Cleaning pad on the fly

I don't run my 3401 when cleaning pads on the fly. I find the forced rotation accelerates pad deterioration while doing this.

Instead, I keep the machine off and brush the pad free of residue with a pad conditioning brush.

No problem sir. I have a Meguiar's WPCB brush which it seems they no longer manufacture.
Meguiars Professional Pad Conditioning Brush, pad cleaning brush

Perhaps you can find one locally.

Good stuff.

I plug in my DA and whatever Flex pads I'm using swop over to it and use speed 2 against and old MF cloth, it cleans and dries real quick. Worth investing in a cheaper DA just for pad cleaning and spot buffing if you machine polish often or for a living.

rcoops77 said:

Hi all,

What speed is best on flex 3401 when cleaning foam pads on the fly with terry cloth towel

Click to expand...

The technique I share in this article doesn't work with gear-driven dual action polishers.

How to clean your foam pad on the fly



You can use a variation of it with rotary buffers but it simply doesn't work with the Flex 3401 or even the RUPES tools or Cyclo tools.

It's really only good for the Porter Cable, Griot's and Meguiar's type free spinning DA Polishers.

Also, even though Meguiar's may discontinued selling their pad cleaning brush Autogeek does offer the original here,


Foam Pad Cleaning Brush


In my Flex how-to book I do show the nylon pad cleaning brush and to use it you simply brush the face of the pad with the polisher turned OFF not on. You can use the brush with the tool turned on but it doesn't work any better then scrapping the product residue off the face of the pad in the off position and it can tear up the foam.



Nylon Pad Conditioning Brush
You can also hold a nylon pad conditioning brush against the face of the pad with the machine turned on but if you push very hard at all it will tend to tear up the foam.




Cotton Terrycloth Towel
I demonstrated this in my Flex 3401 Class at Detail Fest so while this class was taped live, there were people standing in front of me during the cleaning demo so all you see are their backs.

Basically, fold a towel into a ball and hold it tightly against the pad as it spins. Here's a screenshot from my power point presentation.



Note: You want to use terry cloth towel for this, like a wash cloth or a hand towel as the characteristic of terrycloth is the fibers are more stout than soft gentle microfibers that make-up microfiber towels and you need this stoutness to help clean the gunk off the pad.