I received one of those "orbital" machines with the bonnets to wax your car for christmas, and havent used it yet. I have an 05 limited coupe aero blue peral color and live in Az where my car gets dirty quite often. Do those machines do a good job as far as waxing cars or do they damage your car or leave swirl marks? What do dealers use to get that great shine . always hand waxed but feel I never get great results, anyone use these machines to wax your car, your thoughts??

 

You can not damage the paint, even if you tried what an orbital polisher. However, I don't know what polisher you got for Christmas, so I don't know how good it is in terms of quality of job it will do on your car.

 

I am not sure you can say that, all orbitals are not the same. Most importantly the "bonnet" is the part that touches the finish and the wrong "bonnet" can be fatal, well, not to you but you get the drift.
Those terry "bonnets" are fit for polishing your shoes and little else.

 

Most orbital polishers don't have enough power to do anything more than apply wax. Defect correction - the removal of swirls, etc - takes more power, generally from a D/A polisher like the Porter Cable 7424XP, Griot's Garage, or Meguiar's G110v2 unit. These are what allow you do accomplish proper surface prep to level the surface and give you that show car shine. Wax is merely a sacrificial protective layer that you apply after all the hard work.

Oh, and don't let a dealer work on your paint - most are total hacks and will cause more problems than they solve.

In my day job I'm the Admin of meguiarsonline.com, the discussion forum of Meguiar's Inc. I also teach our detailing classes and hold seminars at various events from time to time. Just got back from Orlando, FL where I spent last week with our sales rep who handles Advance Auto Parts, talking at the Advance Auto Parts Manager's Conference. Next month I'm back in Orlando as a guest of the Rolls Royce/Bentley Owner's Club Annual Meet to do a couple of seminars for them. We teach how to use a buffer properly to correct defects, etc.

 

I too have had the Meguiars orbital polisher demonstrated to me by Meguiars here in the UK. The results were astonishing. They marked off the bonnet (hood) into a grid and demonstrated the difference between the Meguiars products and the difference between hand polishing and machine polishing. When they removed the grid you could clearly see the results and the difference in finish. Under a UV lamp all the swirls had dissappeared with the Orbital Polisher but were still evident from the hand polishing albeit, you had to look hard to see them.

 

so it depends on the bonnet? what is a good bonnet to get, and do these machines put the polish on and then you use them to wax it off with a different bonnet?

 

Go over to the detailing forum on this site and read all of Mike-in-Orange's posts. He knows what he is talking about and gives the best advice.

 

Hey..At least you have the RIGHT color Crossfire. Squirrel Crusher

 

These less expensive machines tend to vary a bit with regard to bonnet choices. Check the owners manual but you should have suggestions for which bonnet to use for wax application, paint cleaner application, etc.

Generally what you do is to work a paint cleaner with a moderately aggressive pad (in this case, bonnet) over a small area for a couple of minutes and then wipe it off with a clean microfiber towel before it dries. You work around the vehicle in this manner, essentially deep cleaning the paint and prepping it for the wax. The problem with these machines is that they lack the power to remove really severe defects, and as soon as you put some pressure down on them they just bog down. On some cars with very soft paint they can work fairly well, with the right product choice, but on paint as hard as we have on the Crossfire, they just can't cut it (pun intended).

Anyway, after this paint cleaning process you would switch to a very soft finishing pad (again, bonnet in this case) and apply a very thin and uniform coat of wax to all the painted surfaces of the vehicle. Let the wax dry fully - perhaps 20 to 30 minutes - and then simply wipe off with a clean microfiber. This is something these tools are actually pretty good at. Most people have a habit of using waaay too much wax - a couple of ounces of a liquid wax is all you need to cover a full size car, let alone a Crossfire. And once you apply this small amount in a thin, uniform layer, removal when dry is a piece of cake. Any time someone tells me how hard it is to wax a car I know immediately that they're doing it all wrong.

 

WHAT HE SAID

 

I have something simular, its orange, made in good ol China...got it from walmart a few years back. It works good to put on and remove wax/polish but really only in the aspect that it saves elbow grease. Havent hurt any paint with it and have used several different types of bonnets too. Bear in mind Im an extreme novice and have had no problems with it or the terri cloth bonnets.

On the CICCI forum theres a good link to Adam's Polish detailing how to's. Plus search every post Mike in Orange has made for the real deal on detailing. And dont forget the claybar