Mittenz
New member
- Aug 13, 2015
- 154
- 0
I grew up always enjoying detailing and keeping my cars clean. I blame my step-father. My step-father had a LOT of cars through the years. He fixed them, he painted them, he detailed them, whatever needed done he can do. Restoring Cadillacs is his passion and I can't begin to count how many have gone through his garage.
I never used his buffer, it's a big ol' thing about 40+ yrs old. His one one speed and it's fast with 9" or 10" pads. It could get away from you pretty easily if you weren't paying attention. He had a good story of repainting a fin of a 59 Caddy due to it flipping...on the final pass. He would use wool pads to compound and polish. The waxing we always did by hand.
A little over 20 yrs ago I moved 700 miles south to GA. I no longer had access to his incredible garage, nor him helping me polish up the cars. So after years of doing everything by hand, I finally broke down the other week and bought the Porter Cable 7424XP. At 50 yrs old, doing cars by hand is not a task I looked forward to doing anymore. This orbital buffer is awesome!!
Now while I don't have as nice of cars as most guys on here, I still love getting her all shined up. It's a 2014 Civic Si. It's my 4th Civic and by far my favorite one. It's not real fast, but a very fun car to drive. I've done a lot to it to help it handle a lot better than stock.
The pics are after spending 40 hours on it the other week. I clayed it, polished it, glazed it, and finally waxed it. You can see some high gloss black on the wheels. I spent 6 hrs just on the wheels. I can't imagine how much time I would have spent if I did it all by hand! As I was doing it I was posting up how much time I spent on it. Some people were making fun of me that I was spending so much time on it. Once they saw the final results, they stopped making fun. It even got a lot of looks at a car show that weekend even though it's not some over the top modded import.
And probably like most of you, once people see your car and you tell them what you did, they will volunteer their car next! LOL
Anyway, I'll probably do more reading than posting, but I thought I would stop by and say Hi
~ Michael
Edit PS: I watched and learned a lot from all the videos. I sure appreciate Mike for taking the time to do all those!!!
I never used his buffer, it's a big ol' thing about 40+ yrs old. His one one speed and it's fast with 9" or 10" pads. It could get away from you pretty easily if you weren't paying attention. He had a good story of repainting a fin of a 59 Caddy due to it flipping...on the final pass. He would use wool pads to compound and polish. The waxing we always did by hand.
A little over 20 yrs ago I moved 700 miles south to GA. I no longer had access to his incredible garage, nor him helping me polish up the cars. So after years of doing everything by hand, I finally broke down the other week and bought the Porter Cable 7424XP. At 50 yrs old, doing cars by hand is not a task I looked forward to doing anymore. This orbital buffer is awesome!!
Now while I don't have as nice of cars as most guys on here, I still love getting her all shined up. It's a 2014 Civic Si. It's my 4th Civic and by far my favorite one. It's not real fast, but a very fun car to drive. I've done a lot to it to help it handle a lot better than stock.
The pics are after spending 40 hours on it the other week. I clayed it, polished it, glazed it, and finally waxed it. You can see some high gloss black on the wheels. I spent 6 hrs just on the wheels. I can't imagine how much time I would have spent if I did it all by hand! As I was doing it I was posting up how much time I spent on it. Some people were making fun of me that I was spending so much time on it. Once they saw the final results, they stopped making fun. It even got a lot of looks at a car show that weekend even though it's not some over the top modded import.
And probably like most of you, once people see your car and you tell them what you did, they will volunteer their car next! LOL
Anyway, I'll probably do more reading than posting, but I thought I would stop by and say Hi
~ Michael
Edit PS: I watched and learned a lot from all the videos. I sure appreciate Mike for taking the time to do all those!!!
