foam pad confusion

[ALLMAN BROS FAN]

Hi Everyone
Would someone please tell me if there is a standard in the color of all brands of foam pads. In other words does yellow mean the same in all brands of pads? Thanks so much Guys

[BlackScreaminMachine]

Re: foam pad confusion

http://www.autogeekonline.net/forum/product-charts-graphs/

I use Lake Country and no, not ALL pads are the same. YOu should though always try the least aggressive combo to get the most out of the product.

http://www.auto-geek.net/charts/buffing-pad-chart-lc.htm

[Michael Stoops]

Re: foam pad confusion

No, there is no industry wide color standard for pad aggressiveness.

Todd Helme, MOL member and detailer extraordinaire, put together a great chart showing the relative aggressiveness of the most popular LC pads compared to the Meguiar's lineup, shown below.

[ALLMAN BROS FAN]

Re: foam pad confusion

Thanks so much Michael for the info on the pads. IMHO there seems to be a lot of over lapping with the different paint correction products and what I mean by that is so many of the products seem to perform ALMOST the same function, which can cause problems with a novice like myself. Thanks again

[Michael Stoops]

Re: foam pad confusion

In the most basic terms, so many products actually do perform the same basic function. The reason for this is that there are so many variables involved in polishing paint - paint systems are almost as varied as they cars they are applied to - plus different tools, pads, skill levels of operators, etc all come into play.

You can send out a cake recipe to 500 people and, as long as they follow the directions to the letter they'll all make the same cake. You can't really do that with paint polishing because now suddenly those 500 people are working on 500 different cars, and what works great on one may be total overkill on another and completely ineffective on another one still. It's sort of like sending out that cake recipe but not telling everyone what size pan to use, how hot to set the oven, or how long to bake it - except there are still more variables in paint polishing!!