What sparked your detailing intrest?

I started doing it when I was younger, had a really nice car which I was trying to sell...drove 500km's to show someone who was absolutley keen as mustard, but refused to take it because of a few marks on it that could easily be removed. Even though I knocked $1k right then & there he wouldn't take it. Wasted a full day driving, plane ticket home, petrol etc. on something that would have taken an hour or so to fix up.

So I got home, fixed it up....then did a little more & sold it not long after. Since then been reading lots of forums/websites & working on mine, family & friends cars.

When needing a career change, my brother saw a detailing business (with workshop) up for sale for a very good price...4 months later here I am.
 
well it started when I was in h.s. I got my car during senior yr and started going to Kragen more since i was into cars. While I was at Kragen, I would look at detailing products since I wanted to take care of my first car. Soon I began to join car forums to get more info about cars. This is where I came across a detailer on my forum who would always post threads on cars he details. I said to myself, I want my car to look the same as well. This is where I started joining multiple detailing forums one year ago and began to read as much threads as possible to soak in all the info. As I began to understand more of how things work, my passion for detailing grew more and more. I decided to take the plunge and started purchasing detailing products here and there. That's how I got started into detailing.
 
I posted this in my intro post when signed on for the first time (long winded version). To make it short and sweet, when i got my first car I couldn't stop washing it-every day I washed it. Weekends I would wash my parents, neighbors, friends etc. It just feels good to drive a clean car. At that point I had no clue what polishing and waxing meant so I ended up killing the paint from all of the washing-my dad laughed and introduced me to a buffer.
When I started college I was hired on at a detail shop and there, I found out what it meant to detail. Everything snowballed from there, I took what I was taught and added to it by researching, talking to anyone I could gain some kind of knowledge from and trying new stuff. Here I am 12 years later doing the same thing-just better and with much better products and equipment. Creature of habit I guess....haha
 
Well, working at a dealership I used to use products like Ardex and Auto Magic back several years ago, as well as whatever was at Wal-Mart (Turtle Wax, Armor-All, Rain-X, etc.). My dad always used to take care of our cars and he had used some Meguiar's stuff (Cleaner Wax, Quik Detailer, etc.), but he was kinda old school cleaning, so I thought Meguiar's was old school as well and never used it. I was getting tired of using waxes and products that were not the most user friendly, and so I started looking at what else was out there. I had looked at some products on the internet (I remember checking out Zaino at the time), but balked at the high prices of some of these products I was seeing, and I thought that buying products from anywhere but locally was just a bunch of hype. About this time (late 2008 I think it was), Turtle Wax came out with their ICE line of products. They were praising these products up one side and down the other, and I thought, "This is it! This is what I've been looking for!" So, bought a few ICE products - no bananas. Big frickin' waste of money. Back to Wal-Mart, where I spotted the then new Meguiar's NXT 2.0. I think it was the pretty packaging that got me, more so than the name Meguiar's, but I got it and tried it (over the ICE liquid polish, I might add - automatic improvement). I thought, "Wow! This is the best wax I've ever used!" Started looking online, found Meguiar's Online forum, and started learning a lot and began getting rid of my old stuff and using Meguiar's. After Mike Phillips left Meguiar's in August 2009, I kinda followed him over to Autogeek, and kept building my knowledge and product collection from there. The rest is history.
 
Bought a car that was nice enough that I cared to maintain its appearance and it went from there. :)
 
A little over 20 years ago my mother bought a Lebaron and the finish was nothing short of crap. Out of total ignorance about anything detailing, I waxed that sucker every night for about a week and I noticed the change; I thought, cool stuff. Now that the kids are through college, I have time and money. I ran across the AutoGeek website, got a little training from Anthony & Ron at Auto Concours- and that was it. First the articles, then meeting Mike Phillips- cool stuff.
 
If I had to pinpoint an exact time, I'd say it was the year 2000 or so. I had bought a '99 Trans Am (black of coarse). At that point in time I was a dish-soap and bath-towel guy (I didn't know any better). On top of that, I've always been a neat-freak. What really started it all was when I purchased a Ram Air style hood for the car. I knew it had to be painted. My paint was in such poor shape that I decided to have the entire car repainted (atleast that's what I thought it needed). I didn't want nice fresh paint on my new hood and have the rest of the car in swirls. So I had the painted repaint my entire car AND change the color, to orange. Naturally, I wanted to protect my investment(s).

So, doing as most modern day enthusiast do, I was registered on a F-Body site where I learned how to properly care for the car. It was then when I learned about the Z***o website. I was blown away by the all the steps to obtain a "show-car" finish. Even more-so, I was floored at their prices!! I then learned that the same steps should be performed with OTC products and you could achieve the same if not better results!!!!

I also remember reading about how only 100% cotton (I believe this was pre-MF) was to only touch the paint. I also remember learning the basics, starting in the inside and working your way out and doing the exterior from the top, down and to always rub horizontal surfaces from front to back and vertical surfaces from top to bottom to reduce swirls.

