I read that twice looking for a color. Couldn’t see it. Now I went back and immediately saw the color. lol
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While there seems to be a lot of love for the McKee's Pad Cleaner, it simply hasn't worked very well for me when trying to clean pads used with AIO's. I have the powder version of McKee's, perhaps their spray Pad Cleaner is better, I can't speak to that. My powdered McKee's now just sits on the shelf and most likely won't be used again. Too bad because I have a lot of other McKee's products and am a pretty big fan of theirs, their product is what I have the most of in my arsenal of products. What works well for me is the Poor Boys Tornado Pad Cleaner. Spray cleaner that is quite effective and pretty good value.
I'll through my 2 cents in here.
As for what caused the pads to turn black, I'd agree with Mike's assessment it is grime the pads picked up. When polishing out my daughter's car for the first time it turned my white pads a dark gray from all the gunk they pulled up while polishing. Hitting black trim either plastic or rubber might be another source I've found, but if all the pads used turned that dirty gray color, I say it's grime from the paint.
For pad cleaning, I've found soaking them in a bucket of APC and water solution for a couple days does the trick. People who have their own business can't afford to do this, but as a person who only maintains my own cars, it's pretty easy.
Hmm, I forgot about the powdered cleaners totally. Looking back at McKee's products just now it has jogged my memory about such products in discussions. It looks like McKee's says this Powder is made for them by Snappy. I vaguely remember some talk about Snappy.
This powder product might be better utilized as a MF Towel Cleaner, maybe fortify other existing cleaners that you use for such? Just an idea that came to mind?
I did recognize the Wolfgang's ability to more easily clean Pads, which I was struggling with, with off the shelf products. Only dislike which I sort of touched on before, a bit pricey, I went through a pint bottle of it quite quickly.
Mark: to be perfectly honest, I never get my pads 100% black with road film/gunk or dirt.
However, some of them do get pretty dirty from time to time. (Usually in the spring, getting off all the NE winter crap).
The McKee's Pad Cleaner really impressed me. Great stuff!! :)
I use the mckees pad cleaner also. Super simple and effective.
Vindicated indeed!
Once, a gentleman once told me that my pads should not appear black because my prep work was terrible. This came from a LinkedIn “expert”. I tried referring him to this information in AGO. Never heard back about it.
More....
For those reading this into the future, there's a lot of info in the below article AND if you look at the paint on the BMW carefully, you'll see the effects of road film and normal dirt in our environment and how they impacted ONTO the paint.
The case against multi-year ceramic paint coatings - Road Grime = Surface Staining Daily Drivers by Mike Phillips
And you can see how the paint actually changed colors after the paint was machine compounded. The compounding removed the dirt film.
Before followed by After
http://www.autogeekonline.net/galler...Stain_008c.jpg
http://www.autogeekonline.net/galler...Stain_009c.jpg
Sorry to say I did not take pictures of the pads and the dirt film on them, I had 26 people in this 2-day class and was a tick busy making sure everyone received all the one-on-one attention they wanted and needed.
:)