Porter Cable Usage Question

[Nacho98]

A few questions, as virtually all PC demo videos only ever show flat hoods/doors/trunks being worked:

1) How sharp of a body crease is "too sharp" to use a PC on? Are the creases in the doors/hoods of our SN95s PC no-go zones?

2) How do you polish tight areas like the fog light holes, side skirts, tail light bezels between the lenses, and the tight area where the side skirts meet the bottom of the doors/quarters? By hand, or do those places just have to be unfortunately skipped, as hand polishing seems to be tedious and minimally effective?

3) Do you also polish the door/trunk jambs, and if so, question #2 probably applies as well.

Thanks, getting a Porter Cable soon and just want to make sure I do it right.

 

[mygreengt]

not sure about the angles and curves it can be used on, but they make 4" pads for smaller areas. the really small areas can be polished by hand.

 

[Matt94GT]

I go along the body ridge on our sn95s with mine, i dont really go directly on the edge though too long, sweep over it quickly, if your worried about burning the paint it is pretty difficult to do even if you tried with a PC (unless you have an aggressive pad)

 

[thorco3]

I mean, I wouldn't sit right on a edge for half an hour but it's dang near impossible to burn paint with a pc. It simply doesn't have the rpm's like most of the buffers. It's also a random orbit buffer which makes it virtually fool proof.

With all of that being said, I'm sure you can find links on how to buff body lines and find a few tricks. ie. lead off of a body line instead of into it... much easier to see someone do it than to explain it though. I'm sure there are vids on youtube or something like that.

 

[Nacho98]

Thanks, anyone else who can chime in?

 

[Dr Fildo]

I'll chime in. I am using a pc that I borroed from a friend of mine. Never used it before and was pretty worried about screwing up the paint. It is turning out AWESOMELY. I'm sorry I never used it before. I really thought some areas would need to be re-painted, but after a few passes with the buffer...POOF! Looks like new. Better than new. I'm using the orange pad with menzerna coarse polish, then the white pad with menzerna fine polish.

Just do it, Nacho. You won't be sorry. Just take your time. I've used it on all the edges, going lighter than the flat surfaces...No problems yet.

 

[Dalamar]

It's pretty hard to burn through the paint with an orbital.

Go for it, and do the small stuff by hand.

 

[Nacho98]

Thanks, definitely going to get one with some 5.5" pads and go to town.

 

[DropTopPony]

If you are nervous about going around edges etc with the PC and don't want to spend all day hand waxing try using a Mothers Powerball for paint on those areas. Maybe that will help speed things up?