Watch Your Backing Plates!

... As it nearly ended in disaster for me today. Working away with the PC on speed 6, I noticed what looked like little yellow bits of foam being left by the machine, like a pad disintergrating...



As always when machine polishing, I'm watching the paint like a hawk, and whenever you see something you dont expect, stop! I'm glad I did, as this is the current state of the backing plate...





Now held only by the thinnest of bits of rubber, it was very nearly off altogether which could have proven disasterous! Thankfully, it was spotted before it caused any issue, but a word of warning: watch you backing plates! Especially if they are getting on a little bit, this one is a good two or three years old.

 

Oh man, good thing you caught that on time, it would have been a disaster.

 

That would have been bad!!

 

Yes, that would have of been quite the detail if you continued to polish with that backing plate.

Just curious what kind of backing plate is it?

As always, thank you for sharing Dave eace:

 

Thanks for sharing Dave. It's a good reminder to always watch out for my backing plates potentially failing on me.

 

You are definitely not alone on this one Dave. Good thing you caught it way before anything bad happened. I was fortunate enough to have it bounce off things in my garage after it flung off when I lifted it up...

http://www.detailingbliss.com/forum/f13/problem-melted-backing-plates-3086.html

 

yep, never run it on speed 6.

 

Had a similar thing happen to one of my plates a few years ago.

 

Why not? :shead:

 

Yeah, why not? The only time I've had mine fail on me was on a black car due to the extreme heat that builds up. I've used the same plate on my gold and bamboo pearl colored cars before the thing failed...

 

yikes... mine's still intact, I think...

but I did notice that I can feel the heat on the pad. At first I thought the heat was generated because I didn't use enough polish, but it turns out that it was the backing plate heating up. So I'm guessing that the heat generated was from the PC itself. I think I might have to try to get some better extension cables. I've tried 16 guage (minimum spec from the PC data sheet), and I think some thicker ones. Same result so far. :crash:

 

Speed 6 is fine on the PC, all I ever used.

 

Been there, done that! Mine was caused by running an inferior extension cord, causing the machine to build up heat, thus causing the backing plate to start melting:

 

I have read and been told this before, but I personally disagree with it and I'm not convinced the speed was the cause here... The backing plate that you see belongs to Bryan who I detail with, and he almost exclusively uses a PC on speed 5, so this plate only sees speed 6 when I use it. By contrast, my plates see speed 6 all the time and are fine... From a point of view of working polishes, for example the Menzerna ceramiclear range, speed 6 is essential to getting the best results IMHO.

 

Well the way I see it is if backing plates are failing on a PC at speed 6, that really is just bad engineering and/or manufacturing. Products like these should be designed for this sort of use and are normally tested beyond their normal operating ranges to test durability.

 

true. I melted one backing plate and didn't want that to happen again... I mostly use UDM with Edge 2000 pads and never worry about backing plate. I still run it on 5, too scary to take it up to 6.

Thanks for the heads up, Dave.

 

I've done 2 within 2 months. Waiting on one more before swapping to the Edge pads. Yeah, I know I'm :crasy: haha

 

so I've picked up another extension cord... 12 gauge, but 100 feet... but same results, i can feel the pad heating up, and after taking off the pad, the middle of the backing place is definitely hot hot hot... but not to the point as the above picture yet...

so i'm stumped as to why my PC is still heating up... maybe the cable i got is still low quality? I got it from costco :sorry: 42.99 12/3 100 feet extension cable...

so with the Optimum compound/polish (long time to correct) + PC (heats up, so I have to stop often) = not a happy camper + minimal paint correction

any suggestions will be welcomed!

 

It could be that the cord is too long, no?

 

I finally had that melt in the middle problem, though I think I can account mine to steam since the pad was almost dry when I was using it. It never happened with a dry dry pad yet