This is only my second time with abrasives.
See this thread for my first try, with my brother's equipment.
Spent a total of 6 hours yesterday with the following steps:
- Wash with Armor All car wash concentrate
- Mother's Yellow Clay Bar
- Optimum Compound on LC Yellow Pad with Ryobi 4k rpm Random Orbital
- Optimum Polish on LC White Pad with Ryobi
- Poorboy's EXP Sealant on LC Blue Pad with Ryobi
- Natty's Blue Paste Wax applied by hand with microfiber towel
Beginning with the Mother's Yellow clay bar, this clay seemed to do a much better job at stripping contaminants off the paint than the Mequiar's white bar used in my last thread. With the wax removed, swirls became more pronounced in the morning sun...
After one pass with the OC / Yellow LC pad, the swirls were probably 50% diminished, but I was a little disappointed...
I did 2 more passes. I pressed harder on the second pass, allowing the Ryobi to bog down a little bit. The biggest difference was on the third pass, when I drastically slowed down the motion across the paint to probably 1 inch/second.
At this point, all that remained were the deepest scratches, but 90% of the swirls were gone. I'm thinking I could have gone with the Hyper compound, but switching to a PC would probably also help to keep rpm's up when I apply some pressure. Overall, though, I was pleased with the finish that the Ryobi was able to muster, with the yellow cutting pad and OC.
On to the Optimum Polish and white polishing pad, I really didn't expect to see a difference. The OC broke down well and seemed to cut and polish all in one step, leaving behind no apparent hazing. But when I made just one pass with the OP/White, I could clearly see a difference. The front corner of the hood here is polished. You can see the difference between the OCed area on the rest of the hood (diagonal line going from top left to bottom right)...
The EX-P sealant went on super easy with the blue finishing pad. I didn't work it in with the pad, or anything. Just used it to evenly spread it out over the paint. I applied it over the whole car and then buffed with microfiber. At this point, I was beginning to be really impressed. I had high hoped for the Natty's Blue Paste wax.
The wax seemed to add a little more luster to the gloss, but man, I had a heck of a time applying it after nearly five hours of DAing with the Ryobi. I'm thinking maybe an applicator pad would have been easier than the microfiber cloth. I had to soak the cloth with Detailing spray to get any wax on the towel...
Final Result Pics:
That was a lot of work, but one of the most rewarding 6 hours I've put into a car in a long time. Comments and criticism welcome!
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