Revitalise Pad - Refining pad

The orange pad is our 'restoring' pad. Designed to work with our Revitalise Number 1 Compound.The yellow pad is our 'polishing' pad. Designed to work with our Revitalise Number 2 Compound and One Step.The red pad is our 'refining' pad. Designed to work with our Revitalise Number 3 Compound, Tripple, Rejuvenate and Ultra Glaze.

This will always depend on the aggressiveness of the ‘combo’ - the combination of pad and compound/polish – you use with your DPX or MPX machine. This is because a combo with more cut will take away more of the top layer to level it down to the bottom of the deepest defect, essentially making the defect disappear. As a general rule of thumb though, a heavy cutting combo will take away approximately 5-6 microns and a fine refining polish around 1-2 microns of the top layer of paint or lacquer. To put this into context a human hair is around 70 microns thick, and average two stage OEM paintwork around 100-140 microns thick, including a clearcoat layer (the bit you’re polishing away) of around 45-70 microns. Single stage paintwork (topcoat without lacquer) is a little thinner and often softer, but again you’re only taking away a tiny amount when polishing a panel. On the vast majority of cars there will be plenty of clearcoat to polish, strike through - or burning through the top layer - only really happens due to poor techniques, or on older vehicles which have been repeatedly machine polished over the course of decades. Although the key is only to polish when your vehicle really needs it for enhancement or defect removal, it’s highly unlikely that you’ll be polishing through your paintwork. As for what combo to use for different types of defects including the dreaded swirl marks? Well, we’ve made that straightforward by developing our range of colour-coded compounds and pads specifically for use with our dual action polishers. These include our Revitalise System V2, (with all machine polishing compounds and pads available separately), and One Step All-in-One Compound. For more on those, and all the essential information about how polishes and compounds work, see our guide – All Car Polishes Explained.  

Yes, a machine polisher, such as our MPX and DPX Dual Action Polishers, will take out some of the elbow grease when using any hand polishing product, and you’ll always get consistent, professional results. Unlike products that are for machine polishing only, any polish that’s designed to be applied by hand will contain fine abrasives that can be broken down relatively easily without a polisher (as opposed to heavy compounds that rely on the machine to fully work through), making them suitable for hand polishing. But, for minimal effort, and increased consistency over multiple windows, especially when performing multiple treatments, machine polishing with Vision Glass Polish is a great way to give tired glass a new lease of life. With this product we’d recommend using a soft, Revitalise No:3 Refining Pad or the equivalent red 3-inch Revitalise Spot Pad, a low speed setting, and slow passes.      

This will always depend on the finish you’re looking for, the effort you’d like to put in and the time you have available because you can get great results using either method. Rejuvenate Paintwork Cleanser has been developed using advanced diminishing abrasives which are designed to be extremely easy to break down by hand, so it doesn’t require a machine polisher to work the compound all the way through. All you need to effectively clean away oxidation and hardy contaminants, along with lightly refining paintwork, is a Microfibre Applicator or a Polish Pad. But that said, when you’re looking for the most consistent, professional finish over a whole vehicle, using a DA machine (such as our DPX or MPX Dual Action Polishers) can be the easiest option. Machine polishers will apply the same mechanical action to every panel for the ultimate constancy, and they will certainly take out most of the elbow grease. When using a machine polisher with Rejuvenate we recommend utilising a suitably soft, Revitalise No:3 Refining Pad for 5-inch polishers, and the equivalent (red) Revitalise Spot Pad for 3-inch machines.