Testing new products is something we enjoy doing at blok 51 so we can advise on best use and generally find out how well a product works. When the Auto Finesse One Step arrived, we genuinely couldn’t wait to give it a quick try. Also bare in mind this is only a couple of passes done in 10 minutes and by no means a clinical test.

The test panel i’m using is a reasonably hardish paint. We had it painted this way on purpose for testing. And to cause the swirling i used an inner arch/fender well cleaning brush on it. Medium to light swirls were inflicted with a handful of slightly heavier marks thrown in.

We’ve used the following equipment:
FLEX cordless XFE 15mm throw dual action polisher
Chemical guys green hex logic 5” (medium pad)
Lake country ccs black 140mm (soft finishing pad)
300gsm microfibre buffing cloth
3m 3434 tape

For the test areas we taped 2 areas off. The left side of the test panel is the base and left untouched. The right side has the lighter finishing pad used on the top section and the heavier green pad on the bottom. It’s a single full pass to work the polish down. Working time was probably around 2 mins to 2 and a half minutes. If anything we could have worked it down even further. This will be dependent on machine and technique.

First impressions:
Smooth application.
Long working time.
Initial cut gives good levels of correction before starting to break down.
Early removal before working it down enough can make it a little sticky but that’s normal.

THE RESULTS
We think the pictures and videos speak for themselves but I’ll explain further.

This video show the defects we started with.

And this one shows my working speed with the DA. It’s worth mentioning that as this is a 15mm throw DA i expected to see some minor DA haze, especially with the green pad. This would have been lessened with an 8mm throw machine.

On the next pic you can see from a couple of feet away the finish and gloss appears good. On the next video we get a closer look.

The black pad produced reasonable correction but some swirling remained as expected due to the harder paint. This would need 2-3 passes with this pad to match a single pass with the green. On the bottom section the green pad probably corrected around 95% of the swirls but you’ll notice in the video a star type of reflection coming out from the led light with a slightly blue tint. This is the DA haze referred to earlier and is the da equivalent of buffer trails with a rotary. After another pass with the black pad, this was cleaned up and removed to refine the finish. The last couple of pictures show the final result.

Overall, a very good product as far as we can see from this short test. For a single stage, it has a good level of cut and has enough polishing oils to make it smooth and non dusty. But at the same time there were minimal oils left behind on the surface. I think it’s got some versatility and pads can be varied to suit the finish and application but i would like to test it on soft paint to see if that initial cut level would cause any issues but i think with the correct pad this could work.