The pro detailers at Complete Detailing share their experience with overheating issues between Rupes and ShineMate polishers. The Rupes is the clear winner.
Review provided by the professionals at Complete Detailers in New York.
My business has a ShineMate EX620 and a Rupes LHR15 Mk3. We’ve been using the Rupes since 2020-2021 and the ShineMate in 2023. We have 20x time spent on the Rupes over the ShineMate, and guess which one has started to overheat! We used to use a Tornador to clear pads while on the machine and noticed that both have similar ventilation openings just above the throttle handle. One of them has their ventilation placed vertically, the other horizontally.
ShineMate Overheating Issues
We noticed that if you’re using a wool or microfiber pad or anything that cuts relatively well and dishes out a bit of compound dust (which is common for heavy cutting), then you’ll likely run into some issues long term with the ShineMate. The vents are a bit wider, which allows more dust to be pulled into the machine and causes some substantial buildup. We only realized this when my partner was telling me the machine was getting pretty warm and that translated to the pad getting REALLY warm. That’s when we saw how bad the build-up was for a relatively new machine.
We Chose the Rupes
This overheating never happened with the Rupes, and as mentioned it was easily used 20 times more often over the course of legitimately heavy abuse in 4 years.