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Just the man I've been itching to ask. Aussie Driver, can I see a picture of your random orbital?

I just finished Interlux Brightside Black a few days ago. I am researching which machine to purchase. A detailer from a forum said I should buy a rotary polisher, they said they don't think a random orbital can remove all the wetsanding scratches. But I am curious since you have already experienced this perfectly with a random orbital + SSR2.5.

Please let me know what you can suggest or recommend.



There are two types of polisher/buffer that you can purchase. A rotary (as suggested to you from the detailing forum) will do a brilliant job in getting the paint to look like a mirror. But, in inexperienced hands they are potentially dangerous to the paint. I have a rotary and I will only use it occasionally on flat surfaces. I have burned straight through a clear coat, the color coat and the primer on one panel that I was learning on. It was dead easy to wreck.

I much prefer to use my random orbital polisher(s). The ones that I have are a similar spec to a PC 7424 and they will do just as good a job as a rotary. They just take a lot longer to get there.



You can see the polisher in the shot above. It is very similar to a PC 7427 but it is made in Australia. This one is an Ozito brand and it is a copy of my other random orbital polisher which is a Ryobi (The Ryobi is blue and the Ozito is grey and that is about the only difference between them).

Tha pads that you can see in the picture are Wolfgang buffing pads. I'm pretty sure that the same pads are available in the US marketed under the Lake County brand. The yellow pad is a cutting pad, and the orange pad is a light cutting pad. The brown polish is Poorboy's SSR3 (cutting compound) and the purple polish is SSR2.5. That shot was taken after the buffing of the hardtop that is further up the page. It does show how much pick-up there is from the cutting compound/cutting pad.

As to which polisher you should buy, I would recommend the PC 7424 and the Lake County buffing pads. They are expensive but they are up to the job and they also give you the opportunity to re-coup some of your costs. I do a bit of detailing on the side and that only started because of my paintjob on a budget. I have paid for my two random orbital polishers and about half of my products just from detailing other peoples cars.

Once they see the shots of what I have done with a roller paintjob, they get a little misty-eyed thinking about how good their "real" paintjob could look after detailing. It's an easy sell!!