Tweet
Foam DISCS? Yes, discs. While we were brought in a little "last minute" to test these babies out, we did get about a 3 week sneak peek to give them a run. The very cool part though, they were delivered in person by Mr. Jason Rose of Meguiars, who happened to be passing through our neck of the woods while we were mobile doing a full paint correction on a Lexus ISF.
He brought this guy along too
(Jose Fernandez of Superior Shine...can you say a pretty impressive duo to show up on our job site?)
What he had with him was an early Christmas present for us. A box full of pads, along with some new backing plates (only some are shown here).
Time was short so we were only able to talk for about 10-15 minutes, but that was long enough for Jason to give us a quick run down on the pads/plates and for Joe to tell us how he uses them on speed 6 constantly and they are still in new condition (the rest of us still think speed 6 is WAY too high for these pads! But, he knows what works for him, anyone who's seen his work knows this).
Jasons main emphasis was, just be honest. If you like them, great, if you dont, great...just be honest in our feedback. Basically, kissing butt doesn't help progress anything. Dani's response "Oh don't worry, anyone who knows me knows i have no problem speaking my mind!" Yes, thats my sweet, loving, adorable little sister.
We received both 5" and 6" in cutting, polishing and finishing pads. You will notice one set is fatter than the other. The thicker ones are made specifically for rotary while the super low profile ones are made for dual action polishers. Heres a quick look at the specs:
Now while im sure all this is super interesting to everyone, im fairly sure the main question is "Well how did they work!?" Lets take a look at what ended up being our test subject.
Pretty nice test subject right? As for the paint condition...it was detailed by the dealership...or what Dani and I call "Dealership-afied"...a very technical term.
Plenty of good stuff to work with right? Now being that this was a full correction, we needed something that would cut alllll this good stuff out of here, but being that it was Lexus paint, we didnt need a super aggressive combo either. Now while i wish i could review on the DA backing plates that came along with it, we only had 1 small stroke DA with us and we ended up using it for 3-4" pad work...so we did get to test the new small backing plate out, but the larger pads were tested out on the Rupes 21 with the 6" backing plate.
First thing, the pad fit the Rupes backing plate like it was made for it. Pretty much an exact fit, but the little bit of extra "lip" on the pad made it very convenient to work on certain edges and curves where the backing plate comes into close contact with parts of the panel (this allows for less risk of accidentally hitting the paint with the plate AND helps to get the pads into tight spots.)
As i mentioned above, they were low profile:
For those who have used the old SoftBuff and SoftBuff 2.0 pads. you know how thick they are...i'd say the fatter rotary pads seen in the box above are close to that thickness. The pad I'm holding is the DA disc...and while i didn't do exact measurements ... you can see its close to half the thickness. Whats that mean? LOTS of power transferred to the pad!
This also made for a very SMOOTH polishing cycle. There was no grab or discomfort in the polishing cycle and keeping this thinner pad rotating was much easier than keeping thicker pads spinning (less weight to bog it down).
Now of course, none of that matters if the darn thing doesn't get those nasty things above out of the paint right? Well...thats probably the best part of these discs so far...they cut AND finished nicely. The 6" Cutting Disc, Megs 205 (yup the finishing polish again) and Rupes 21 on speed 3-4 got us these results:
Not bad eh? Now to be totally fair, this was not black, and non-black paints (with some exceptions) can usually hide very faint marrying. That being said, i looked at this thing with every light we had at every angle we could (after an Eraser wipe down) and could see no leftover marring. Further more, our final polishing step (which ended up being with the Black Finishing Disc and Carpro's Reflect) yielded very little, if any increase in clarity or gloss to the naked eye.
We did of course still do a final polish on the entire vehicle to make sure we were doing all we could to get it as glossy as possible, but if this had been a 1-step job i think ANYONE would have been happy with these results.
The pads held up great through the entire car and our preferred method of cleaning on the go was with compressed air...we use a Tornador to clean our pads as we go (when we have air supply). Hit the pad real quick after every section and it basically blows it completely clean. The cells of the pad held up fine against the compressed air thus far and we had zero signs of any type of separation (while it's cooler out here this time of year, it was still 85-90 degrees).
As noted above, the design helped a lot to get into smaller areas (seen below)
Worked great on the lights as well, no surprise.
The 3" backing plate, in my opinion, feels much more sturdy than the older megs 3" backing plate...and while we didnt have any new 3" discs to test, it did fit the older 2.0 foam pads nicely.
End result, super happy customer, super sweet looking car.
BUT WAIT! THERES MORE!
We needed something a bit darker...with a bit harder paint...to test these things out on. Hmmm, what to do what to do...
