Trying to learn on a DeWalt 849

flyinion

flyinion

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So I borrowed my friend's DeWalt 849, not the newer one that's in the AG store but the old one that weighs about 8-10 pounds and goes from 1000rpm up. I was trying to practice on an old door panel he acquired but it didn't go as well as I hoped. The door is not a flat panel, it's an old Honda door and has a bit of a curve to it. Paint is non-metallic red (probably doesn't matter just putting it out there as info). I only have 5.5 x 7/8th inch pads since that's what I use on my current PC 7424 (non-xp about 10+ years old). So I was trying it out with the WG TSR and an old orange LC CCS pad at 1200rpms (AG's recommendation for TSR on the product page).

I was able to control it fairly easy in what would be the horizontal orientation of the door was mounted (i.e. from left to right & right to left laying down) but when it came time to go in what would be a vertical direction if it was mounted (i.e. away and back to me) it was trying to walk all over. It would also try to walk ever time I reversed direction to cover the previous pass by 50%. I called my friend and he said to slightly lift the leading edge of the pad up. That confused me because I've always read to keep it perfectly flat with a rotary but it seemed to help slightly. I still had a lot of problems in the one direction though.

So I guess I could use some more advice on technique. Am I going to fast maybe? Is it the "hard edges" of the CCS pad? I know the flat pads have a rounded edge and the larger 7+ inch rotary specific foam pads have an angled edge. On a positive note, I didn't seem to create any holograms and even though I purposely tried it I couldn't burn the paint or an edge but maybe I didn't have an aggressive enough pad/product/speed to do that.
 
Honestly, you just need to practice. Using a rotary isn't hard but some time is needed to get a feel for the machine. As to what your friend said, u dont actually want to lift the pad off of the paint. You just want to keep a bit more pressure on the trailing part of the pad and that will help with the machine wanting to take off on you until you have a good feel for it.
 
Dr Oldz said:
Honestly, you just need to practice. Using a rotary isn't hard but some time is needed to get a feel for the machine. As to what your friend said, u dont actually want to lift the pad off of the paint. You just want to keep a bit more pressure on the trailing part of the pad and that will help with the machine wanting to take off on you until you have a good feel for it.
Click to expand...

Ok thanks. Maybe that's what he was trying to say is more pressure on the trailing part and it just didn't come across right.
 
Thanks Mike I'll check those out in depth when I get home. I think I've glanced over the article before but I don't think I've seen the video.

edit: My plan is to hopefully get confident enough with it and step up from my original version PC 7424 to the newer DeWalt DWP849X model. I'd love the flex but there's a huge price difference lol. I thought about just getting the flex XC3401 VRG DA polisher but for the price it seemed like maybe a better idea to just learn a rotary. I'm open to input on that though. I'm not doing any pro level work, just mine and friends/family vehicles.
 
I can say that I own a DWP849X and truly love the machine. It has a lot of detailer friendly features and is a very well built machine. You will be happy with your purchase!
 
So how many passes would to do with a rotary to equal 6 sections passes with a DA on speed 5?


Sent from my iPhone using AG Online
 
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