I want the Flex, I need the Rupes?

fenderpicks said:
I just notice that the Rupes 15 and 21 is the same in length....?
Click to expand...

They should be exactly the same except for the throw (15mm/21mm), backing plate (5"/6") and the OPM. *I think* 4200 on the 21 and 4800 on the 15.
 
Success said:
You bought a rupes roshan?
Click to expand...

Yes :dblthumb2:

tuscarora dave said:
Nice. I'll be interested in seeing what you think of it. From what I've read, it seems the Rupes polishers were designed to "allow the pad to do the work" and the application of much pressure is not recommended. I think a lot of us that read that will remember that the comment is in response to someone claiming that the Rupes is somewhat under powered. Working on commercial vehicles as I've described in my previous post could possibly or would even likely exceed the limits of a reported under powered machine.

I remember all too well the reaction of a lot of folks when I made the comment that the Flex PE-14 was like a toy in my life of commercial vehicle detailing. This work is hard on tools when you're striving to be efficient and the more I read about the Rupes polishers, the more I'm glad to have the Flex 3401s.

All I know for sure is that I'd hate to spend the money for a Rupes just to find that it's going to sit on the shelf like the PE-14 did.
Click to expand...

TD, I've seen the work you do, and I believe you when you say the Rupes may not have enough oomph to fit in with you. I, and I know many others on here, highly respect your opinion.

I hope when you get it (and you will eventually ;)), that you find it another useful tool in your arsenal :dblthumb2:
 
g26er said:
Nice, we should get something lined up for when you make the trip next weekend. :xyxthumbs:

Unless I missed it, did you get the 15 or 21?
Click to expand...

I'll be back in Tampa for sure on the 2nd. I would be down for the 3rd if you are :) What would you have in mind?

The 21 with the 5" bp as well.
 
james51381 said:
Thanks to all for the suggestions.

Rmagnus - I have been working on maybe 10 cars on the side. This order came after the CFO saw me waterless washing my car at lunch and asked a ton of questions.

I don't have a set time to do the vehicles. They are ok with one correction a week or at my own pace within reason.

I have everything that I can think of to handle something like this: pressure washer, ladders, McCullough steamer, rigid vacuum, and so many cleaners, polishes, lsp.I may need more mf towels.


I live in the SF Bay area and don't know anyone in this field really... So any locals willing to show the ropes on a RB.... I can bbq.

Suggestions for BP and pads for a RB would be awesome. I noticed some BP that are really thick and almost plush and then some that look like there isn't any padding and just he hook and loop.
Click to expand...

I'm sensing you haven't made a business proposal to the owner yet and I would do that before gearing up. It should include schedules, expenses and payments (billing).

You should hook up with a detailer in your area if possible. Learning how to use a direct drive buffer either a RB or Flex 3401 should be easy. Yes easy. It' crazy to let others scare you into thinking using a RB or 3401 has a steep learning curve. That's just not the case.

Mike recommended the Flex 3401 so give that recommendation some careful thought. If fact if you were only going to rely on one buffer that would also be my choice. You will reduce the possiblity of installing swrils with the 3401 yet have most the power of a RB. If you go this route buy a smaller backing plate to use the 5.5" pads as well. I use LC Hybrid, CG Hex and LC CCS all 5.5"s, but I'm working on cars. Wool pads will hold up better for the abuse you're going to request of them. 5.5" and 7" pads should cover 99% of what you'll need.

Planning to clean and polish in one step will be a real time saver. Mike suggested Megs D151 and I bet that would work great. Bang for the buck is pretty good also. I do like the Duragloss 501 product for an AIO.

Once you figure out a direction then specific recommendations can be made. The choices are pretty simple.
1. RB
2. Flex 3401
3. Rupes

These are realistically the choices. If I was in your spot and I had the money I'd choose 1 & 2 with 1 being the Flex 14-2. If money was tighter it would be 1 & 2 with 1 being the Dewalt. If money was tight, start off with the Flex 3401.

You already have a buffer you might just start out with that and you'll get a better feel for the work and equipment required. IMO saving time in commercial work is even more valuable than in retail detailing.

Good luck. If you plan to be in the Orange County area PM me and you can try out some of my equipment. Meguiars has a HQ in Irvine they are always willing to help as well.

I'd say the flexible paded backing plates are more in favor these days over the ridgid ones. I'd recommend the padded ones. Flex makes their own plates for the 3401.

Good luck and let us know how it works out.
 
Wow, You guys have been incredibly generous with knowledge and opportunity to test out equipment, thank you very much.

