Thanks Chip and Gregory for your expert comments! Chip, you mentioned
detailing books - any good ones that you could recommend?–
Per Stenius @Per_Stenius http://www.ece.ucsb.edu/SQO/Per/
Warn’t me, Per. Detailing books? UGH. Use Meguiars and work hard.
Per Stenius wrote:> Thanks Chip and Gregory for your expert comments! Chip, you mentioned
detailing books - any good ones that you could recommend?
Per Stenius per@quantum.ece.ucsb.edu http://www.ece.ucsb.edu/SQO/Per/
–
Cheers-
William “Chip” Lamb
1976 Jaguar XJ6L, 143k miles, “Julia”
1960 SAAB 93F, GT-850 conversion, “Inga”
http://www.jag-lovers.org/lumps/chip/
http://users.aol.com/spgone/saab/saabpage.htm
Thanks Chip and Gregory for your expert comments! Chip, you mentioned
detailing books - any good ones that you could recommend?
I picked up a couple at one of the local megabookstores a few years
ago. Can’t remember the titles off-hand. But my overall impression
was that they were a lot of filler with just a few good suggestions
and some that were questionable. The good ones made sense, whereas
the others seemed either steeped in ritual or intended to get you
to buy some product. I wouldn’t recommend actually buying
them – better to check them out at a public library and make some notes.
Some of them are just hard-copy infomercials for car-care product lines
and will tell you that you need some chemical to accomplish virtually
anything (e.g., get Motheguires specially formulated antenna polish,
in either the chrome or black version, depending on your aerial’s finish).
Besides keeping the car from accumulating dirt, one of the other
generally good suggestions was to use care in applying wax etc. so
that you don’t get it into places you don’t want it. For example,
it’s a real pain to clean wax out of the letters of a plastic logo,
as is removing oversprayed vinyl protector from the bottom edge of
the windshield near the dashpad. In the extreme, they recommend
using cotton swabs to work up to the edges all of the areas you want
to avoid, and only using larger applicators in the middle of larger
areas. I have had several concourse winners tell me that their
real secret is thousands of Q-tips and a lot of patience (old
toothbrushes, wooden cuticle sticks, and artists paintbrushes
also seem to figure heavily in their bag of tricks).
Another point I remember was that home detailing and professional
detailing usually have different goals. Professionals need to get
the best looking overall results in the least time, so they tend to
use stronger chemicals than you can buy retail. A lot of their work
is prepping a car for a sale, so it needs to look good for a buyer’s
inspection – OK to do a pressure wash, quick machine polish, spray wax,
and hit it with a finish enhancer to make it glow for a short time.
Not the sort of thing you’d want to do every weekend. Home detailing
is seeking to preserve the finish, so uses milder chemicals, gentler
washing and hand-application of materials. Not that you can’t find
professionals who will do this too – it’s just that you have to
explicitly seek them out.
Chip