Proffessional detailer or my amateur skills

[RandyBoone]

Re: Proffessional detailer or my amateur skills

They could have used a glaze to cover up the swirls.

Car wash detailing can't be really considered proper detailing. All they care about is getting your car in and out as fast as possible. How long did it take?

In my opinion, whether it's a car wash or not has absolutely nothing to do with it at all. Zero, zilch, nothing whatsoever!

I've been a professional detailer for over 40 years and I've always had a car wash. The reason is real simple and doesn't take a genius to figure out. When you have a car wash you get folks stopping by that don't even know it's possible to do anything BUT wash it. You have hundreds of leads a week that are the absolute PERFECT people to talk to about a wax, carpet shampoo, headlight restoration, polishing, etc. And once you show these people you know what you're doing a vast majority will "upgrade" from a car wash every week to a much more thorough cleaning.

When I hear people calling themselves a detailer, but NOT having a car wash, it makes me think either they're not too smart or else they don't have enough money to have a car wash. Either way, I wouldn't want that person "detailing" my car. Why? Because if they're not smart, well that speaks for itself. And if they're broke, they can't be much of a detailer. Any town I go to I can rent a $500 a month one stall garage and start washing cars. By the time my second month rolls around I can make a minimum of $10,000 for the month. Back in the late seventies and early eighties I used to do that all over Kentucky, Alabama, Georgia and Florida, just for the fun of it. Now I own multiple gigantic detail shops in all of those states and somebody else runs them.

I had my car's exterior detailed at a local car wash.
When I picked it up, the car looked great but as the wax started to fade off... started to see the swirls.
To be completely fair, I did run the car through an automatic car wash once after this detail.

Running your car through an automatic wash is without a doubt where the swirls came from. You can buy a brand new car, and get a REAL professional detailer to polish the paint until it looks like glass, and all it takes is 1 run through an automatic wash to totally undo 12 hours of polishing. Running a car through an automatic wash is the stupidest thing any car owner could EVER do, if they care about their paint. I'm not calling you stupid, because obviously you didn't know, but now you do. ALWAY, ALWAYS ALWAYS spray your car off WITH A 1500 - 1700 PSI PRESSURE WASHER (not a water hose) first to remove the dust and grit, then wash it with a good car wash soap and a plush wash mitt (not a rag and dish washing soap). If you can't do it this way, take it to someone who can. Whatever you do, NEVER EVER EVER run it through an automatic wash.

Of course if you don't care about your ride you can ignore everything I've said, and you can blame every body else when it looks like ****!

[RandyBoone]

Re: Proffessional detailer or my amateur skills

As with any profession, there's 2 kinds of detailers...

The first kind goes to work for a detail shop and within 2 or 3 months he sees the money being made and decides he's learned enough to start his own detail shop. These kinds of detailers are the most dangerous kind. They'll burn your paint down to the primer, bleach your $1000 rims as white as snow, totally screw up your window tinting, and make all kinds of other mistakes. Craigslist is over-run with these kinds of detailers, most of which only offer mobile detailing, because they don't have the money to rent a shop. Stay away from these kinds of detailers at all cost.

The second kind of detailer is the one that's been in business for 5 years or more. He's burned the paint down to the primer, bleached out $1000 rims as white as snow, totally screwed up window tinting, and made all kinds of other mistakes. He's learned detailing the ONLY way you can learn detailing, by doing it. He's also learned the hard way how much to charge and what it takes to satisfy a customer. He knows that the only way he can keep paying the bills is with repeat customers. He'll normally do a job for you like restoring headlights for only $50 because he knows that once you see them, you'll want the $75 wax and once you see that, you'll be back for the $150 (or more) detail when you need one.

If I were you, I would always make sure that anyone I got to detail my ride has at least 5 years or more real world experience (being a forum member for 5 years doesn't count). That way, he's already burned someone else paint up and bleached out someone else's rims, etc.. You may as well let him "practice" on someone else's ride before he does your's.

Being a professional detailer may just be the ones that charge for it but I DO NOT agree with that. A professional detailer is someone who knows how to detail and treat his customers right. Someone who doesn't know how to detail and treats his customers bad, but charges them for it, is a crook!

Find yourself a REAL professional detailer and you'll be glad you did, because no matter how good you may think you are, a REAL professional detailer can do things with your vehicle that you don't even know is possible.

[ClearlyCoated]

Re: Proffessional detailer or my amateur skills

I dropped off the car at 8AM and picked it up at noon.
I picked this particular place because they were the only one in my area that uses clay.
Anyways... never again.

