You too can burn paint with your 3401, follow these easy steps!

[goathead]

So last night I had an excellent opportunity to really experiment with my 3401. I've been working with my friend restoring a 1985 F150 and last night I went over to do some work on the cab.

We've got the bed off of had to do some patching on the cab corners. Since the plan was to paint the backside of the cab before the bed goes back on I figured I would run the flex through the paces working with different pads and products. It provided a lot of nice challenges with all the edges, indents and curves in the back of the cab. The fact that it was black just provided a better canvas. Great to be able to try the different combos of pads and products.

The winner for paint abuse? I used the purple foamed wool pad with Optimum Hyper Compound right on the edge of an indent with very firm pressure and I was pretty amazed how easy it took the paint off, probably less than 2 seconds of exposure. Of course, that was as aggressive a combo as I used and it was original paint from 1985 so I'm sure that played into it.

At that point, I was going out of my way to try and take the paint off to see what it would take. Overall, pretty safe "as long as you know the basics of how NOT to burn paint" and the 3401 definitely has a ton more cut (much faster) than my classic PC.

Pads Used:
Yellow, Orange CCS
Orange, White Cobra
Purple foamed wool LC

Products used:
Optimum Hyper Compound
Optimum Polish
PB SSR 2.5
PB SSR 1

[Flash Gordon]

Contratulations?

[goathead]

Hey, come on now. It was fun to be able to play with no fear of destroying anything and to find what could happen worst case scenario.

[WRAPT C5Z06]

Unless you're not constantly moving the polisher, I don't care how aggressive the pad/polish combination is, you won't burn paint.

[A4 1.8tqm]

Unless you're not constantly moving the polisher, I don't care how aggressive the pad/polish combination is, you won't burn paint.

Unless you polish over a hard edge, I learned that one pretty quick after buying my Flex 3401 (first polisher).

[WRAPT C5Z06]

Unless you polish over a hard edge, I learned that one pretty quick after buying my Flex 3401 (first polisher).

You're right, there's always potential. I burned paint with the Griot's DA, but that was after putting a lot of pressure on one specific area and holding the polisher still.

[Danube]

You're right, there's always potential. I burned paint with the Griot's DA, but that was after putting a lot of pressure on one specific area and holding the polisher still.

I've done the same .. burned the paint with UC and G220, 4" megs pad.

It wasn't funny at all.

[CEE DOG]

Excellent post! It's great to remind people and share this with people just learning so they realize you can cut the paint off the edge of a panel or a thin area with any machine including even the pc. Many threads focus on best case so it's good to see this end as well.

BOTTOM LINE: If it cuts paint then it can cut through paint.

[Rix6]

Excellent post! It's great to remind people and share this with people just learning so they realize you can cut the paint off the edge of a panel or a thin area with any machine including even the pc. Many threads focus on best case so it's good to see this end as well.

BOTTOM LINE: If it cuts paint then it can cut through paint.

We usually hear how safe a DA is to use on paint. It's good to hear where the limits to that safety are so we can adjust our sense of common sense.

[goathead]

It was a great opportunity to try. I was always careful but always wondered what "threshold of adventure" was as far as how much was too much pressure on an edge and so on and so forth. Here's how the truck came out after I wet sanded and buffed.