buffing the hood

when i detailed my jeep the biggest PITA for me was the hood, more specifically the contours of it what pad (size, manufacturer, type ) does every1 else use for this area and what are your opinions of the pads you have used. i was looking at the lake country 7 inch kompressor pads as a good option but i do not know much about them.
thanks

cplchris said:

when i detailed my jeep the biggest PITA for me was the hood, more specifically the contours of it what pad (size, manufacturer, type ) does every1 else use for this area and what are your opinions of the pads you have used. i was looking at the lake country 7 inch kompressor pads as a good option but i do not know much about them.
thanks

Click to expand...

It greatly depends on the machine that you are using, but I generally prefer to use Lake Country 4" pads for the hood of my KJ when using both my dual action and my rotary. Actually, the whole KJ tends to lead to using a 4" pad on the whole thing due to having so many lines on it.

The kompressor pads are nice, but they are just to big for the most part for the KJ. In my option anyway.

I use a griots garage 3" buffer with matching pads, and got back and forth between that and my flex all over the jeep. 3" gets in lots of little spots.

thanks guys, i used the 4 inch lake country orange pad but all of the other pads that came with my 7424xp are 6.5inch and it impeded my ability to do the final polishing of the entire hood so it looks like next thing im buying are some nice thick 4 inch pads

I find myself using the 4" pads a lot. Not just on my Jeep, but on my customers cars as well.

Also, with a dual action polisher, the smaller the pads, the more work you can get done. With smaller pads, you gain the ability to generate more heat and that breaks the polish down quicker. You also receive a better finish when the polish breaks down further.

yea i felt like the larger pads kind of gave me a false illusion of more progress in less time

Reviving an old thread here... I am deciding on tools for detailing my '06 Liberty. I've already decided on the supplies ... I'm using various Meguiars products. I think I want to get the Porter Cable 7424XP... but all the pads I see mentioned in relation to this polisher are 6". Do any of you use the 4" pads you mentioned with this polisher? Are there any gotchas to watch out for?

I tend to agree, 4" would be better for the Liberty given all the lines, corners, edges, etc.

TIA!

i use the 4 inch lake country pads the only 4in pads that came with my starter kit were the orange light cut pads and the were awesome at correcting and gave me more control with the tight curves and lines everywhere the 6 inch pads were decent for a few of the larger flat spots but the time consumed by having to change the pads and then priming them and reapplying product with the larger pads would have been saved by just stcking with the 4inch pads but the 7424xp is an excellent tool i really liked it and i will be using it to make me some money this summer so you cant go wrong with it IMHO. good luck man

oh and as far as products go look into farecla products...they are all water based therefore if you happen to get some compound on the plastic fenders you can just spray it off with water.

I prefer to use 4" pads. If I use anything bigger, I use their 5.5" pads, but that is fairly rare. I never use anything bigger than a 4" on the KJ though.

The FLAT hood on my Renegade lends itself well to a 6" pad. Ha.

I ended up buying some 4" pads and am getting started with the project. My Liberty must have been thru a carwash a thousand times before I bought it... it's swirl city. I'll update when I've made some progress

progress...

Here's how it looks so far ... I still need to do around the door jams, do the roof, and polish & wax the wheels. But for the rest I polished with Meguiar's Ultimate Compound, then with Swirl Remover 2.0, then used Show Car Glaze, and then topped it off with a coat of NXT Tech Wax 2.0. So far I've spent about 7 days of effort on it. That clear coat is easy to scratch but *tough* to correct!!!

The last image shows what the whole surface looked like when I bought it. Fine from a distance, but under bright lights, swirl city!!!

What'ya all think?