Mike Phillips
Active member
- Dec 5, 2022
- 51,004
- 6
High quality production detailing by Mike Phillips
Normally the words high quality and production detailing don't go well together. Production detailing is the type of slop-n-glop work performed by people with little to no training and working under tight time requirements with low quality pads, products and tools.
The problem is not how to create a show car finish in the least amount of time, that's not production detailing that's show car detailing and that's not what I'm talking about.
What I'm talking about is how can a detailer do as few as steps as possible and still turn out a quality detail job that they can be proud of and their customer will love.
And... how can a detailer do this on clearcoated black daily drivers?
The normal procedure historically for doing production detailing is to use a one-step cleaner/wax for the paintwork after the normal steps of washing, drying and claying if the paint is contaminated.
While a one-step cleaner/wax, applied by machine might work well on light colored cars, the issue is this approach will tend to leave micro-marring or a light haze in the clear layer of paint on darker colors and the hardest color of all to work on and that's black paint.
The micro-marring tends to be caused by the abrasive technology together with the pad choice and even caused in part by the machine application as the action of the pad spinning and/or oscillating against the paint leaves a tale-tale sign from the process that shows up to our eyes as a hazy appearance.
Because most daily drivers tend to be trashed in the sense the paint is filled with swirls and scratches, in order to provide enough correction ability to create a visible and even dramatic visual difference, (in the eyes of your customer), some type of abrasive technology is needed together with some type of chemical cleaning ability plus any polishing oils and last but not the least important, some type of protection ingredients be they synthetic, naturally occurring or a blend of both.
Trying to clean, polish and protect a swirled out dark or black colored clearcoat finish is for the most part asking too much from today's available technology. It's pushing the envelope too far at least if one of your requirements is to put out high quality work you can associate with your name.
The problem
Doing more than two steps means investing more time into the exterior process and this is where too many detailers lose profit. As the saying goes, time is money. Doing two, three or more steps to the paint is fine if you're charging accordingly for it but high prices and production detailing are at the opposite end of the spectrum.
To be honest, at this time there isn't a perfect answer. So Here's a two part answer that might be just the ticket for you when you're asked to work on a trashed, black or dark colored daily driver.
The solution
Part of detailing cars is under promising but over delivering. This starts by you not promising to create a swirl and scratch free finish. Period.
Removing all or even a majority of the swirls and scratches out of any daily driver is a multiple step process and you need to charge for this type of work.
Instead, here's a pretty good solution to the problem and that's to do a 2-step where the focus of your attention is in the first step, removing "some" of the shallow swirls and scratches while restoring clarity to the clearcoat and the second step is using a spray-on wax to seal the paint.
Here's the project car, a daily driver, 2013 Chevy Tahoe. This Tahoe looks to be washed incorrectly all of it's life. I did not see any straight line scratches caused by being run through a brush style automatic car wash but there's still plenty of random cobweb or spiderweb scratches to go around.
The owner asked me if I could cleaner her up with a wash and wax. He told me it's a 2013 that spends a lot of time in the garage so it's not that bad.
That's where everyone has their own definition of the word bad.
Besides being words apart on our definitions of the word bad, in a way, it doesn't matter because if the paint is horribly scratched or lightly scratched, in order to do just one machine application of some type of polish or cleaner/wax to a vehicle this size requires a certain amount of time because you can't simply run the buffer over the paint as fast as you can walk around the car.
So let me document the condition of the Tahoe as it arrived...
Pretty bad...
I cover this in my new how-to book!
On Autogeek.net
How to use the Flex XC 3401 VRG Dual Action Polisher
For both Production Detailing & Show Car Detailing
:xyxthumbs:
Normally the words high quality and production detailing don't go well together. Production detailing is the type of slop-n-glop work performed by people with little to no training and working under tight time requirements with low quality pads, products and tools.
The problem is not how to create a show car finish in the least amount of time, that's not production detailing that's show car detailing and that's not what I'm talking about.
What I'm talking about is how can a detailer do as few as steps as possible and still turn out a quality detail job that they can be proud of and their customer will love.
And... how can a detailer do this on clearcoated black daily drivers?
The normal procedure historically for doing production detailing is to use a one-step cleaner/wax for the paintwork after the normal steps of washing, drying and claying if the paint is contaminated.
While a one-step cleaner/wax, applied by machine might work well on light colored cars, the issue is this approach will tend to leave micro-marring or a light haze in the clear layer of paint on darker colors and the hardest color of all to work on and that's black paint.
The micro-marring tends to be caused by the abrasive technology together with the pad choice and even caused in part by the machine application as the action of the pad spinning and/or oscillating against the paint leaves a tale-tale sign from the process that shows up to our eyes as a hazy appearance.
Because most daily drivers tend to be trashed in the sense the paint is filled with swirls and scratches, in order to provide enough correction ability to create a visible and even dramatic visual difference, (in the eyes of your customer), some type of abrasive technology is needed together with some type of chemical cleaning ability plus any polishing oils and last but not the least important, some type of protection ingredients be they synthetic, naturally occurring or a blend of both.
Trying to clean, polish and protect a swirled out dark or black colored clearcoat finish is for the most part asking too much from today's available technology. It's pushing the envelope too far at least if one of your requirements is to put out high quality work you can associate with your name.
The problem
Doing more than two steps means investing more time into the exterior process and this is where too many detailers lose profit. As the saying goes, time is money. Doing two, three or more steps to the paint is fine if you're charging accordingly for it but high prices and production detailing are at the opposite end of the spectrum.
To be honest, at this time there isn't a perfect answer. So Here's a two part answer that might be just the ticket for you when you're asked to work on a trashed, black or dark colored daily driver.
The solution
Part of detailing cars is under promising but over delivering. This starts by you not promising to create a swirl and scratch free finish. Period.
Removing all or even a majority of the swirls and scratches out of any daily driver is a multiple step process and you need to charge for this type of work.
Instead, here's a pretty good solution to the problem and that's to do a 2-step where the focus of your attention is in the first step, removing "some" of the shallow swirls and scratches while restoring clarity to the clearcoat and the second step is using a spray-on wax to seal the paint.
Here's the project car, a daily driver, 2013 Chevy Tahoe. This Tahoe looks to be washed incorrectly all of it's life. I did not see any straight line scratches caused by being run through a brush style automatic car wash but there's still plenty of random cobweb or spiderweb scratches to go around.
The owner asked me if I could cleaner her up with a wash and wax. He told me it's a 2013 that spends a lot of time in the garage so it's not that bad.
That's where everyone has their own definition of the word bad.
Besides being words apart on our definitions of the word bad, in a way, it doesn't matter because if the paint is horribly scratched or lightly scratched, in order to do just one machine application of some type of polish or cleaner/wax to a vehicle this size requires a certain amount of time because you can't simply run the buffer over the paint as fast as you can walk around the car.
So let me document the condition of the Tahoe as it arrived...
Pretty bad...
I cover this in my new how-to book!
On Autogeek.net
How to use the Flex XC 3401 VRG Dual Action Polisher
For both Production Detailing & Show Car Detailing
:xyxthumbs:
