Yesterday I was fortunate enough to be shown the difference between valeting a car and detailing a car. Gary of Refined Reflections is one of our first advertisers on BigPower and I felt a responsibility to you guys to try the service, call it quality control
Garys first comment was that the difference between cleaning a car and detailing a car is time and quality. Valeting is all about time, valeting is all about quality.......the only constraint was my wallet.........oh crap! We discussed the options, looked at the time available and also gave consideration to the amount of paint on the car......The day arrived and Gary arrived at 8.30 am and merrily started unloading the van with boxes and boxes of cleaning gear. Gary explained that the first procedure was to check the paint thickness of the car so he knew how much he could take off
Still a bit surprised Gary grabbed his one grand micrometer and started beeping all over the car.......'Ooh........aahhh.......yesss......ooooh.' repeat... I know how micrometers work, I ran a metal finishing business for four years, but the relevance in cleaning a car seemed........excessive. The reason for this attention to detail is simple. It protects Gary against the likelihood of problems when he's working on 100k Bentleys. He can produce a document showing paint thicknesses all over the car and then do a before and after for his clients. Clever sod!After micrometering the car ( my new word) Gary started on the scabby brake dust mullered wheels, good luck.
Spraying the wheels liberally with an alkaline solution and scrubbing like a mad dervish using three different brushes to agitate the most stubborn of the baked on dirt. This was followed by a very thorough pressure wash job.
The car was then treated to a degrease using natural orange zest as a solution and this was applied to the entire lower third of the car. The smell was amazing. Arches, wheels, bumpers, sills all treated to a heavy dose of vitamin C.
The car was then rinsed again using the jetwash.
The next stage was great. Snow Foam is a really thick heavy sudding soap used to remove loose dirt and particles sitting on the paint.
This was rinsed again and then another coat of snow foam was put on, this time the soap suds were washed over the panels using the finest sheepskin mitts, ensuring all metal work was completely massaged with the solution. More rinsing and then dried by hand using waffle weave microfibre clothes. The time was now 12 noon. 3 and a half hours and we had only just finished 'shampooing' the car!
The next stage is one I've read and heard about but never seen.....clay bar and detailing spray. Essentially this removes all of the contaminants on the paint, tree sap, overspray, tar etc and leaves the metal work glass smooth. Sounds like cobblers, but if you've never tried it you will be stunned. (Bloody hard work graft though)
With the wetjobs finished the wheels and tyres were returned to. A special high temperature wax was applied to the wheels and a tyre cleaning compound were added, the theory being that the longer they had to go 'off', the better.
Next was the masking in in preperation for the machine polishing. This in itself took about 20 minutes, the amount of time spent is staggering, and I thought I knew how to clean a car.
Gary uses a choice of polishes subject to the amount of cutting he needs to do, this is governed by paint thickness, level of swirls or other defects and your wallet. So in my case that was varied, numerous and empty. The actual process is pretty straight forward though and this is when I shot off to do some lunch. (Truth be told, Tan did it)
We had a natter about world politics and the fiscal economy of middle England and then proceeded to talk about more pressing issues of women and beer. How the time flew:) It was now 3pm and we needed to nourish the paint using some kind of glaze, probably hideously expensive as it was made by Zymol and smelled of chocolate. Effectively everything we had done so far had taken stuff off of or out of the paint. Six and a half hours later, we were putting something back on/in. One of the things I noticed with the Zymol stuff was how easy it was to use. Obviously Gary guided me on the initial applications but it was a doddle. If you can use Meguairs, you can use this. At 4.10pm we had the car cleansed and were ready for the big daddy of the applications, the Zymol Concourse wax. The pot that Gary passed me was the same size as a bottle of hair wax, around 8oz, and costs upwards of
and you face when you realised what a couple of things did was worth a million pictures (unfortunately I didn't have the camera at those points:( )
