What you use to wash polish and keep your Elan Clean?

[DeanG]

I use two different machines. The safe machine is a Porter Cable orbital sander with a hook and loop head. I burnt mine up (literally burnt) after years of abuse including hundreds of hours use as a sander on our boat. I bought a replacement the next day.

If you feel sporty the high end Dewalt polisher works well. You dial in the rpm and it maintains a constat speed no matter the load. Like any non-orbatil machine you have to be careful or you can easily screw up a paint job. I have only used this on bare aluminum (Lotus 7) but I intend to practice on my wife's car.

Carefully wet sanding your M100 can make a world of difference. I was able to remove most of the orange peel although it took approximately 100 hours to do our car wet standing through final polish and wax.

[theelanman]

I have only used this on bare aluminum (Lotus 7) but I intend to practice on my wife's car.

good call and I bet she'd never know the difference if you made a mess of things