Team Adam's

Might help it look nice, but anything that gets drug on the ground is likely going to pick up dirt/debris regardless.

Experiment. Treat half with SVRT and leave the other half untreated and see what happens

I'll be back to post my reply later... Need to find large enough facepalm image to convey my feelings.

Looks fantastic and thanks for being a part of the forum! Hope we can help you keep that beautiful ride glossy for years to come.

JOIN ADAM'S POLISHES PRESIDENT & FOUNDER, ADAM PITALE, FOR A DETAIL CLINIC AT WEST COAST CORVETTES

Adam himself will be leading a live demo day, answering your questions, offering advice, and showcasing some of our latest product releases. All in-stock Adam's Polishes products will be 15% off the day of the event and  FREE taco cart lunch will be provided with any purchase. We look forward to seeing you there!

WHAT: Adam's Polishes Detail Clinic  

WHEN: Saturday August 15th from 9am - 1pm

WHERE: West Coast Corvettes - 1210 N. Kramer Blvd. Anaheim, CA

ADMISSION: FREE to attend!

For information call (888)737-8388 or visit WestCoastCorvette.com

I keep a dilution bottle of all the high volume stuff at full strength (DWC, APC, TID, DS, WW) for those that I need.

I also keep a 1:1 of APC, SVRT, LIC, and DWC for more specialized uses.

Customers voted with their wallets. It just didn't sell very well so we killed it off.

No.

iIs just not conducive to polishing an entire car. If you want a tool to do the whole car that can get into SOME of the tight spaces go with the Cyclo, but please don't try to polish a whole car with the mini.

What is the Ph Leval of the new glass gleaner ?

Not at my computer to look at the MSDS to verify at the moment, but I believe its 8 on the pH scale. I'll verify and update later.

Welcome back. Love the Raptor... But I might be biased

Newspaper is a very old school, but effective solution. My only complaint is the print stains on my hands when I'm done.

JUST IN! 2 New Colors for the Die Cut Decals in limited availability.

SHOP NOW! There is limited availability so don't delay. They won't last long!

http://adamspolishes.com/adam-s-die-cut-decal.html

ELECTRIC BLUE

PURE WHITE

I can't wait to play with mine, this backorder on them is killing me.

All Rupes 75E mini's have shipped... they actually shipped last week.

Michael is correct.

CP has more cutting power than SHR, yet finishes cleaner, requiring less effort in the follow up steps. So much so that in some situations you can one step a car with CP where it would have been impossible with the SHR. 

Like mentioned above - don't just throw your SHR out the window. If its working for you keep using it, but when its time to restock know there is a killer replacement that will make the process even more effective when you're ready.

The video below covers the change from back when it happened a few years back:

LOL... yep... a few of Todd's tales are not fit for AF.

Is this Todd formerly of Autopia?

Yes. Formerly of Autopia/AG/Blackfire... now working for Rupes.

Certainly one of my biggest complaints about the PC is the vibration at high speeds (5+).  I'm hoping that by moving down to smaller polishing pads from the 7", it will reduce this problem somewhat.  The bigfoot line seems like a solid upgrade.  If I wasn't just doing maintenance polishing and sealant application on my 2 vehicles it would get heavy consideration!  I couldn't imagine using the PC as a primary tool if I was doing detailing for a living.

Years ago it was the only option... my hands have the aches and pains to show for it. Its good for what it is - a budget solution to break into polishing or to do only occasional work, but with advances in the tool world there are far better options that will beat you up far less .

And the expectations are not as high for the cheap economy car in most cases. 

The same can be said the other way as well... I've seen plenty of 'fancy' car owners not want to pay top dollar for the work the car deserves and instead get what they can cheap. On the flip side we have plenty of customers and I've seen plenty of owners of very average cars want only the best and absolute perfection. It comes in all shapes/sizes.

^^Cool! Looking forward to the writeup Mike!

An excellent post from another forum I felt compelled to share. For those who have been around the detailing world for awhile you probably know Todd from his forum writeups. He is an exceptionally talented detailer who has worked for a variety of companies, including running his own very high end detailing business in Florida. He is a pilar in the detialing community and a wealth of knowledge.

