(upbeat music)
- Hi, I'm Todd Helme with RUPES USA
on the next chapter of Bigfoot 101,
we're going to look at basic swirl removal
using a random orbital polisher.
And there's a number of techniques we wanna cover
to give you the best results you can,
when you're polishing your car.
The first thing we want to do is make sure
that we start polishing in a comfortable position.
Polishing a car or a vehicle is a physical activity,
so we don't wanna do anything
that could get us uncomfortable or overly fatigued.
So keep the polishing section in front of you,
too often, you'll watch somebody who's polishing
and they're gonna go too far out to one side or the other,
this puts the body in a compromising position,
accelerates fatigue
and often can lead to a less than desirable result.
Another thing that we always recommend for every polisher,
is take that polishing cord
and put it over your shoulder,
that prevents the cord from dragging
or running across the paint
and undoing the work that you just did.
You don't wanna put scratches in with the cord
after you just polished a section.
So what we like to say is bring the paint to you,
get as close as you can,
keep your polishing section about shoulder width apart
and move around the vehicle,
don't stay stationary and overextend yourself.
So now we're going to look at some of the basic techniques
that you need to get great results right away,
now these are the basic RUPES recommendations
and they are variables.
As you develop your polishing skills
you may find that you start to make adjustments
to these variables,
but these are always a good reset,
it's a good way to start
and ensure you're getting good results.
The first thing we're gonna talk about is the reload amount,
and reload amount,
is how much product we're putting on the pad
after it's primed.
Now RUPES BigFoot DA polishes,
are famous for how little they require
to get optimal results,
on a large 180 millimeter face pad
that'd be the pad we use on the 21,
we're only gonna do two to four drops of reload,
and these are pea-sized drops.
As we shrink the pads down,
we're gonna use less and less product,
so on a 150 millimeter face pad on a 15,
we might use two or three drops,
down to the mini one or two drops,
nano we're just dabbing the pad with polishing compound.
This is one of those cases where less is more,
if you use too much product
you can actually reduce performance
and spend longer polishing,
and you can even wear out your polishing pads faster.
The next area we are gonna talk about,
so we've applied the polishing compound,
the reload to the face of the pad,
we have to talk about our application area.
If you remember from another video in this series
we define terms in an application area is defined as,
how large your polishing section is.
So these are the size bites
we're gonna take out of the vehicle.
Now RUPES recommends an application area
roughly six times the size of the pad.
Now, if you're working on an area with
maybe the bed of a truck or over a fender,
of course there's gonna be some variability there,
but we wanna keep it fairly consistent
because that helps us deliver a consistent result
over the entire face of the vehicle.
Tool speed.
Generally for all BigFoot random orbital,
gear-driven and rotary tools,
we recommend polishing around three to four.
Three to four gives us a good balance between pad life,
pad performance and polishing results.
There are times when we're removing deeper scratches
that we might go up to five or six
or if we're attacking a body angle that is curved,
but for general polishing set it at three to four.
In fact, learn how to use your polisher
on speed three to four,
before you even consider increasing the speed temporarily.
Arm speed.
We're gonna go over our polishing section size
at a slow rate,
for some people this could be faster than others,
but when we head out to the detailing Academy
and watch Jason and demo and area,
he's going to give you a good example
of what we would consider slow to moderate arm speed.
Generally, with a random orbital BigFoot polisher,
you're going to get better results going over the area less,
but moving it slower than going over the area
a bunch of times faster,
Pad angle.
One of the big keys
with a BigFoot random orbital polisher,
is we wanna engage as much of that pad
to the surface as possible
and the center of that pad needs to be flat to the surface.
Now, this isn't always possible,
if you're going over a convex curve
we wanna keep the center of that pad flat to the curve.
So this is something to consider,
the edges might be lifted
because of the angle of the curvature
but the center of that pad is flat to the curve.
If we're polishing large flat sections
that pad should be fully engaged on the surface,
and this can take a little bit of practice to get used to,
because it's natural
to apply too much pressure in one direction
because you're grabbing too hard
and this can slow down the pad rotation
and reduce polishing and results slightly.
Down pressure.
If you remember from an earlier episode of RUPES BigFoot 101
we defined terms and we talked about down pressure,
and down pressure is the pressure we apply
evenly to the polishing machine,
to engage the pad to the polishing surface.
So, if we were polishing a door
down pressure is actually lateral,
if we're polishing the roof or the hood,
we are pushing down.
The amount of pressure that we're gonna use
with the BigFoot random orbital system is slight.
There is no definition of weight,
we just want to engage the pad to the surface
and that's gonna give us the best results.
So now to illustrate these concepts
with a live demonstration,
let's send it out to Jason in the Academy.
- All right, so here we are,
we're going to walk you through the application process.
On an earlier video you may have noticed that
on this particular car we did a test pad
and we dialed in our blue blue combination of the DA course
and our course wool pad,
as the ideal one step on this particular car,
due to paint hardness and defect.
But for you to really see
the phenomenal differences is going to produce,
we're going to put a tape line on here
so you can really see the difference,
and we'll ask my assistant to come and help us do that.
So we will show our standard application process,
we're going to do this systematically
in the sections that were described in the classroom there.
With this combination we have already primed our pad,
we've already done the test spot,
we are going to do a reload,
and then,
pick an area.
And so we will have our cord over the shoulder
just to protect the paint here.
Speed four,
standard application area,
side to side movement.
(squealing sound)
We will stop to wipe the residue off each application area.
We are verifying that we have the desired results
we're looking for,
if we are, then we go to the next area
(upbeat music)
All right, so we have just completed
our procedure on this half of the hood,
but we are in our BigFoot Academy
with these intense paint correction lights.
So I'd like to bring outside
and have you look at the results out in regular sunlight
which is what more likely you will be seeing your car in.
So let's go check it out.
(upbeat music)
So here we are in the sun, no smoke and mirrors here
what you see is what you get.
So, as you can see we have very very good defect removal,
depth of color,
it's really glossy.
This is a fantastic result compared
to the other side that we did not do anything to,
where you can see all those carwash marks and towel marks.
So this is our application process
now I've got to go back in and complete the whole car.
(upbeat music)