How to maintain my FLEX polisher

[Dave Rifkin]

A while back I bought myself a FLEX polisher for my 1969 Corvette (since has been sold). I had bought some different polishing had and compounds with some okay results (I am not a great detailer).

Last year my neighbor asked to bother the polisher / compounds. He used it for a while; when I got it back the backing pad was falling apart and very stiff. I wound up replacing the backing pad.

I haven't started using it again; I was hoping you experienced detailers could tell me if I did something wrong when using the polisher. I know when I used it before I would always remove the pads from the backing pad when I was done so I could clean the pads. When doing that I never had a problem removing the pads. My neighbor left the pads on the backing pad and when I tried to remove them from the backing pad, the pads were really stuck to the backing pad and were dried up.

In addition to your thoughts on the proper way to maintain the pads, do you have any recommendations for medium priced pads for the FLEX polisher? Recommendations for polishes? I bought polishes from Adam's and was always happy with them.

Thanks for any input.