RMAGNUS - you are correct about not giving the company a proposal or schedule. The company is very flexible with this project regarding schedules and payment. I have been with the company for 12 years and have become family with most....and the CEO is my unlce. The family relationship has not been an advantage because we go to extreme measures not to show nepatism (no raise for 4 years or assumed perks). The Flex and supplies will be purchased through the company as a barter for the first vehicle. Maybe try to get the Flex RB on the next van.

The scheduling I think would be easier than a reasonable price point. Do you guys think my pricing is fair?

I will look into some Bay Area locals who can help teach me on the flex and RB.

I wil work on a quarter panel tonight with the megs MF system and post before and after. I am shooting for about 80% correction as it is a working truck.

Thank you all
James
 
tuscarora dave said:
I can't speak as to how the Rupes works as I haven't tried one yet. I can however speak through lots of experience about working with commercial vehicles, to include box trucks, buses ,vans, semis, race car trailers or other enclosed trailers.

I own a couple rotaries, a couple Flex 3401s, a Cyclo and a few traditional DA polishers.

It really depends on what the vehicles are constructed of and what types of paints or metals are used. Box trucks are typically constructed 3 different ways.

One solid fiberglass sidewall with either a roll up rear box door or the semi trailer type swing out doors. A rotary will work well on the side walls until you get to painted or aluminum bolts and or rivets. The forced rotation will rule in these sketchy areas.

One solid aluminum or steel sidewall with spot welded or riveted vertical support channels on the inside of the sidewall, with either a roll up rear box door or the semi trailer type swing out doors. A rotary w/wool will likely thin or remove the paint in between or around the spot welds or painted rivets. (depending on the type and thickness of the paint)

A sidewall that is constructed of pre-measured, pre-cut and pre-painted sheet metal panels that are "buck riveted" (solid aluminum rivets with no hole in the middle of the rivets) or "pop riveted" to the vertical support channels, bottom rail and top rail.

The third one listed above is what I see more commonly than the first two. These pre-painted sheetmetal panels typically have very thin single stage paint that abrades to nothing very quickly, so a rotary and wool will be the worst choice on these boxes. In fact, any abrasive compounds or polishes should be avoided on this type of truck / trailer.

A traditional DA will take way too long to deep clean the paint on these boxes as well. Having not used "but having read a lot" about the Rupes polishers...I'll just venture a guess that once you're on one of these box trucks with a Rupes and you get to the aluminum "Bucked rivets" where you'll need to apply a lot of pressure on the edge of your buffing pad to get the entire strip of rivets shined up...(remember this is just an educated guess) the pad rotation of the Rupes will stop dead in it's tracks.

The rotary would be cleaning only one side of the rivets and slinging black aluminum polishing splatter all over your already cleaned panels... but the Flex 3401 would just work and work at the entire rivet cleaning and shining it up very well without slinging product everywhere and without a slowing or stopping pad rotation.

Another point would be that...on most any commercial vehicle, you'll be concentrating on getting the ground in road dirt stained paint deep cleaned and not thinking a lick about paint correction (with exception to the cab). A rotary is the most inefficient tool to achieve this goal.

The Rupes would probably work fine for this on all the flat surfaces where little pressure is needed, but again...getting into tight areas where a lot of pressure will be needed, you'll be working quite inefficiently as the pad rotation slows or stops. There are a ton of these "pressure required areas" on most commercial vehicles regardless of how they're constructed. The forced rotation will be your best friend on most all commercial vehicles.

Honestly, the rotary is my least used tool when working with commercial vehicles.

Have I mentioned diamond plate, aluminum top rails, aluminum bottom rails, aluminum fuel talks etc.

If you're being payed to remove fuel tanks or tape off diamond plate and polish them to a high shine, a rotary and metal polishing wheel will be your first step on these so you'll want to have that setup handy. The wheels typically leave their own marks and will need to be followed up with a foam pad to even out the wheel marks.

On the other hand, If you'll simply be forced to do the best you can with the little time you're allowed for each vehicle, (which is commonly the case on commercial vehicles) The forced rotation (with soft foam pads and a good metal polish) will be your best bet on tanks, top and bottom rails and especially diamond plate.

The hinged rear box doors are typically the pre-painted sheet metal panels that have the very thin and dirt stained paint. Concerning the roll up type doors...they're typically painted wood with galvanized and or rusty steel flat faced door bolts. A rotary will be useless here and with polishing up to and against all the flat faced door bolts you'll find the need to tip your polishing pad on it's edge a lot to get tight against and in between the hardware, so again the forced rotation will be your best bet.

