Going to detail my first vehicle ever tomorrow and had a couple of questions regarding cleaning pads during compounding and polishing. I will be using M105, M205 and PO85rd and a Griots Garage DA.
1) By using the grit guard washer can the pad be washed and immediately put back into use compounding or polishing a panel or does it have to dry?
Like Charles posted, blot out any excess water using a clean, dry terry cloth towel using the clean your pad on the fly technique here...
How to clean your foam pad on the fly
The Grit Guard Universal Pad Washer and the Clean your pad on the fly technique are two methods that work great together...
2) will i need to apply more product?
Yes.
3) It is my understanding people clean the pad after 1-2 section passes? That seems like a lot.
What they are talking about is cleaning their pad after buffing out two section of paint, not two section passes. There's a difference.
A section of paint is an area about 16" to 20" squarish that you're going to buff out that is part of a panel like a hood or door.
A single section pass is where you move the buffer over the area you're buffing one time. Buffing that area twice would be 2 section passes. If the paint still needs buffing you wouldn't stop and clean your pad until after you've made your 6-8 section passes to that one area of paint.
You clean your pad AFTER you finish making all the sections passes to an area with the product on the pad. Once the product is used up then you clean your pad to remove the spent product and removed paint.
This is the kind of thing that is so easily shown but harder to teach with a keyboard. It's also just one of the zillions of things you would
see and do in one of our classes.
I thought I read where it might take 6 section passes for m105 to do it's job on fairly heavy swirls, so that means cleaning the pad 3 times for that one area?
6 Section Passes means moving the polisher over a single section of paint you're buffing 6 times. Then afterwards you would clean your pad.
If that section of paint still had swirls then you could buff it again.
Let's say you don't have a grit guard pad washer or compressed air, what would be the best way to clean the pad after each section?
Pad reconditioning brush?
Terry cloth towel with the machine spinning at a low speed?
Both of the above but when I clean my pad on the fly it's on a high speed, whatever the speed was while I was buffing.
Keep in mind the whole idea behind cleaning your pad on the fly is to QUICKLY clean "most" of the gunk off the face of your pad so you can get back to work.
It already takes a long time to buff out an entire car in one day if you're doing a multiple step process, you don't want to use a pad cleaning method that takes a half hour or every time you clean your pad you'll be adding a half hour to the total time it takes to buff out a car.
You should see us during our Thursday Night products, we clean or pads on the fly all the time and it takes seconds and then we get back to work.
Also, you leave your tool on the speed setting you were using. To stop, turn the speed down, then clean your pad, then turn the speed back up would all take more time, keep it simple. If you're buffing on speed 6, then you use speed 6 when you place the towel against the face of the pad and clean it.
