VIF: This is Why You Have One

VIF-CYA-ASAP.

Great advice.

Evan, that's a great point about customer walk-throughs. Most of the time when someone drops a car off with me they can't get out the door fast enough. Then when they pick it up they suddenly found their fine tooth comb and inspection light. The VIFcan be done fairly quickly compared to most detailing processes and is absolutely worth the time. I also make a point to photograph panel by panel after each step (On arrival, Wash, clay, other decon) so that if something appears, I can go back and see when it appeared and ascertain if it was related to my work or not.

The 2002 S8 I did recently had some of the chrome pealing off from the rear rings. I didn't see it until after I pressure washed it, but went back to the original photos and to my relief, it was already there. Taking the extra photos takes about 5 minutes and all these little things add up to real time in the end, but it's time well spent.

Great advise Evan! Thanks for sharing.

Thanks for sharing Evan. Great advice.

Great reminder, so true about how people's view of their car changes before and after, it's funny how that's a common theme all over the place.

What do you guys do about this initial inspection when the exterior of the car is super dirty and probably hiding some issues. I live in a mountain town where almost everyone does outdoor/off-road activities to some degree and people's DDs can get really dirty - especially in winter. How do you handle the VIF in that type of scenario.

Thank for sharing this incident Evan....


Just to comment on a point Evan brought up...

Most people don't know about every little defect in each of the body panels of their car. They are not intimate with the paint. They mostly just see the big picture. Like red car, blue car.

As a detailer, as you work around the car performing normal steps,

• Inspecting before you start
• Washing and inspecting after you wash
• Decontaminating and inspecting as you decontaminate
• Machine compounding, polishing or waxing, (whatever your process), you're also looking at the paint as you work and inspecting and NOTICING any issues

And so on and so on....

So by the time you're into the project and especially by the time you're done with the project you're going to be completely and fully aware of just about every single defect in the paint. Much so more than the owner.

It's just a normal relationship between you and someone else's car.

It also equips you to share everything you've discovered about the paint with the owner and that's nice and professional thing to do but like Evan pointed out... protect yourself and use the VIF form and even your camera or the camera on your phone to document any issues before you start working on the car.

In a perfect world you want to do your initial inspection with the customer present.

Then, at any time you find something new that was identified at the time of the initial inspection, stop working immediately and contact the customer and let them know as that as a professional courtesy to them you've found a new issue and that's why you're contacting them.


I recently buffed out a black Ferrari. The front clip had been repainted. As I was wiping off some polish I noticed a issue with the paint that I didn't see when I did the initial inspection. The blemish was masked by all the swirls in the clearcoat. After machine polishing the area and removing the swirls this restored clarity to the clear coat and visually exposed the defect. It kind of looked like burn through but it was under the clear. My buddy Paul, a professional painter was stopping by, I showed it to him and he called it a "bullet hole". Said it had to do with the way the person either did the prep work or held the paint gun when painting the basecoat.

I contacted the owner about it and he told me that it's always been there and he was hoping I was going to be able to remove it.

When I explained to him the defect was under the clear he understood. As I continued to work around the car I found two more same types of paint issues under the clear that he didn't know about. This in and of itself also vindicated me and to his dismay vindicated to him that "yes" in fact he had a poor quality re-paint on his Ferrari.


If you don't have a copy of my VIF then get one and make it a habit to use it.


Here's the link,

Mike Phillips - Vehicle Inspection Form - Version 2


Reply to the thread and at the end of day I'll send everyone new reply to the thread, (since I last replied to the thread), a copy of it.


I'm incredibly busy right now in a hot project so I get to this at the end of day.