Really...the mention of all those polishers I listed is not to tout the fact that I have a collection of polishers...but to show that I need and use all of them. I have doubles of all of them because I work on big, very cruddy commercial vehicles and often need help with these vehicles. So if I have help, we both need to have the right tool to be efficient.

I'd be willing to bet that once I do get a Rupes polisher (and I will have one eventually), it will hardly ever see commercial work with the exception of hoods and fenders.

These are just my thoughts combined with a lot of commercial vehicle experience. Pick them apart if you will, post your experience if you go in a different direction. I am constantly learning and sometimes I'm proven wrong. TD
Click to expand...

These are great insights!!!!! If I am 10-15 years younger, I would take this on without thoughts. Nowadays, I know jobs like these will turn me into a puddle of mush at the end of the day.

Good Luck. OP!!!
 
I love my Makita 9227 and my Flex 3401, both machines has their own place in the way I detail. I have specific pads and backing plates for my rotary only. In my own preference, a DA, including the Rupes would never succeed the rotary in any day:xyxthumbs:
 
I would like to thank everyone for their incredible information and suggestions.

So UPS came to my work today with a pretty good size box with my new Flex 3401, LC bp system, 5" hybrid (blue and orange), 6.5 CCS pads (orange, yellow, and pink), D151, Ultima WW, and 2 530 towels. A great day no?

I opened the box in my office and couldn't wait to turn on the flex, my office mate thought I was going to polish my desk when she heard me turn it on. This thing is much smoother than my megs da.

So after everyone went home, I went to test it out on one of the trucks. I had just enough time to do half of the hood with the orange CCS pad and megs ultimate compound, it worked out great. I now know I really need to concentrate on my technique, I felt the Flex wanting walk on me a bit. After a few passes I got the hang of it. I will post some before and after photos tomorrow on my progress.

Since its a single stage, I noticed the pad fill with paint quickly. In about 3 section passes the pad was completely red and it felt "grabby". Is this normal for single stage paint or is it just that I can see it since it isn't clear?
 
If the paint was heavily oxidized, the pad would load up quickly. Once the pad is loaded up, the machine will be hard to control.

I had the same thing happen with my old truck. I went through 4 pads quickly because the paint was in such bad shape. Once the oxidation was removed, the pad had a longer work time.

20130112_135535.jpg


20130112_154506.jpg
 
Thinking of selling my barely used flex. Is ebay the best place to sell it?
 
Project update:
The van came white from the factory and was repainted with a single stage red. It was a budget job, as they forgot to take the tape off the A pillar and left a nice white strip of original paint. Paint and vehicle are about 6 years old without any paint maintenance.

Test spot: megs mf cutting pad and d300 dried after the first pass. I then went to d151 and megs soft buff yellow. First time using the d151 was interesting. The first two passes with a good amount of downward force and the next two or three with little to no pressure. This gave me about 70-80 percent correction, which is what I'm looking for. After the 5-6 pass d151 was hazing dry (flashing?) I'm not sure how much product I was supposed to use. I primed the pad and then used 3 grape sized globs of product. Anything less it would dry up after the 3rd section pass.


The business end of this panel truck is another animal. I used the same techniques and product quantity without the same results. I had done half of the panel which is about 5 feet by 10 feet before I saw Da haze and could clearly make out each 2x2 area I worked on.

I started a new test spot on the panel section where I tried every combination with machine speed, arm speed, pressure and product amount. I would still get a cloudy trail from my last pass. I tried megs black soft buff pad with d151 and had much less haze, but still visible. I also tried a blue CCS pad with the same results. I used megs #7 on a new test spot to see if it would help, but same haze after d151

At 11:30 I just about called it a day when I saw the d301 in my bag. Couldn't hurt to try... I primed a megs black pad and did 3 light passes and it came out perfect! Now I have a spot on the panel that is 99 percent defect free lol. Guess who is doing a 2 step now so the panel matches

Can anyone help me out with what could have happened? Is d301 less aggressive? There are 4 other vans from the same shop, but are normal cargo vans, this is the only one with the larger rear with panels.
Any advise on how to utilize d151 would be great. Should it haze quickly after 3 passes?


This is what I'm working on.
20130302_173037.jpg


20130301_123830.jpg


Sent from my SGH-T989 using Tapatalk 2
 
I forgot to add the speed on the Flex, I was running it anywhere from 3.5 - 5 when testing. The best results where at 3.5 with the black pad and d301. The worst one was at 5 with D151.
 
tuscarora dave said:
I can't speak as to how the Rupes works as I haven't tried one yet. I can however speak through lots of experience about working with commercial vehicles, to include box trucks, buses ,vans, semis, race car trailers or other enclosed trailers.

