Thought I would go ahead and make a follow-up post now that I’ve used my new cordless beast a few times. I’ve been very impressed with the performance and relieved that the battery life has not been a huge disappointment as I was afraid it would be. I was worried that I would have to buy extra batteries or constantly waiting on a charge to finish. I had been second-guessing myself from the time I made the order and wondering why I just didn’t pay more for the 24 V units. Instead, I’ve found that I’m able to polish as many panels of the car as I want to before needing to wipe off the residue before it gets too dry. It’s also quiet enough that I can hear music over a Bluetooth speaker instead of having to wear ear buds like I used to. It’s smooth without too much vibration, and far more comfortable for me to use than my corded version. Based on how I’ll be using it, and the infrequent times it will be used for completing the cut & buff after I paint a car, I’ll definitely be putting my corded beast for sale.
I did nearly have a disaster yesterday. What prompted this purchase was constantly having to fight the cords on my other units. I twice caught the cord when using the wool pad on my rotary, but fortunately didn’t do any damage to my vehicle. Yesterday I got careless and barely touched a queen-sized sheet which I had over the cockpit of my roadster to keep out any splatter. In a split second it had grabbed and twisted and wrapped the entire sheet as it was pulled off to the back-side where I was working. Fortunately, it didn’t slam the tool down onto my car. I learned, 1) to be more careful with where my pad is making contact, and 2) to never have the trigger-lock engaged when I am in close and in a similar situation.
I had been hoping that the original batteries that they let me keep after sending replacements would give me some extra capacity if ever needed. What I had heard was that the black goo leaking out of them would not affect their life. However, neither one works at all. They show a full charge but literally die after less than 2-3 seconds. I would have expected them to have a more limited capacity and life due to loss of the cooling supposedly provided by that black substance, but these are literally dead as a door nail. I’m hoping availability of the 18V batteries won’t be a problem in the future. It’s looking to me like they are abandoning their 18V line and moving everything to the 24V.
Almost forgot to mention… There is one thing I hate. The speed control dial is far too loose. Tempted to disassemble it and come up with a way to tighten it up so I’m not constantly changing the speed when I barely come in contact with it.
