and years of waiting for someone to introduce thing foam buffing pads had just come to an end.
Meguiar’s Foam Discs!
Meguiars 5 Inch DA Foam Discs
Meguiars 6 Inch DA Foam Discs
I like to think of them as wafer pads myself, a term my friend and colleague at Meguiar’s Scott Smith coined back around 2004, maybe 2005. That’s because the foam prototypes Scott had been working on were incredibly thin to the point of looking like a thin wafer, like a Necco candies.
In case you've never eaten Necco candies before they are quite delicious and the candy itself is a somewhat large, thin wafer. The label even describes the candy as a wafer. I like the black ones the best.
I knew the moment I saw them they would be a success and guys would love them because it’s a simple fact that THIN foam pads rotate better and thus perform more efficiently on dual action polisher like the Meguiar’s G110v2 or the Porter Cable 7424XP.
The reason why is really simple and that’s because there’s less mass overall for these types of tool to rotate. The mass issue isn’t an isolated issue it’s also what happens to the mass as you work around a car and that’s another issue called,
Pad Saturation
As you work around a car you buff section by section and panel by panel. Each time you finish a section of a panel, when you go to start a new section you add fresh product to the face of the buffing pad. Then you place the buffing pad against the surface of the paint and each time you do this some of the product is pushed up inside of the cells that make up the foam buffing pad. After buffing a few sections you can inject enough liquid from the product you’re using to begin to saturate the pad.
Here’s the deal…
Thick, large wet pads rotate even worse than thick, large dry pads. And the reason this is a problem is because if the pad is not rotating…. You are not removing any defects. So pad rotation is key to successful compounding and polishing and even when using a one-step cleaner/wax or AIO.
By reducing the thickness of the buffing pad you increase the ability for these types of dual action polishers to maintain pad rotation when wet or dry.
Why did it take the industry so long to figure this out?
I wrote about this in my first how-to book, both the first and the second edition and even coined the term back in 2010...
Thin is in...
Note how thin the new Hydro-Tech pads on the right are as compared to the traditional foam buffing pads.
When Lake Country introduced their thin Hydro-Tech pads followed by their thin CCS and Flat pads.
Regardless of the past…
The good news is we now have thin foam buffing pads and I didn’t have to test them to know they were going to work great and also be a home run for Meguiar’s.
I did test them and gave m feedback to Jason. Then right before SEMA, when these new pads would be introduced to the detailing world I hunted down the perfect candidate car to showcase these pads.
A totally swirled out 2010 Camaro!
The new Meguiar’s thin pads come in 2 different sizes and three different foam formulas and measure 11/16" of an inch or 17.5 millimeters.
6 1/4” and 5.5” are the diameters and here are the color codes for they types of pads.
Burgundy = Cutting
Yellow = Polishing
Black = Finishing
These new thin pads work great on any dual action polisher including,
Meguiar’s G110v2
Porter Cable 7424XP
Griot’s Garage 6” DA
Rupes Bigfoot 15 & 21 as well as the Duetto
Flex 3401 with the factory 5.5” backing plate
They also revamped their 7” Softbuff line of pads with a new cup style recessed design to the back where they attach to the backing plate. These traditional thick foam buffing pads work great with rotary buffers as well as the Flex 3401 Dual Action Polisher and the Rupes Bigfoot 21.
I know all you guys are going to love these new pad lines from Meguiar’s. I’ve already typed too much so now I’ll just let the pictures do the talking.
Jason Rose a long time friend and peer in the professional detailing industry approached me back in March of 2014 after Autogeek’s Detail Fest had concluded and asked me if I would like to do some testing with some prototype foam pads he was working on for Meguiar’s.
Of course I said yes!
He handed me a box and I opened it up and years of waiting for someone to introduce thing foam buffing pads had just come to an end.
Meguiar’s Foam Discs!
Meguiars 5 Inch DA Foam Discs
Meguiars 6 Inch DA Foam Discs
I like to think of them as wafer pads myself, a term my friend and colleague at Meguiar’s Scott Smith coined back around 2004, maybe 2005. That’s because the foam prototypes Scott had been working on were incredibly thin to the point of looking like a thin wafer, like a Necco candies.
In case you've never eaten Necco candies before they are quite delicious and the candy itself is a somewhat large, thin wafer. The label even describes the candy as a wafer. I like the black ones the best.
I knew the moment I saw them they would be a success and guys would love them because it’s a simple fact that THIN foam pads rotate better and thus perform more efficiently on dual action polisher like the Meguiar’s G110v2 or the Porter Cable 7424XP.
The reason why is really simple and that’s because there’s less mass overall for these types of tool to rotate. The mass issue isn’t an isolated issue it’s also what happens to the mass as you work around a car and that’s another issue called,
Pad Saturation
As you work around a car you buff section by section and panel by panel. Each time you finish a section of a panel, when you go to start a new section you add fresh product to the face of the buffing pad. Then you place the buffing pad against the surface of the paint and each time you do this some of the product is pushed up inside of the cells that make up the foam buffing pad. After buffing a few sections you can inject enough liquid from the product you’re using to begin to saturate the pad.
Here’s the deal…
Thick, large wet pads rotate even worse than thick, large dry pads. And the reason this is a problem is because if the pad is not rotating…. You are not removing any defects. So pad rotation is key to successful compounding and polishing and even when using a one-step cleaner/wax or AIO.
By reducing the thickness of the buffing pad you increase the ability for these types of dual action polishers to maintain pad rotation when wet or dry.
Why did it take the industry so long to figure this out?
I wrote about this in my first how-to book, both the first and the second edition and even coined the term back in 2010...
Thin is in...
Note how thin the new Hydro-Tech pads on the right are as compared to the traditional foam buffing pads.
When Lake Country introduced their thin Hydro-Tech pads followed by their thin CCS and Flat pads.
Regardless of the past…
The good news is we now have thin foam buffing pads and I didn’t have to test them to know they were going to work great and also be a home run for Meguiar’s.
I did test them and gave m feedback to Jason. Then right before SEMA, when these new pads would be introduced to the detailing world I hunted down the perfect candidate car to showcase these pads.
A totally swirled out 2010 Camaro!
The new Meguiar’s thin pads come in 2 different sizes and three different foam formulas and measure 11/16" of an inch or 17.5 millimeters.
6 1/4” and 5.5” are the diameters and here are the color codes for they types of pads.
Burgundy = Cutting
Yellow = Polishing
Black = Finishing
These new thin pads work great on any dual action polisher including,
Meguiar’s G110v2
Porter Cable 7424XP
Griot’s Garage 6” DA
Rupes Bigfoot 15 & 21 as well as the Duetto
Flex 3401 with the factory 5.5” backing plate
They also revamped their 7” Softbuff line of pads with a new cup style recessed design to the back where they attach to the backing plate. These traditional thick foam buffing pads work great with rotary buffers as well as the Flex 3401 Dual Action Polisher and the Rupes Bigfoot 21.
I know all you guys are going to love these new pad lines from Meguiar’s. I’ve already typed too much so now I’ll just let the pictures do the talking.
