Originally Posted by George @ DU

So I've been extremely excited to put this buffer into action and see if this buffer really lives up to its hype. One of my good friends has a 1996 Black Honda Civic that has more swirls, holograms and other imperfections than any other vehicle I know I may be able to get my hands on. I found this is the perfect candidate to test this new Flex XC3401VRG buffer, while comparing it to the results I can achieve from a PC.

Greg and I started by taping off 3 sections, a side of the trunk for Flex, a side that goes untouched, and a side for the Porter Cable 7424.



Here's a full shot of the Flex side:



A shot of the Flex side and the None Column:



A full shot of the PC side:



And the last before shot the PC side and the None Column:



We shot a video working each buffer using a yellow Lake Country variable contact pad and Menzerna Power Gloss on both the PC and the Flex. Once I have time to put together the video I will add them to this post. Following the cutting compound, we followed up with Menzerna PO106FF on a white Lake Country polishing pad to get the paint as glossy as possible.

Here are the results. First up the PC:



The Porter Cable 7424 did a great job removing the surface swirling and put quite a dent on the deeper imperfections. As you can see there are still some remaining, but overall the finish looks great compared to when we started.

Time for the Flex:



The Flex side of things cleaned up nothing short of exceptional. Look at the lower right hand corner where the light crosses the unpolished area onto the Flex side of things. The amount of imperfections that were removed and the clarity of the paint after polishing is mind boggling to think that this came from a random orbital buffer. It wasn't until I lined the lights up side by side on the Flex side to the PC side until I realized just how much better the paint looked.

Let's revisit the before picture with all three sides. I've added a red line just below a horizontal scratch that spans across the entire trunk. The scratch was moderately deep and I was just ever so slightly able to catch my fingernail on it.



In the next picture there is virtually no trace of that scratch on the Flex side. The Flex was able to remove several other deeper imperfections that the PC could not, while also producing a crisper, deeper, wetter finish.



As I was packing up my camera equipment, Greg said that he could almost read the wording on the inner part of the halogen lights on the Flex side, with the PC it was still murky and unreadable in comparison. By this time I already packed up my camera equipment, but went over to look at Greg's findings. The detail was so clear that you in fact were able to see the writing on the inner part of the light bulb. I re-setup my equipment and tried to capture this effect. I've never seen paint transform from a severely swirled vehicle, to something so crisp and clear as this with a random orbital:



That concludes the experiment write up, I will continue writing about my overall thoughts on the unit after dinner, as well as post the video sometime this weekend.

Thanks for reading!