Just a few tips that helped me and may help you/others: 1-You are only going side to side in your passes. You should also go up and down, so you go over in a cross pattern. 2-Way too much water, which is reducing the effectiveness of compound. Try no water and manually rub compound into the pad before starting (as if you were conditioning a baseball glove) to get it 'lubricated'. 3-You are polishing at a lower speed than you are cutting/compounding. You should be finish polishing at a high speed.
^Spot on, and water dries up the oily carrier quicker as the compound is being worked, so water makes the product more prone to dusting. Dust causes scratches.
At any given time you have your pad doing all the motions. Left goes up while right goes down. Up goes right while bottom goes left. Hence no need to move it in all directions. Just cover the entire panel in the motion that is most comfortable.
You did a great job. I do this for a living in a body shop. Been wet sanding and buffing or what we call it cut/buff since 01. And I must say, you did way better then me when I first started. GREAT JOB👊🏽😎
Wow, I’m not normally a brasher but if you spent half the time it took to make this video and watched how to detail paint you would have learned a lot of things to pass on to your viewers. 1) your passes should be up and down working across the area and the followed by left and right. )2 move your da at about one inch per second. 3) your using enough product to do a ton of autos. 4) start on the lowest speed to move the product over the area you intend to buff and then raise the speed to about 3/4. 5) at most do a 16” to 24” square at most at a time. Cheap Cheap after washing and clay barring mix alcohol 50%/50% with distilled water, mix and wipe down the area you intend to buff. This removes anything that shouldn’t be there. Bug guts that were missed, wax or tar. It’s cheap and makes a big difference. I pray you took my post as constructive and not as belittling. Good luck and God bless you
I was extremely nervous when I made an attempt to polish my car, it took a lot of watching video after video and expert after expert, and I just got confused with all the mechanics involved in completing the car for polishing. I finally decided that I would do what I thought was "BEST" for "MY" car and do it my way, very similar to yours. By the way, I loved your video, very informative. You got the "JOB" done. Nice!!
When I would polish, I found quickly that it was not that effective when you got things wet. Having the water defeats the purpose of the polish. Try the other side of the door dry.
Suggestions: When you start the dual action polisher, have it against the vehicle, this will keep the compound/polish from slinging all over. Second, polish in both the back and forth and up and down directions also known as "cross hatch". Third best to do the process in a garage, not outdoors. This will slow down the process of the stuff from drying out and minimizes bugs and stuff getting on the surface.
I have one of the Harbor Freight Dual action polishers. I repacked the gear box and it quieted down a lot. It contains just a little bit of cheap grease when you by it. There are several videos on RU-vid that show how to do it. It only takes about 15 minutes.
From what I have heard from other professional detailers, you want to stay around 4-4 1/2 because anything higher will just create extra heat on the panel, which is not good for the clearcoat
@@TheMstwntdLMSV123 well the extra heat is created only if you keep it in ome are for too long, youll burn the heat because of thebfriction of course but they do also make Polishing Pads that Help Dissipate Heat faster, so long as you keep the pad moving youll be alright and also lubricated.
I'm in the exact same boat right now. Just started using the new H.F. polisher and the vibration is terrible, I noticed that mine and just about everyone's backing plate is bent in some way shape or form. I tried bending mine straight again to get rid of the vibration but its still there yet reduced about 20%. I've learned that the backing plates that come with the new H.F. DA polisher are practically ALL bent! Ik its crazy but for $60... it just comes down to buying a new backing plate i suggest Maguires or Lake country i think there both on Amazon. I hope this helps someone, it took me a lot of time to figure out this stuff so now hopefully you won't have to struggle wondering why.
you should have got the most aggresive pad you could to start with,,( you can also order microfiber pads off the itnernet for that machine) a company called lake country makes good backing plates and pads ) spread the compound out at the low speed then crank the speed all the way up that it will go , when you are done you should not have that much product to wipe up with the rag, the machine should have "used" most of the product up , the only type of scratch a DA machine will remove is a swirl mark type scratch, that machine is not deisgned for major paint correction ,, you need a ROTARY machine for that , just like it says on the front of thoose bottles of meguiars product you are using , do not be affraid to apply moderate pressure to the machine , thoose machines are designed to be used without doing any damage to the vehicle , from your technique i see you are not ready to use a rotary machine , you will cause swirl marks with it, ,,, have fun thats alot of work to do that whole big SUV ,something i charge at least 400 dollars to do and would take most of the day
Watch some MeguiarsUK videos. Very well done. Don't be afraid to hand polish the difficult areas, like the blue section above the trim piece. The body lines make it nearly impossible for the electric polisher to get in there. You did really well and made an improvement to your SUV. Everybody's gotta start somewhere!
