Foam Pads

[Reflections]

Hi,
I was teaching a friend how to clean his paint with the PC and DACP. Just happened that I was waxing another car next to his with #26 when by accident he grabbed my wax bottle and started applying it to his car. Now the foam pad he was using was contaminated with wax and DACP. I figured that the pad was trash so I decided to do an experiment. I applied some household citrus cleaner to it and rinsed it off with hot water. To my surprise the pad was clean and bright yellow. I kept on rinsing it for about 5 minutes until all the water was clean and the pad didn't smelled like citrus anymore. Just for the record I used running water sprayed with the sprayer in the sink. My question is; is this pad serviceable? Was this an acceptable way to clean a dirty pad? Is there another way to wash my foam pads without ruining them? These babies are not cheap and if I can prolong their service life, then I think I'll save money in the long run.
Thanks
by the way, the pad looks good and it's not deformed or damaged in any way visible.

[MBZ 500E]

I'm not sure if this is right but I've always thrown my foams pads into the washing machine. They typically last up to 5 waxes before I wash them again and relegate them to tire duty. After 4 uses on my tires they're usually trashed.

I would also be interested to hear better methods if there are any?

[Billorlando]

You know in my detail shop we have all types I have meguiar's , 3m, automagic, a few from xyz companies. We normally start by letting the foam pads dry out then we rinse with clean water until the pads runs clear thru ...after that we will put them on our PC and spin them at high speed in a bucket for about a minute after that we let them dry again .... I can get about 20 cars out of each pad. However I have a meguairs rep that came by last wednesday and he showed me a neat tool that instead of being A spur cleaner it was a type of heavy grade nylon brush and he took one of my used but dry foam pads and cleaned it almost as good as my process all he did was place the pad on a PC and cleaned it with a brush and then rinsed it thru water blotted it off with a clean towell and it was ready to go again .... I do not if this is an option or not but works real well...

[MBZ 500E]

Bill the spur is a very cool tool for cleaning PC foam pads, I've seen and used them a couple of times and they work great. Only problem is I don't have a rotary and you can't really use them on an Orbital.

BTW my parents live in Leesburgh, what a beautiful and rediculously fast growing city.