As Marc alluded to, your vehicle was likely glazed. You dropped off you car at 8:00. They probably didn't start washing it until 15-30 minutes later. another 15 minutes to dry if they use forced air drying. If two guys worked on your car, they could have had it clayed in 30 minutes. By now it's probably after 9:00 (closer to 9:15 or 9:30). If you picked your car up at noon, even with two guys machine polishing the paint I don't think they could have done a proper paint correction in less than 3 hours - but one guy can easily glaze a car in that time. Detailing from a car wash business is usually more focused on volume and most tend to use an assembly line process. Most private detailers will take their time to give you the best results while living up to their own tough standards. If you paid around $100 or a little more, you probably got value for your money.

[C8N]

Re: Proffessional detailer or my amateur skills

They could have used a glaze to cover up the swirls.

Car wash detailing can't be really considered proper detailing. All they care about is getting your car in and out as fast as possible. How long did it take?

I dropped off the car at 8AM and picked it up at noon.
I picked this particular place because they were the only one in my area that uses clay.
Anyways... never again.

[Detailing by M]

Re: Proffessional detailer or my amateur skills

Auto car washes use very harsh chemicals to clean your car.
So what ever wax they used came off quicker then if you washed your car with higher quality soap.
Requarding swirls, if you didn't pay for paint correction then they didn't do any and the auto wash helped make some more.

[Marc08EX]

Re: Proffessional detailer or my amateur skills

They could have used a glaze to cover up the swirls.

Car wash detailing can't be really considered proper detailing. All they care about is getting your car in and out as fast as possible. How long did it take?

[C8N]

Re: Proffessional detailer or my amateur skills

I had my car's exterior detailed at a local car wash.
When I picked it up, the car looked great but as the wax started to fade off... started to see the swirls.
To be completely fair, I did run the car through an automatic car wash once after this detail.

[Brad7]

Re: Proffessional detailer or my amateur skills

So many "Professional" detailers in my area do a sub-par job. I spend at least 30 minutes a day on these forums and can make a car look better than they can. Having the right knowledge paired with the right products(meguiar's) is the key to producing excellent results.

[J. A. Michaels]

Re: Proffessional detailer or my amateur skills

I think there are a lot of weekend warriors that do a professional job. Too often on forums you see a hologram detail from a so called professional. Does that make it right? No of course not.

I tend to look at the final results and the persons knowledge before I call them one thing or another.

[FinalTouchDetail]

Re: Proffessional detailer or my amateur skills

Another piece of advice, and something I did myself that was quite valuabe to me...

Get a GOOD detailer to tackle your car and sit out there asking questions and watching how they work. You will learn so much more than you will by just reading the forums.

The only way to get very good at detailing is practice, and a good start is being able to watch someone work and understand how products break down, arm speed, pad selection, etc...

[Matt Majeika]

Re: Proffessional detailer or my amateur skills

If you accept money for a detail, you are a professional detailer. So the real delineation is competence.

Just reading these forums and applying the invaluable advice received here makes you more competent than many professional detailers who never learned to recognize or correct their mistakes, no care to.

Agree 100%

Being a professional just means you get paid. It's a skill level that we're working towards. The more knowledge / experience you have, the better YOU are as a detailer. Stick to doing it yourself. If you don't know how, just stick around here! You'll learn.....

Matt

[ClearlyCoated]

Re: Proffessional detailer or my amateur skills

If you accept money for a detail, you are a professional detailer. So the real delineation is competence.

Just reading these forums and applying the invaluable advice received here makes you more competent than many professional detailers who never learned to recognize or correct their mistakes, no care to.

[Mr Miyagi]

Re: Proffessional detailer or my amateur skills

Yesterday I couldn't even spell professional...Today I is one.

JKv :0

[Ravi_1992]

Re: Proffessional detailer or my amateur skills

Things came to my mind when i ve seen a proffessional detailer working with a rotary buffer on BMW M3 and he was so hard pushing the roof was waving i was shocked and silently get out of that garage and decided to do everything myself

Some cars have soft roofs ( easy to ripple ) , I was polishing my cousins nissan pickup truck with a PC and just the weight of the machine was making it ripple.

[Michael Stoops]

Re: Proffessional detailer or my amateur skills

A professional detailer can do wonders for the appearance of your car. But many amateurs or "weekend warriors" as we like to call them, can do an equally outstanding job on their own vehicles. It all depends on how much time and effort you are willing to put into learning proper technique so that you do things right. But even a "weekend warrior" with only moderate skills is going to be better for a car's finish that a so called professional detailer who is "professional" in name only but really has very little skill. Unfortunately we see far too many of those. There are too many cases of "pro detailers" leaving a car looking worse than before they started work on it. Unless you can search out a true professional and are willing to pay him what he really is worth, you may be better off learning how to do it correctly yourself.

Some people have no interest in doing the work themselves but demand that their car look darn near perfect all the time. For them, there is no substitute for a genuinely skilled professional detailer.