I use a wool buffing pad that gets all the deep scratches out quicker using Griot's Fast Correction Cream, that stuff works amazing then use a middle foam pad with the same Griot's cream, then the black foam pad to put a carnauba wax over, clean the black foam pad and use it to put a seal over that and the results are amazing, I have black, silver and white vehicles and they all come out looking like a glass finish, you could use a normal buffer in the first step with the wool pad but change to an orbital buffer after to get and keep the swirl marks out of the paint. Good luck in the future with maintaining the paint jobs on your vehicles.
Using to much compound reduces the effectiveness of the compound. Glad you started to learn with a dual action polisher it's the best for beginners. A rotary polisher is less forgiving and paint disappears. Btw great job for your first time
You should try Chemical guys compounds and pads. I always used the harbor freight pads until I found chemical guys. I saw a huge difference when I switched.
Theres alot of good tips people are offering…you did a good job for polishing for the first time…for next time in a nutshell i would get a orange correcting pad for compounding that would have just about taken care of your scratches, also you could have gotten away with using the blue polishing pad for finishing as your working on GM paint which is a bit harder/stubborn. When compounding or polishing doing the cross hateches side to side then up and down then side to side then up and down would also help getting good results…also to cut down on vaibration definately get rid of the backing plate the machine comes with as they are junk right out of the box and get lake country, buff n shine, meguuars, or even griots garage backing plate. Hope that helps if you decide to give that sweet burban a 2nd round of polishing or the the other white suv you have…if thats a GM product then the paint is the same and same material and method on that one to….happy polishing 😉
One of the problems of those compound is dusting. It would be best if you also clean your pads in between by brushing them together with a chemical pad cleaner; that way, you remove the hardened compounds that can introduce scratches.
Prime the pad by putting alot of compound on the pad when new and rub it in by hand then do the dots. Dab it low speed to spread then high speed and move in a up n down left and right motion.
You and I thimk alike. You addressed all my reservations about using a DA. Last time I used a compound by hand on my new car and removed the clear AND basecoat. I'm going to try the Harbor Freight DA and the 2 step process, JUST the way you did it. I have a 20 y/o Ford sedsn that I love. Thanks !!!
Great video and good job for your 1st time. Your machine vibrates because the backing plates from Harbor freight are defective, their bent which causes the vibrations. If you pick up a new backing plate from a good detailing company it will help cut the vibration down. Also if you change the size of backing plate there is a counter balance weight inside that needs to match the backing plate you can pick it up from Porter cable, Home depot which is similar to the Harbor freight. You can also change out the grease in the machine, which will help cut vibrations down.
I had a black 1990 chevy 454 SS back in the day. I had it professionally detailed. In the sun you could see all the swirls. (Burn). I said I would never let anyone use a buffer on my cars. I have a 2020 Mustang S550, velocity blue. I am thinking of trying the buffer again. Maybe. 😆. I should just get it clear-coated. 1,500-2,000. $$$.
Good stuff, but you are using m105 with a blue poslihing pad.. it’s too soft for that step. Use a cutting pad (orange) for m105 and the blue pad for m205, they have a grey finishing pad I use with SwirlX for maintenance. The blue pad will not cut and show half good results.
I have used the same compounds but I do it by hand. Takes way longer but i don't wanna run the risk of damaging the paint with a power buffer. Either way door looks good.
There is almost no risk of doing it with a dual action polisher. Just check often and only polish until the scratches that aren't through the clearcoat are satisfactorily removed. It stalls out on edges so you don't burn through.
Watch for the DA to be spinning. Speed 3-4 should have no issue spinning if it's flat and not too much pressure. Slower arm speeds with do more but too much heat is the enemy so play with that. Otherwise good job, cool to see people work on their own cars.
I already bought a variable speed polisher and don't have dual action polisher so I ain't gonna take it back now I never heard this until I saw your video.