Jinkys where'd that come from! (Scooby doo reference, leave me alone).
Extreme swirly tastic CTS-V Coupe? Yes, yes that will work.
The new discs also have a go go gadget legs feature where you grow an extra foot to reach the center of the hood! (Ok not really, but hey maybe thats next in line?? Or maybe its already been developed ...its called..stand on a bucket.)
As you can see here, same pad/machine...also even on this harder GM paint, same polish...205. We did have a few spots here and there where we added a couple drops of M100 to "bump the bite"...but the results were the same as the ISF. Extremely satisfying.
That last pic about says it, don't you think?
We did have a couple of RIDS left (they were very noticeable even before we started)...
(When one of us comes across a deep RID that our current set up will not remove, we mark it with a small amount of polish so its easy for us to come back and spot polish later...thats what the white line is, where the light is..is where that RID was at).
While the larger pad set up did not take care of this eye sore...a smaller set up with a more....
type of approach...did the job.
Dani made a very short post of this picture to our facebook biz page simply saying "Coach mad!" (Coach is my nickname for her...and M101 is her solution to horrible RIDS that think they will get to hang around).
Well, that fixed that. Here's hoping the new discs come in 2" sizes too in the future?
End result, this baby got sealed up with Meguiars D156 Xpress Synthetic Spray Wax (tried it a few months ago, surprisingly easy to use AND quite durable) and bing bang bam...
Probably one of my favorite pics.
FINAL THOUGHTS
So far...we love these pads. Comfort is a no brainer, try em' once and you'll see what i mean. Cutting ability seems to be (in our limited testing time) between the old 2.0 pads and the Microfiber Discs Megs makes. The finish however...is much better that the microfiber discs, which means your final polish step, IF it is even needed, will be much easier.
The durability so far too seems to be quite impressive. I wont describe us as super abusive to our pads, but you can bet they have to work as hard as we do or else they get the boot! Clean up was easy and once dried they were basically like new again. At this point, these look like they will become staples on our shelf...and I'm not just saying that because we got some to test out (A couple years back when Optimum came out with their microfiber pads we got some freebies to test out just prior to launch and they sucked to be blunt. Separation in 2.5 seconds anyone?)
I'm sure we will have many more details in the future where these pads will get used and as we use them more i'll continue to update our opinion on them through our write up as well as on the forums and facebook.
Hope this was helpful, entertaining and all that good stuff. Thanks as always for reading!
He brought this guy along too
(Jose Fernandez of Superior Shine...can you say a pretty impressive duo to show up on our job site?)What he had with him was an early Christmas present for us. A box full of pads, along with some new backing plates (only some are shown here).
Time was short so we were only able to talk for about 10-15 minutes, but that was long enough for Jason to give us a quick run down on the pads/plates and for Joe to tell us how he uses them on speed 6 constantly and they are still in new condition (the rest of us still think speed 6 is WAY too high for these pads! But, he knows what works for him, anyone who's seen his work knows this).
Jasons main emphasis was, just be honest. If you like them, great, if you dont, great...just be honest in our feedback. Basically, kissing butt doesn't help progress anything. Dani's response "Oh don't worry, anyone who knows me knows i have no problem speaking my mind!" Yes, thats my sweet, loving, adorable little sister.
We received both 5" and 6" in cutting, polishing and finishing pads. You will notice one set is fatter than the other. The thicker ones are made specifically for rotary while the super low profile ones are made for dual action polishers. Heres a quick look at the specs:
Now while im sure all this is super interesting to everyone, im fairly sure the main question is "Well how did they work!?" Lets take a look at what ended up being our test subject.
Pretty nice test subject right? As for the paint condition...it was detailed by the dealership...or what Dani and I call "Dealership-afied"...a very technical term.
Plenty of good stuff to work with right? Now being that this was a full correction, we needed something that would cut alllll this good stuff out of here, but being that it was Lexus paint, we didnt need a super aggressive combo either. Now while i wish i could review on the DA backing plates that came along with it, we only had 1 small stroke DA with us and we ended up using it for 3-4" pad work...so we did get to test the new small backing plate out, but the larger pads were tested out on the Rupes 21 with the 6" backing plate.
First thing, the pad fit the Rupes backing plate like it was made for it. Pretty much an exact fit, but the little bit of extra "lip" on the pad made it very convenient to work on certain edges and curves where the backing plate comes into close contact with parts of the panel (this allows for less risk of accidentally hitting the paint with the plate AND helps to get the pads into tight spots.)