I'm proud to say I've known Todd for awhile now and would consider him a good friend depsite the fact we have regularly found ourselves working for competing brands. Most recently hes taken a positioin with Rupes so I'm excited to finally say we're on the same side of the 'line'.

This post he recently made covers a topic that has gone overlooked with the introduction of other large throw machines that mimic the design of the Rupes. I'd further this point by saying we invested significant development time and research to the Gen5 Pad System to minimize vibration. Each pads mass was adjusted to as closely match the tools (Rupes as well as others) to minimize vibration as much as possible.

Take a moment to read Todd's post below. More and more, as knock-offs enter the marketplace it becomes important to understand that the innovators, and those that bring technology to market do so with lots of research. The copies that follow may look the same, but there are subtlties that make a huge difference, so as comparisons between tools abound remember as he says below - "this amount of engineering cannot be copied with sight and calipers"

Vibration Free: Why does it matter? 



 

When RUPES set off to develop the BigFoot System, one of the primary goals was to create a nearly vibration free polishing experience. While the obvious benefit is user comfort - a vibration- free tool will fatigue the user less and can reduce the risk the of long-term health problems such as carpel tunnel syndrome - it also reduces/eliminates most of the factors that cause wear to the tool in addition to producing a better finish potential. 



 

Vibration, for this discussion, is a factor of being out of balance. Random orbital polishers, by design, are quite unbalanced. You have a large mass (backing plate/pad/spindle) that is orbiting around a center axis point. The further the mass is away from the axis, the greater the unbalance, the more intense the vibration becomes.

 


RUPES BigFoot Polishing System remains the most balanced single-head random orbital polishing system on the market. If ran in free air at full speed, BigFoot Polishers, when used with the appropriately weighted BigFoot Pads will produce almost ZERO vibration. The reason that RUPES remains the only near vibration free large-stroke system on the market is because it is time consuming and hard to engineer (3 years) and nearly impossible to copy. 


 

While the internal counter balance of the machine is important, it must be married to backing plate and pad that are not only correctly weighted, but are also dynamically balanced and have a proper center of gravity. 



 

What is dynamic balance? It is the ability of a moving part to remain in balance. A couple examples are if you stick your leg out to the side, you might have to move the opposite arm out. Move your leg out, your arm needs to go out further - staying balanced in motion.(Bad example, but point made). Some tools, like a rotary tool, are inherently dynamically balanced if the pad is centered. That is the force on all sizes of the axis are equal and the tool operates smoothly. 



 

As mentioned above, an orbital polisher requires a counter weight that is properly married to the internal counterbalance system. But dynamic balance goes further. RUPES BigFoot pads also feature a proper center of gravity. Inside the tool, there is a shaft that runs through the bearing into a secondary counter weight on the top of the tool. If the pad is too bottom or top heavy, additional stress is placed on the shaft which can create excessive wear. You may have noticed that RUPES 100 mm and 150 mm pads are shorter in height than the 180 mm pads. This is part of maintaining a proper center of gravity.

 



So to expand on the opening paragraph and fully answer the initial question, why does vibration matter? 

Any vibration you feel is a result of unbalance and it creates excessive wear inside the tool.

 

Hold your tool our with one hand and run it full power… Feel any tingle/buzz? That tingle is placing unwanted side-load on the bearing inside the tool’s head. That tingle is your bearing wearing out faster than necessary.

 



Vibration also makes it hard to manage a foam pad’s behavior as it engages the workpiece surface. The result is that it makes it more difficult to achieve maximum gloss (although the difference is often so small not to be recognized, if your goal is to truly create maximum gloss, it is something worth remembering). 

RUPES spent nearly 3 years to develop a nearly vibration free tool when paired in the RUPES system. This amount of engineering cannot be copied by sight and calipers. The weight and center of gravity of the system is imperative to a long-lasting design that will produce consistent results. 





