Who was into detailing and then went off it?

[sonnenschein3000]

Yoghurt Rifle said:

Simliar here. I think getting into detailing can be a road to despair. Fair play to anyone who has the time and enjoys the hobby but that sinking feeling when finding a new stone chip or blemish and the constant obsession over parking

This exactly. I always park far away in the corner of the car park and my mind is simply not at ease if I've parked in a busy car park in a space between two other cars. And then I look a bit silly with my LED detailing torch having a look around it before I go - not just for dents but also if someones trousers lightly rubbed past my door thus micromarring it

[smudgerebt]

Glare or Bilt Hamber.

If you cant see the swirls then they arnt there.

(Still use the PC whilst lugging around the adaptor. Do miss L200, Dave KG etc, been on DW since erm 2005 or something like that, used to help do the free training days with Dave KG Gorden at AB many years ago)

[fourstardan]

I'm glad someone has posted about this, i'm back to addiction and need help (Seriously I do, looking on ebay for spray bottles for IPA dilutions on a saturday night is NOT healthy).

I had a TT ten years ago that was my first "sports car", i was a member on TTforum that led me to my first waxing efforts, beading porn and the softstuff, nothing too major.

Bought a A5 after that and went off the boil with this one for some reason, it was a year old and black, had swirls on it beginning to show, maybe it was work related, more work, better car, busy at the time OR maybe I thought fuk that i'm not doing something this big as a wax.

I moved onto a used Q5 then, and decided to give it a full detail...and then the DAS6 arrived for some pissing about on the missus car! Learning about compounding etc, which admittedly i wasn't really good at understanding lol.

The Q5 was a pita to clean so I got into funding organised crime in my local area and outsourcing the work

A4 after the Q5, which was new and had "autoglym" included for free (Yeh i know t'wasn't) but i got pushed into it, however for 12-18 months I just jetwashed, then slipped back to the car washes route.

Some may had seen on here my posts about returning a vehicle, i had various bits of work needed that I could had done myself but some didn't leading me to Detailingworld and resetting my 5 year old account! I think i'd managed to get rid of a decent scratch and with this being the itch more pissing about on the missus car (stone chips, wet sanding etc) has led me back to the dirty/clean detailing habit.

And now i've just bought a year old Passat (mostly car washed but fine at the mo on swirls) which is now all mine (well in the Anti PCP brigade eyes) and the Old man just bought a nice new motor and got it professionally done, which I nearly did do for the winter sealant but decided to DIY.

I looked at a big order and tbh some things bought i've probably already got and I could had reused but the more and more i've read into the stuff and picked up reviews on Youtube (Forensic detailing is one reason lol) the more addicted in PRODUCTS i've become !

The products to me are the problem, they are all very close in ability to deliver results and promise things you'll need the knowledge to actually achieve and they also take time and practice to learn how to use them, they then run out and it's a vicious cycle.

Could be worse habits that need spending...oh yeh golf the other one!

[rsv gone!]

I used to be. Time was always the issue. My Evo used to cycle between incredibly dirty and gleamingly spotless. I just couldn't face taking it to the hand-wash places.

My BMW is more of a tool. It does 25,000 miles a year. And with greater time pressures, it is a case of getting it done by the local handwash place or it never getting done. I still minimise the visits to them as I cringe at the swirls they're adding and I always spend an hour afterwards, picking up the bits they've missed, waxing and properly cleaning the glass.

I had thought of getting it 'corrected' and then just paying for top-up cleans. Its about double the cost of a top 'clean' but I'd sooner spend more, less frequently.

[dhutch]

sonnenschein3000 said:

Hello
So I went down one of the two slippery slopes back in 2013... the detailing slope

I think you can get medical help for that.

[p4cks]

Dermot O'Logical said:

I learned a lot on sites such as Detailing World, and bought lots of Dodo Juice, Gtechniq and Poorboys potions, together with a DA polisher etc.

I'm not what you would call a "detailer", but I do like my cars nice and clean. I like to think that I've found the middle ground, where I use quality products to clean and protect the car, but I'm not so obsessive that I don't worry about driving it in bad weather.

This is pretty much me too. I take both my cars to the Eastern European hand washes as for £5 I can't be arsed to do it myself. On occasion I'll take it home and give it a wax and a vacuum but for detailing or really anything else on the car that requires time and effort I'd prefer to spend my time doing other things and let other people worry about those.

[macdeb]

We get pissed off if someone scratches our cars but some seem to want to pay people to do it at the 'hand car wash' places.
Same sponge car after car, wheels then bonnet, sills then roof etc,,,

[ambuletz]

wash once with regular car shampoo.
wash again using a 'wash n wax'.
dry
done.

[sonnenschein3000]

Went to a local hand car wash.

Mild swirls now in the paint, probably going to get worse with the next wash.

But its just such a liberating feeling to not care anymore.

[macdeb]

That is until resale time when they point out the poor paintwork

[Blue62]

I'm less OCD these days but still care and enjoy giving my car a proper clean. Some of the latest products make very light work, I paid (for the first time ever) for a pro detail on my current car just after delivery, it was coated with G-Techniq ceramic and I top it up with Gyeon bathe and wet coat, they're not expensive and the results match anything I've done previously for a fraction of the effort. HTH

[sonnenschein3000]

macdeb said:

That is until resale time when they point out the poor paintwork

Dad's never been into detailing and has never been knocked down for swirl marks....

[Davie]

Dermot O'Logical said:

I learned a lot on sites such as Detailing World, and bought lots of Dodo Juice, Gtechniq and Poorboys potions, together with a DA polisher etc.

I'm not what you would call a "detailer", but I do like my cars nice and clean. I like to think that I've found the middle ground, where I use quality products to clean and protect the car, but I'm not so obsessive that I don't worry about driving it in bad weather.

Pretty much the same here.

Always liked to clean my cars but back in the day it was the basic wash with a sponge, crack on with some Mer or Meguiars Tech Wax, dress the tyres and anything else in range with some Back to Black and that was sufficient... then Detailing World arrived and so did the word detailing and whilst I've little time for these types who list the 'products' by barcodes and have several buckets, I have picked up and acted upon some of the words of wisdom and invested in some better chemicals, all of which make the job a bit easier.

I recently bought a DA polisher, more so because I bought a black car that was a car wash car and almost matt so figured what's the worst I could do... so then spent a few weeks faffing around, experimenting with various compounds and stuff and whilst far from perfect, the difference is remarkable. Plus, have now figured that prevention is as good as cure and as scene as snow foam is, it does make giving the cars a quick rinse off much easier more so now that I've figured out what are good products and last too.

As winter approaches and given the demands of life, I rarely spend much time washing cars anymore... quick wash down, maybe do the tyres, glass and a hoover and that'll do. Would be nice if I could spend all Sunday buggering about with washing cars and generally tinkering but that's not gonnie happen for a few years!