As i mentioned above, they were low profile:
For those who have used the old SoftBuff and SoftBuff 2.0 pads. you know how thick they are...i'd say the fatter rotary pads seen in the box above are close to that thickness. The pad I'm holding is the DA disc...and while i didn't do exact measurements ... you can see its close to half the thickness. Whats that mean? LOTS of power transferred to the pad!
This also made for a very SMOOTH polishing cycle. There was no grab or discomfort in the polishing cycle and keeping this thinner pad rotating was much easier than keeping thicker pads spinning (less weight to bog it down).
Now of course, none of that matters if the darn thing doesn't get those nasty things above out of the paint right? Well...thats probably the best part of these discs so far...they cut AND finished nicely. The 6" Cutting Disc, Megs 205 (yup the finishing polish again) and Rupes 21 on speed 3-4 got us these results:
Not bad eh? Now to be totally fair, this was not black, and non-black paints (with some exceptions) can usually hide very faint marrying. That being said, i looked at this thing with every light we had at every angle we could (after an Eraser wipe down) and could see no leftover marring. Further more, our final polishing step (which ended up being with the Black Finishing Disc and Carpro's Reflect) yielded very little, if any increase in clarity or gloss to the naked eye.
We did of course still do a final polish on the entire vehicle to make sure we were doing all we could to get it as glossy as possible, but if this had been a 1-step job i think ANYONE would have been happy with these results.
The pads held up great through the entire car and our preferred method of cleaning on the go was with compressed air...we use a Tornador to clean our pads as we go (when we have air supply). Hit the pad real quick after every section and it basically blows it completely clean. The cells of the pad held up fine against the compressed air thus far and we had zero signs of any type of separation (while it's cooler out here this time of year, it was still 85-90 degrees).
As noted above, the design helped a lot to get into smaller areas (seen below)
Worked great on the lights as well, no surprise.
The 3" backing plate, in my opinion, feels much more sturdy than the older megs 3" backing plate...and while we didnt have any new 3" discs to test, it did fit the older 2.0 foam pads nicely.
End result, super happy customer, super sweet looking car.
BUT WAIT! THERES MORE!
We needed something a bit darker...with a bit harder paint...to test these things out on. Hmmm, what to do what to do...
Jinkys where'd that come from! (Scooby doo reference, leave me alone).
Extreme swirly tastic CTS-V Coupe? Yes, yes that will work.
The new discs also have a go go gadget legs feature where you grow an extra foot to reach the center of the hood! (Ok not really, but hey maybe thats next in line?? Or maybe its already been developed ...its called..stand on a bucket.)
As you can see here, same pad/machine...also even on this harder GM paint, same polish...205. We did have a few spots here and there where we added a couple drops of M100 to "bump the bite"...but the results were the same as the ISF. Extremely satisfying.
That last pic about says it, don't you think?
We did have a couple of RIDS left (they were very noticeable even before we started)...
(When one of us comes across a deep RID that our current set up will not remove, we mark it with a small amount of polish so its easy for us to come back and spot polish later...thats what the white line is, where the light is..is where that RID was at).
While the larger pad set up did not take care of this eye sore...a smaller set up with a more....
type of approach...did the job.
Dani made a very short post of this picture to our facebook biz page simply saying "Coach mad!" (Coach is my nickname for her...and M101 is her solution to horrible RIDS that think they will get to hang around).
Well, that fixed that. Here's hoping the new discs come in 2" sizes too in the future?
End result, this baby got sealed up with Meguiars D156 Xpress Synthetic Spray Wax (tried it a few months ago, surprisingly easy to use AND quite durable) and bing bang bam...
Probably one of my favorite pics.
FINAL THOUGHTS
So far...we love these pads. Comfort is a no brainer, try em' once and you'll see what i mean. Cutting ability seems to be (in our limited testing time) between the old 2.0 pads and the Microfiber Discs Megs makes. The finish however...is much better that the microfiber discs, which means your final polish step, IF it is even needed, will be much easier.
The durability so far too seems to be quite impressive. I wont describe us as super abusive to our pads, but you can bet they have to work as hard as we do or else they get the boot! Clean up was easy and once dried they were basically like new again. At this point, these look like they will become staples on our shelf...and I'm not just saying that because we got some to test out (A couple years back when Optimum came out with their microfiber pads we got some freebies to test out just prior to launch and they sucked to be blunt. Separation in 2.5 seconds anyone?)
I'm sure we will have many more details in the future where these pads will get used and as we use them more i'll continue to update our opinion on them through our write up as well as on the forums and facebook.
Hope this was helpful, entertaining and all that good stuff. Thanks as always for reading!
Comment