New Black Vehicle

[Outback101]

Said I would never buy black but now have a new truck. I have a flex polisher and some older products from my 2013/2014 Mustang days. What's the
best pads and products for a new Ford F350 with miles of flat panels. Actually has pretty decent paint from the factory.
Thanks!

[TrustJesus]

No expert but I hear people talk about lake country heavy cutting pads. With Sonax or Meguiars M105.
Remember tho to start from least aggressive compound

[spazzz]

Just to start the convo.... Since you are a Flex owner, you probably already know about the Lake Country Force pads.
They have never let me down.
Your basic orange and whites are fantastic.
Blacks are nice for Menzerna 3800 as a finish polish. Wolfgang Deep Gloss paint sealant after that and a black car looks simply wonderful.

One way to attack not too bad paint.

[MIsnowman]

Congrats on the new truck!

One of my favorite combos is the flex, Menzerna FG400, and orange LC Hybrid pad. I also often use a white hybrid pad if the paint is in pretty good shape. Then follow that up with Menzerna 3800 with a black hybrid pad, top with the lsp of your choice and stand back and admire the results.

Another quicker option, since you said the paint is in good shape, would be Blackfire one step. I haven’t used it yet myself, but it gets very high marks from Mike P. and that’s good enough for me.

[Mike Phillips]

Said I would never buy black but now have a new truck.

Wow! A glutton for punishment.

I have a flex polisher

Which one? I think we carry roughly 14 FLEX tools on the FLEX page here,

Flex Power Tools, Flex car polishers and buffers, circular polisher, dual action polisher, buffer, german car buffer, german car polisher, flex buffer

and some older products from my 2013/2014 Mustang days.

If after shaking violently the product comes out of the bottle with a uniform appearance and consistency, like a hand lotion, it's probably still good to use.

What's the best pads and products for a new Ford F350 with miles of flat panels.

If the tool you own is the FLEX XC 3401 VRG also known as the BEAST - then I tend to use these pads most of the time,

6.5 inch Lake Country Force Hybrid Foam Pads


Orange for any compounding or correction work. I also use the orange with AIOs if the paint is hard. If not then the white polishing pads tend to be pretty consistent on a wide range of paint systems.


I also have bee using the RUPES 7" yellow and white foam pads for polishing work. The pads themselves are great and I like the TAPER design for the outer edge of the RUPES pads.


Here's a recent article I wrote about RUPES 7" pads on the BEAST and the Supa BEAST

RUPES BigFoot Foam Pads on the FLEX BEAST - Supa BEAST and CBEAST

[Mike Phillips]

Said I would never buy black but now have a new truck. a new Ford F350 with miles of flat panels.

I don't know what your plans are for "sealing" the paint but if this truck were mine - I'd keep it simple and buff it out with the BLACKFIRE One Step.

1. It works great.
2. I cleans, polishes and protects in one step.
3. Let it fully dry and it wipes off super easy.
4. Down the road - it's fast and simple to re-do the truck.

I'm guessing this is a daily driver. As such it's going to see normal wear-n-tear plus get dirt staining impacted onto the paint. A one-step cleaner/wax is the perfect product for vehicles like this. Take my word for it, after you about one panel into this project it's going to sink in just how large of a project it is.


Plus - down the road, if you really want to keep it looking showroom new, then the best way to do this is to RE-DO it. That is simply run your polisher over the paint with the BF One Step. Because it's fast and easy - you'll do it.

As soon as you make taking care of something this large time consuming and difficult - you won't do it.


Keep it simple and your truck will always be the best looking black truck in the parking lot.


Watch this recent video,

[Desertnate]

My advice would be to have a range of products at your disposal.

I have no experience with Ford paint, but I would encourage you to at least have a good inventory of the white and orange Lake Country Pads already mentioned. Just because your truck is new now, you never know when you might need to change up the aggressiveness of your process to fix a problem...like when the dealership washes it with a dirty brush (happened to me). In fact you might even want a couple MF cutting pads, just in case. I learned that lesson the hard way.

I'd also advise you to keep at least a good compound AND polish handy. Again, you never know what you'll find or need to fix. There is nothing like polishing out your vehicle and suddenly finding you don't have an aggressive enough polish to get the job done. With at least two~three levels of pads and two levels of polishes, you have plenty of options and combinations to try out.

If you are going to go with a sealant for your LSP, I'd also recommend getting a couple black Lake Country Flat Pads. You can use them to apply the sealant and it will be much faster than trying to apply by hand.