Some background- my previous vehicle, a 1995 Plymouth Neon, had a lot of wiper haze scratches in the windshield. I bought a glass polishing kit from The Eastwood Company to remove them. I polished the windshield and it came out really well. The only thing I didn't like was how taxing it was to try to polish with a drill. I was constantly fighting the drill trying to kick out of my hands. I did two windshields with the glass kit's 2.5 inch pad and drill adapter. The windshields came out great, but my arms and hands were almost crippled afterwards.
My current vehicle is a 2007 Civic Si which also suffered from wiper haze scratches in the windshield. I wanted to polish out the scratches to decrease the glare on my windshield before winter gets here. I recently purchased a Harbor Freight 6" dual action polisher after reading some good things about it on this site. I also saw that Griots makes their own glass polish and polish pads. After reading that their polish only really removes water spots, I figured I could use their glass polishing pads on my DA and use the glass polishing compound (I think its called rhodite) from the Eastwood kit. Last weekend I used this set up to polish the windshield on my Civic. The hazing was nothing extreme, but I think I got better results from the set up with the drill, even though using the DA was easier on my arms and hands.
I've read on here already that most people say a DA does not have enough power (no direct rotary action like a rotary polisher, or forced rotation like a Flex) to polish glass. I think the results that I got from my set up got me satisfactory results. I didn't induce any additional scratches, and I removed most of the wiper haze, but I think that I can still make it better. There are still very light scratches from the wipers. To clarify my set up, a Harbor Freight 6" dual action polisher using the backing plate that comes with the polisher, a Griot's Garage glass polishing pad prepped by soaking in water. The polish was added to the pad by tapping a small amount out of the container and wetting it with a spray bottle until it turned into a wet slurry. The slurry was soaked up into the pad by pressing the pad into the slurry. Just guessing here, I used about 12 to 15 lbs of pressure on a speed of 4.5. I did an area of about 18"x18" at a time, moved the buffer slowly, did two passes in a cross-hatch pattern, stopped to wet the pad without adding polish, and did two more passes. It worked well and kept the glass fairly cool, but was kind of slower than using the drill, and didn't yield results as good.
Since I've been looking here on AutoGeek, I found CeriGlass. Would CeriGlass be better to use with this set up? Is the cutting ability of CeriGlass more than the rhodite in the Eastwood kit? Would increasing the speed of the polisher help? Would going to a 3" backing plate and pad help to put more pressure on a smaller area instead of spreading out the force to a large area?
I'd like to go at this windshield one more time to get the rest of the wiper scratches out, but I'd like to try to do it more time efficiently.
My current vehicle is a 2007 Civic Si which also suffered from wiper haze scratches in the windshield. I wanted to polish out the scratches to decrease the glare on my windshield before winter gets here. I recently purchased a Harbor Freight 6" dual action polisher after reading some good things about it on this site. I also saw that Griots makes their own glass polish and polish pads. After reading that their polish only really removes water spots, I figured I could use their glass polishing pads on my DA and use the glass polishing compound (I think its called rhodite) from the Eastwood kit. Last weekend I used this set up to polish the windshield on my Civic. The hazing was nothing extreme, but I think I got better results from the set up with the drill, even though using the DA was easier on my arms and hands.
I've read on here already that most people say a DA does not have enough power (no direct rotary action like a rotary polisher, or forced rotation like a Flex) to polish glass. I think the results that I got from my set up got me satisfactory results. I didn't induce any additional scratches, and I removed most of the wiper haze, but I think that I can still make it better. There are still very light scratches from the wipers. To clarify my set up, a Harbor Freight 6" dual action polisher using the backing plate that comes with the polisher, a Griot's Garage glass polishing pad prepped by soaking in water. The polish was added to the pad by tapping a small amount out of the container and wetting it with a spray bottle until it turned into a wet slurry. The slurry was soaked up into the pad by pressing the pad into the slurry. Just guessing here, I used about 12 to 15 lbs of pressure on a speed of 4.5. I did an area of about 18"x18" at a time, moved the buffer slowly, did two passes in a cross-hatch pattern, stopped to wet the pad without adding polish, and did two more passes. It worked well and kept the glass fairly cool, but was kind of slower than using the drill, and didn't yield results as good.
Since I've been looking here on AutoGeek, I found CeriGlass. Would CeriGlass be better to use with this set up? Is the cutting ability of CeriGlass more than the rhodite in the Eastwood kit? Would increasing the speed of the polisher help? Would going to a 3" backing plate and pad help to put more pressure on a smaller area instead of spreading out the force to a large area?
I'd like to go at this windshield one more time to get the rest of the wiper scratches out, but I'd like to try to do it more time efficiently.
