Struggling with the DA

[tgfhatch]

Well the weather on the east coast today was 60 for Jan which is great! So I thought what a great time to post out the detailing supplies and clean up some cars.

Well I washed, and clayed my Mazda (silver), and then grew some you know whats, and attempted to use the DA for the first time.

Well I must say, I'm struggling to convience myself that the $220 I spent was worth it! Nothing seemed to work for me. First I tried #80, and that worked out alright. The product seemed sort of hrad to remove with a MF. Then I moved up to applying some NXT, well that didn't go over well at all. I applied some to the pad, and tried it on the fender. It didn't appear that anything was even on the paint. I don't know what my problem was, I followed all important posts on here about which pad to use with which product. Was I applying to much product? Not enough product? Was I not applying enough pressure?

I want to use this on my garaged car to remove some swirls but now I'm really luctant to do so, as it didn't go over to well today. I really wish their could be a detailing class in PA or MD so I could learn properly how to do this!

Any help is appreciated! I'm struggling with all sorts of issues today. This is the second help post i had to put up

ON a good note, BIG thumgs up for NXT metal polish!! WOW!

[SiriusRIMZ]

#80 can be hard to remove for a first timer, because it was put on too thick. I started with my DA three days ago, and I found #80 difficult to remove, however with some pratice I am able to put on a thinner coat and it comes off 100x eaiser than when I started.

I found that #80 was also not cutting it, so I went up to #83, give that a shot, it should clean up more swirls.

[imacarnut]

i struggled at first as well. make sure you do slow passes (side to side, up & down, and horizontal) with the pc bumped up to about 5 or so.

[Mike Phillips]

Re: Struggling with the DA

Originally posted by tgfhatch

Any help is appreciated! I'm struggling with all sorts of issues today. This is the second help post i had to put up

I'm not able to post how-to stuff on Saturday's as I'm usually busing teaching the above aforementioned class you say you would like to attend.

http://meguiarsonline.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=10831

Two of the things I focus very strongly on in the class is the technique for applying ScratchX by hand and using the dual action polisher correctly, (wait till you see the before and after results.

Send me your phone number and I'll call you to discuss. As I type this it's a little after 6:00am on Sunday morning, I've already answered a number of posts and I have to wrap things up here i order to get ready for church.

http://meguiarsonline.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=10843

http://meguiarsonline.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=10842

So while I love answering questions on this forum all the time, I have to push away from the keyboard at some point in order to include other areas of life in an attempt to have balance. Yesterday's class started at 4:00am and I arrived home after 8:00pm, no big deal but there has to be time away from the job and Sunday is that day.



I'll be working on our 1959 Cadillac today after church as I'm going to adjust the valves, (I wrote a how-to book on how to adjust the Chevrolet valve train, so I'm pretty good at it).






I would be happy to call you to discuss by phone however if you'll send your phone number via e-mail to mphillips@meguiars.com

How's that?

[tgfhatch]

Mike, I appreciate your willingness to try and help me over the telephone. I'm sorry that I had no chance to post up yesterday as the weather turned bad and ended up raining the majority of the day. I'm going to attemp another shot at the DA with some other products, and I'm going to read more on here. hpefully that will correct a lot of my problems / issues.

hopefully I will not have to take you up on the telephone lesson later in the future!

thanks again Mike for offering your services yesterday!

[Mike Phillips]

No problemo...

I'll be by a phone most of today, but then offline Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

[Setec Astronomy]

tgfhatch, I hope you get to talk to Mike Phillips today, but here's a couple things that jump out at me from your post and from my learning curve with the G100. If you have product caking up on the surface that is difficult to remove (in 60 degree weather), sounds like you are using too much product or not working it enough. You may need to more fully break down the polish, working it until it is almost gone.

Also, some swirls/scratches can be deep, and, as was mentioned, may need a more agressive product like #83, but what I found was that to perform defect removal with the G100 requires pressure . When I first got mine, I thought I could just run it over the paint with the weight of the machine, but the reality is, the pads/products aren't really very abrasive (even the combo's we would consider such), and you really need to put some pressure on the machine to take out defects.

As far as applying LSP, that's always kind of a tossup against doing it by hand. You should probably used a finishing pad, and relative to your observation about there being "nothing" on the paint, how did it feel? One of the reasons to do machine LSP application is to acheive a thin, even coat, which you may have done.

EDIT: Oops, you didn't mention what speeds you were using with the G100. For defect correction you want to run at 5 (the maximum speed Meguiar's recommends for the backing plate), lower speeds really won't cut it (no pun intended). You'll want to be down maybe 2-ish for the LSP application.

[tgfhatch]

Setec, sorry for the delay in posting up again. I think one of my problems might have been not working the product in long enough. I was reluctant to work it in to long, as I didn't want to get to a dry buff.

I also think that I wasn't puttin enough pressure. I have the how to's for the g100 with the products that Mike posted up on the website.

as far as the lsp, I tried to layer a thin coating of nxt. then once i thought it was on, i tried the swipe test, as it didn't look like much was there, and nothing really whiped off. so i just put it on by hand and removed by the machine.

as far as the speed goes, i did it exactly to the specs of the posts i found on here (per pad and product being used).

hopefully my next shot will be a success