I own a couple rotaries, a couple Flex 3401s, a Cyclo and a few traditional DA polishers.

It really depends on what the vehicles are constructed of and what types of paints or metals are used. Box trucks are typically constructed 3 different ways.

One solid fiberglass sidewall with either a roll up rear box door or the semi trailer type swing out doors. A rotary will work well on the side walls until you get to painted or aluminum bolts and or rivets. The forced rotation will rule in these sketchy areas.

One solid aluminum or steel sidewall with spot welded or riveted vertical support channels on the inside of the sidewall, with either a roll up rear box door or the semi trailer type swing out doors. A rotary w/wool will likely thin or remove the paint in between or around the spot welds or painted rivets. (depending on the type and thickness of the paint)

A sidewall that is constructed of pre-measured, pre-cut and pre-painted sheet metal panels that are "buck riveted" (solid aluminum rivets with no hole in the middle of the rivets) or "pop riveted" to the vertical support channels, bottom rail and top rail.

The third one listed above is what I see more commonly than the first two. These pre-painted sheetmetal panels typically have very thin single stage paint that abrades to nothing very quickly, so a rotary and wool will be the worst choice on these boxes. In fact, any abrasive compounds or polishes should be avoided on this type of truck / trailer.

A traditional DA will take way too long to deep clean the paint on these boxes as well. Having not used "but having read a lot" about the Rupes polishers...I'll just venture a guess that once you're on one of these box trucks with a Rupes and you get to the aluminum "Bucked rivets" where you'll need to apply a lot of pressure on the edge of your buffing pad to get the entire strip of rivets shined up...(remember this is just an educated guess) the pad rotation of the Rupes will stop dead in it's tracks.

The rotary would be cleaning only one side of the rivets and slinging black aluminum polishing splatter all over your already cleaned panels... but the Flex 3401 would just work and work at the entire rivet cleaning and shining it up very well without slinging product everywhere and without a slowing or stopping pad rotation.

Another point would be that...on most any commercial vehicle, you'll be concentrating on getting the ground in road dirt stained paint deep cleaned and not thinking a lick about paint correction (with exception to the cab). A rotary is the most inefficient tool to achieve this goal.

The Rupes would probably work fine for this on all the flat surfaces where little pressure is needed, but again...getting into tight areas where a lot of pressure will be needed, you'll be working quite inefficiently as the pad rotation slows or stops. There are a ton of these "pressure required areas" on most commercial vehicles regardless of how they're constructed. The forced rotation will be your best friend on most all commercial vehicles.

Honestly, the rotary is my least used tool when working with commercial vehicles.

Have I mentioned diamond plate, aluminum top rails, aluminum bottom rails, aluminum fuel talks etc.

If you're being payed to remove fuel tanks or tape off diamond plate and polish them to a high shine, a rotary and metal polishing wheel will be your first step on these so you'll want to have that setup handy. The wheels typically leave their own marks and will need to be followed up with a foam pad to even out the wheel marks.

On the other hand, If you'll simply be forced to do the best you can with the little time you're allowed for each vehicle, (which is commonly the case on commercial vehicles) The forced rotation (with soft foam pads and a good metal polish) will be your best bet on tanks, top and bottom rails and especially diamond plate.

The hinged rear box doors are typically the pre-painted sheet metal panels that have the very thin and dirt stained paint. Concerning the roll up type doors...they're typically painted wood with galvanized and or rusty steel flat faced door bolts. A rotary will be useless here and with polishing up to and against all the flat faced door bolts you'll find the need to tip your polishing pad on it's edge a lot to get tight against and in between the hardware, so again the forced rotation will be your best bet.

Really...the mention of all those polishers I listed is not to tout the fact that I have a collection of polishers...but to show that I need and use all of them. I have doubles of all of them because I work on big, very cruddy commercial vehicles and often need help with these vehicles. So if I have help, we both need to have the right tool to be efficient.

I'd be willing to bet that once I do get a Rupes polisher (and I will have one eventually), it will hardly ever see commercial work with the exception of hoods and fenders.

These are just my thoughts combined with a lot of commercial vehicle experience. Pick them apart if you will, post your experience if you go in a different direction. I am constantly learning and sometimes I'm proven wrong. TD
Click to expand...
Thank you very much for taking the time to write this. It's outstanding information.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top