Great thread. Nothing worse than a cool car photographed after a detail, but the pics crop the car off or are just poorly composed.

This is why I always do interiors first in the summer - I actually knocked out an express detail on the Honda and our Equniox yesterday when I got to work (testing and someone is coming to buy the Honda). Even at 8am here in CO it was already tickling the 80 degree mark so I pulled both inside the warehouse (shade, but no air con) and did the interirors so I wouldn't sweat all over them later.

Depends on the condition of the car, size of the car, and what the level of detail is expected (not everything justifies or needs to be perfect) but as a range I can do a pretty serious detail on an average size/condition car in as little as 6 hours start to finish. I've also spent as much as a solid week of 8+ hour days on one car... just depends.

The term "detailer" is an easy one to slap on when in reality there is a substantial amount of guys out there that aren't much more than hobbyists. Theres almost a running joke that the majority of 'detailers' out there bought a PC last week, detailed their cars, and decided to open a business this week.

True, actual, experienced professionals running a legitimate full time detailing business are far more rare than people realize. I'd say there are hundreds of hobbyists posing as pros for every actual pro in the industry. Hang out on any car enthusiast forum for long enough and you'll see theres always a dozen or so guy who 'detail professionally'. Dig a little deeper and you find out they are generally uninsured, unlicensed (business), and working out of their home garage on weekends. Not that there is anything wrong with that - but it does present the issue you're dealing with.

Its easy to start a business FB page, start a basic DIY website, and claim you're a detailer, but when you have a regular 9-5 and only detail when you have spare time the business and service aspect of it fall by the wayside and sadly the perception of real detailers and full time pros suffers. The business is flooeded with them. Most likely you just happend to pick 4-5 of these types to call.

To answer your question - no. The most successful detailers I know hardly ever work on high proflle cars b/c they understand as a busienss everyones money is the same. If someone shows up with a cheap economy car, but wants to spend the money to have it detailed it pays the bills in the same way a Ferrari would. A smart business person looks at it in terms of whats out there - there are probably tens of thousands of average cars out there for every high end exotic, so the market is huge for those cars.

I know a lot of guys in this business. Get me a city/state and I'll put the feelers out there for you to get a real professional for you.

Check with the guys there... while they might not be open on the weekends it would be simple enough to have them drop an order in the mail for you so you get it in a couple of days and far less than shipping it over the ocean like we have to from CO.

Roughing out the order for you with those items its about 11lbs with packaging. Its also an awkward (large) box since it includes the fender brush. The best rate it spit back was $44 and change for 3 day USPS priority. None of the flat rate boxes are available due to the dimensions.
 

Versus retail (what a person off the street would pay) all the rates appear to be about $10-$20 lower on our site, which makes sense based on our volume discounts, but its still never 'cheap' to ship to the islands... if it was I'd ship myself there

So I just pulled the trigger on buying one a couple of days ago. I really hated spending that much on a single product, but I've been hating more how long it takes me to dry my car. I have a 2015 Mustang and I'm really anal about getting every spot clean and Iet's just say....I take a long time washing my car, I'm OCD about it.

 

My first solution was buying a blower (Toro), since I've heard people say good things. Well, I regretted it for 2 reasons.

 

1. It was too loud

 

2. It didn't blow the water out of car like I thought it would

 

Anybody here with a Master Blaster can chime in on how well the Master Blaster works? 

The MB is a monster! We use it like crazy here at the warehouse.

If your LSP is fresh then its absolutely no problem to dry a car 90% with just the blower and just do general touchup with a towel and detail spray. Its also great for drying your wheels and blowing water off the tires, blowing dust off when you need to clean the car between washes.

I also use it for a process called 'purging' - if you have an interior that isn't filthy rather than vacuuming you can blow the debris out. Works great for door panels, dashes, and even seats.

Really the MB is a tool that once you have you'll wonder how you lived without it.

We get tons of emails asking for us to do free shipping for orders at a lower threshold - customers looking to place smaller orders. This sale is for them. If it doesn't make sense for you to place an order by all means don't! Not every promotion is going to tickle everyone the same way.