Moving a little futher down the time-line, it wasn't long after my car was repainted when I was hired at a body-shop as a painter's helper. THAT'S when I really got to solidify my OCD tendencies. I learned how to paint and do minor body-work. After only working at the body-shop for a few months, I added pearl-flames to the TA. After the flames were on and laid down a healthy coat(s) of clear I wet-sanded and buffed the entire car. To this day I remember making the final wipes on that car with M34 and looking at the reflection qualities that car had.

To sum it all up, since I bought that d**m Ram Air hood (which stems from another addiction, HP and vehicle modification) that I have ALWAYS wanted to maintain the paint on my cars/trucks. My GF makes fun of me and so do my friends/neighbors when I break out the leaf-blower (fitted with a cone-style filter on the bottom) to dry my cars!!! Having discovered this forum doesn't help much either!!!!

:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D
 
my new family member, 2010 Corvette Grand Sport, son moved out, vette moved in!
 
I think my passion for detailing started when I was just a kid. My old man use to spend every weekend cleaning the family mini van. It was always clean and there was always a good coat of wax on it. He never went as far as to remove swirls or anything like that, but I think just the fact that he kept his cars so clean and had a passion for it made me really want to do the same. So, when I got my own car it was always clean. Now I detail part time and since joining AG I've learned way more about detailing and a big thank you should go out to everyone that contributes to the forum. The senior members and the newer members. It's great to have such a wide range of input on any given situation.
 
jimmyjam said:
and me not knowing how/what to charge replied "$40"
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Just to double check... you have brought your prices up?


jimmyjam said:
Anyhow after that my barber started sending random people to me and word of mouth got so huge that my business blossomed.
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It's great hearing experiences like yours...


jimmyjam said:
All the knowledge of the you members makes me excited to try out new methods, and detailing doesn't become work, it's still fun.
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That's a good sign... when you enjoy your work it's no longer work... just passion for perfection when it comes to car detailing...


:xyxthumbs:
 
CieraSL said:
Started looking online, found Meguiar's Online forum, and started learning a lot and began getting rid of my old stuff and using Meguiar's.

After Mike Phillips left Meguiar's in August 2009, I kinda followed him over to Autogeek, and kept building my knowledge and product collection from there. The rest is history.
Click to expand...


Meguiar's Online is a great forum, of course it's dedicated towards the Meguiar's brand but people can talk about other products if they like, it's just the focus is on Meguiar's products. A lot of people don't know the story behind the story for MOL but MOL started out as ShowCarGarage.com, that is I was posting my detail projects to my own forum because Meguiar's didn't have a forum.

I spend almost 2 years explaining to management what a "Discussion Forum" is and that it's not a "Chat Room", then one day the VP came to me with a print-out of a write-up I did and posted to my own forum and asked me,

"Hey Mike, this is really great stuff but how come you're always posting this to your website?"


We were walking down the hall of the Meguiar's Corporate office when he said that to me and I stopped, raised my hand to my forehead and in front of him did this,


wall.gif





Then explained to him that the "thing" I was putting my how-to article on is called a discussion forum. I said the reason I could put it on my website was because I purchased and paid for the hosting of a vBulletin forum and the reason I couldn't do it to the Meguiar's website was because it didn't have a vBulletin discussion forum.

I then explained that this was the "thing" I had been trying to explain to him and others...

He then paused, looked at me and said...

"Make it happen"

And in a couple of weeks, MOL went live with the first post being the pictures and comments from a Mini Cooper class.


I was out in SoCal over the holidays and actually found that print-out in my collection of catalogs and other data.


:)
 
Mike.Phillips@Autogeek said:
Just to double check... you have brought your prices up?




It's great hearing experiences like yours...




That's a good sign... when you enjoy your work it's no longer work... just passion for perfection when it comes to car detailing...


:xyxthumbs:
Click to expand...
Hi Mr. Phillips,
Yes my prices have climbed as my performance excelled, at first I felt very uncomfortable asking for higher prices. The better my business/reputation got the more comfortable I began raising my prices.
 
I used to detail my bicycles when I was a kid with turtle wax, blue poly etc.
 
My love of cars and going to car shows, there is always that one car that is like WOW! look at the gloss and depth of the paint!

I love to drive a clean car.....
 
Chicks dig a shinny car...any questions?

:dblthumb2:

Fussman
 
I love how clean cars look and also my love for cars or anything with an engine sparked my interest.

Even my R/C's and lawn mowers receive detailing.
 
longdx said:
I thought I knew how to detail years ago. That was until I saw a detailer's site. In that site, I researched and saw step by step the process of actually correcting paint. That led to me finding this forum and asking questions about different processes. Detailing is a skill set that can be constantly improved upon.
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Me too. I just like a clean car.
 
I got into detailing because I started doing car shows. I always kept my cars clean but I would always call my friend to do a detail or clean up for car shows and most of the time we would work together on the car. I learned a lot from him over the years. Talking with him and Steve from Showroomfx really taught me a lot and got me more interested in doing more myself

Plus seeing all those cars that had hack jobs done on them made really want to learn to take care of my car right and avoid those same issues
 
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