I watched many RU-vid videos and decided to try my hand at it. A little nerve racking at first but after a while I got into a groove. I spread the compound on say setting 2 then turned up to 5.5 working it slow doing 6 passes in cross hatch pattern applying slight pressure. I kept area small 2x2 at most. Just takes time. Can’t rush it. Great video.
Great video/review. Nice job! I was looking into beginning paint correcting my car as a hobby. The high vibration might make me reconsider a different brand polisher, although a great price!!
I recently bought the H.F. DA polisher and it does have quite a bit of vibration on all of them bc they are very cheap, but the good news i found out if you replace the crappy backing plate it comes with that is normally bent on all of them for some reason and get a new one thats a decent quality it'll reduce the vibration a lot or completely. Hope this helps
i want to paint correct my car using a DA polisher, idont mind the vibrations because i dont want to pay more than 100 for a polisher plus all the aditaments for something i will use just once. so i want to buy this bauer polisher if the price is good but i can not find it cheap in my country , i have seen only the GALAX PRO polisher which has the exact same specs and it looks exactly the same as the buaer one just different color it has 4.3 stars on amazon but i have not seen a single video here on youtube on that polisher and it is beins sold for US $50 dlls. so do you think bauer rebranded its polisher? what do you guys think?
I have a harbor freight polisher. I get very little vibration because the Warrior backing plate is off-center. When I purchased a professional backing plate that is better balanced the vibration went away. Also found Harbor freight pads are not the best. The hook and loop is not good and flew off the backing plate, so I switched to Lake Country. No more flyoffs.
so does the compound says to use water or is that you? why dilute the original grit with water ?... and like a lot of rotary machines, the slower you go the more you feel it , the faster you go the machine feels that vibrate less but still vibrating at a faster rate... but I don`t like that dual (oval motion) action at slow speed on a fine or taped edges that`s why I just like the single action ones ... and most of the times the HF machines work better in combination with quality consumables ,same in welding and others... kool educational video !
When you first put the compound on the pad and evenly spread it out you can use a speed from 1-2 and when you start polishing you can speed it up to a 5-6 depending how effective u want it to be and you should also do cross hatch pattern but for your first time you did it preety good congrats
Hey good job ! Maybe using a orange cutting compound pad first. Do exactly what you did, but this time use speed 1 or 2 to first spread the compound. Then once it’s all spread out, use speed 5 or 6 and slowly go through the surface. Wipe down and then use that blue pad to finish off with a polish.
I appreciate you making the video and giving your viewers the opportunity to learn from your experience as well as allowing other viewers with more experience to give their feedback on how you can improve for better results. I’m going to take everything in consideration. Keep up the great work! Your videos give me the confidence to tackle similar jobs.
remember there is two models of the bauer one that is smooth and one that vibrates you have the bad one. anyone looking for them you want the one with the sku ending in 64529.
I know this was an educational video that was put together nicely. However, I was wondering what your overall opinion and performance of the Bauer Sander/Polisher product? I plan to purchase this polisher and appreciate your input, especially after almost 2 years of use.
@@1RoadGarage well if it works for you How's your arms feel after using that cheap dual action polisher? Hopefully you didn't get overly frustrated I would have suggested the Porter Cable 7424xp polisher for you It's a great polisher
I use Scratch -X by kit, instead of clay bar. The paint has better gloss and smooth as glass. Then perform an all day detailing of my Silverado 6 hours average on just the paint. Next day rims, tires, interior. Looks like new when done. I get stares comments on an 2003 black, it looks like a mirror. Birds bomb it daily especially starlings My motto now if it flys it dies
Change the grease in the machine. Much less vibration. Change the backing plate and pad ( not Harbor Freight) to 5 inch. Use a better cutting compound. ( 3M) Follow up with Grios 1 step then wax. Your welcome.
For a first time you did great. Next time as you’ve probably by now figured out. Do a cross hatch pattern. Also there’s better compounds that don’t dry up so fast. HD speed or HD One. Also a faster speed like around 4-5 after spreading compound out. As far as vibration I bet the backing pad is part of problem. A better backing plate and also regressing the gears with better grease solved this on my harbor freight Chicago electric. You may also find a 5” pad and plate is better to work with.
Really not sure why you struggled for tips for beginners. Like you I’m a novice who’s just about to take on this task for the first time on my son’s car. I’ve spent about four hours watching videos aimed specifically at beginners and taking in tips from at least 20 sources. From watching them I can see 1) you first need to spread the compound at the slowest speed (maybe take around 45 seconds) 2) turn up the speed to #5 (always stopping and starting the polisher whilst in contact with the panel) 3) keep the pad flat on the surface (that might reduce a lot of the vibration you’re feeling) 4) you’re moving the pad too quickly. Move at at around 1” per second 5) at that speed make 4-5 passes over the whole area. You might go right to left first ensuring you only move down 50% each time. Then on the second pass go vertically keeping the 50% rule. This might take 4/5 minutes As you moved so quickly, the experts would suggest the pad made too little contact with each area to polish it properly. Let’s hope I take on board what I’ve learned and benefit when I get to it. Good on you for making the effort and the very best of luck!
Well Jimmy, whilst I can't donate at the moment I at least shot you a follow on Instagram from both my Stage and Normal Accounts and I favorited the website. I know all of these things help a little and I really enjoy your content and can't wait to see what you do next. XOXO Jean
Dig your videos, but man invest in some good tools. I will never buy corded tools from Harbor Freight. They just don’t last. Would like to know your opinion after owning it a while. I spent a lot of money on a Porter Cable RO buffer that is still in the box. Can’t wait to get it out and compare.
After all the blood sweat and tears of work to get a nice finish..... ceramic coat ceramic coat ceramic coat!! After time passes beginners just buff but you are cutting precious clear coat. Especially on older original paint on vehicles.
Good job! I know I'm nit picking but on most modern cars you're polishing the clear coat, not the paint, if you actually get down to the paint (past clear coat) you got some real problems on your hands LOL! That's unlikely to happen just using polish BTW. I'll throw this tip out, if you have scratches don't be afraid to lightly sand with wet 1200 grit first, just not too deep!!
13:19 the back door the reflection is clearer. I think you were too hard to start with and maybe took the laqure off. Shurley you can set that up better to be centered and rotate smooth.
The machine you are using is basically a porter cable polisher copy , they have a lot of vibration. Again I am an Adams polishes guy but you can look at other brands if you like, but go to their website they have videos from beginning to end how to do each step from proper washing technique to clay bar and polishing.
Wow nice job for your first time! Considering the condition your paint was already in personally I would have tried skipping the heavy cut and going straight to the fine cut compound just in an effort not to cause any unnecessary cutting. If your paint looked as good in person as it did in video that is, because from what I can see in video your paint already didn’t look to bad. But great video though I love seeing people take on things like this on their own!
Thanks Keith! The paint is in really good condition to begin with but there are lots of little thing when you look up close. I was first going to just use the finishing compound but decided to go through both steps in the end. I think it turned out quite well.
If your experience has been one of ending up with "swirl marks" in your paint after using a dual action buffer, then you are probably not starting out with a clean paint surface to begin with. Or you are using the wrong pads/bonnets for their particular corresponding type of compound/cleaner/polish/wax. Or you are doing it outside, where it's almost impossible to NOT pick up tiny, random dust/dirt particles. Either of those three conditions is a good recipe for swirl marks (and making more work for oneself). One of the most common ways folks F up a paint surface using a machine, is by using a round, foam applicator pad that is typically used with a paste wax. Meguiars "Ultimate Synthetic Polymer Paste Wax" actually comes with one. These pads are dirt MAGNETS, and one of the reasons I avoid paste waxes for machine buffing. Bottom line, I've gotten great results with zero swirl, with machine buffing. Even on black paint jobs. But I do agree with you in the sense that hand buffing is generally better for avoiding the issue for most folks. As long as you have all day. Because "all day" is what hand buffing takes to get even close to the results machine buffing will bring in 2 hours. Machine buffing IS the way, but you damn sure better be paying attention.
1ROAD says: "This video is for entertainment purposes only! I am not a professional. Do not do what I do or say. I may be making big mistakes that may lead to property damage, injury or death..." Need we hear any more your honor?
You know what's weird is I needed to reference one of your videos for a parts link for Amazon and I couldn't find your channel I wasn't even subscribed anymore. Weird I just figured you haven't uploaded in awhile. Anyway, I'm back subscribed
No offense, but if you've never polished before, you probably shouldn't be telling people what equipment to use or not to use. 40-year detailing expert Yvan Lacroix for example says that the rotary is better in almost every way. They don't cut as well, but that can be compensated for with a wool pad for cutting.
