ValetPRO are a market leader when it comes to automotive detailing and have sent us their latest product, ValetPRO Advanced Compound, for review.
This is a one step polish compound designed to bring your paint work back to life by machine or by hand.
Preparation
To prepare the car ready for the advanced compound, you should follow your normal cleaning process, where applicable use a clay bar or some kind of contaminant removal, and then dry the car.
It helps to mask up the car into areas you are polishing. The car was masked with 3M 3434 tape. If polishing the entire vehicle you should protect areas that might become damaged or collect polish. A good example of this is badges and lenses for any of the exterior lights.
For this review, we are using a Meguiars G220V2 with a Valet pro medium-heavy pad.
Polishing
With the panel now prepared, add a few spots of polish to your pad and spread this on to the panel without the machine on. Once you have a relatively even spread of polish, and with the machine pad already against the body, turn the machine on. This process prevents the polish from being flung from the pad or body panel.
Carry out a number of passes on the panel in vertical and horizontal lines. Each pass should slightly overlap the last. If you feel the pad beginning to grip more you can spray some water or quick detailer to the pad or panel before continuing. Excessive heat build up may cause damage to the paintwork, maintaining a good level of lubrication will avoid such scenarios. For this review, we used four passes. Vertical, then horizontal, and repeat.
Whilst it’ll be harder to achieve similar results to a machine polisher, you can also use this polish with a hand applicator and still achieve good results. We sectioned off another area and applied the polish by hand. This time applying the advanced compound with a small circular pattern.
Once completed, wipe down the panel with a microfibre cloth and inspect the panel. If you feel the need to, repeat the above process with some more polish until you’re happy you have removed all of the defects in your paintwork.
The Results
The following images show the difference of before and after for both machine and hand application.
You can see here in the side by side comparison the difference the advanced compound makes. The right-hand side is unpolished, the left shows the machined polished panel, swirl-free and showing off all of the flakes in the paint.
Whilst not quite as effective as the machine polisher, the hand polish method still rendered some significant improvements. The deeper swirls remain but the medium to light swirls have been removed leaving more depth to the colour than the unpolished panel. The left side is unpolished, the right side in hand polished.
For comparison, here are a few close-ups.
Here is a close up of the unpolished panel.
Here is a close up of the machine-polished panel.
Here is a close up of the hand-polished panel.
The Verdict
Advanced Compound does exactly what it says on the bottle, it is a one step polishing compound. Whilst the results differ between the machine polish and hand polish panels, they both offer a significant improvement to the paintwork. The colour has been brought back to life without having to use a number of products. It would be normal to use a heavy cutting polish and then a fine cutting polish and finish off with some kind of protection. You will save yourself a significant amount of time by using a one step product like Advanced Compound.
A 250ml bottle of ValetPRO Advanced Compound retails for £12.00 and 500ml for £18.00. Considering you will not need to use this product often, maybe twice a year, this is good value for money.
In short, if you’re looking for a product that offers very good value for money, very effective at removing swirls and scratches, and a great glossy finish then Advanced Compound is the perfect product.
Add Protection
Once you have polished the entire vehicle, it is highly recommended to add some level of protection to the paintwork. You could use a wax such as ValetPRO Indulgence or a sealant such as Snow Seal. Coupled with the two bucket method, this will prolong the smooth, swirl free paintwork and keep your car looking immaculate.
