Hi All,
I spent 1/4 of my 33 years detailing autos at various levels to pay for college and for fun, but after reading around this site for the past week or two, I realize I'm far from up to date.
A little about me, after spending a decade in a technology career I purchased my dream garage with a house next to it. I decided to use the 1200 sq/ft portion of the garage to start an upholstery shop which I currently run, but the original reason of buying the place was to enjoy the heated solitude of great lighting to maintain and care for my vehicles.
With my business consuming my life, I've been struggling to rekindle my hobbies, one of which has always been detailing vehicles. Back in the day I started as a lot attendant slinging wax on new vehicles, learned detailing and buffing from the other departments of the dealership, and moved on to working in a few smaller shops over the following years. Please keep in mind, I was strictly pumping out used cars from trade / auction and making them ready for retail, but I didn't have the pleasure of working on more than a dozen true high end vehicles for personal consumers so I don't have the same resume of most of you here operating your own businesses on a different level than my experience allowed me. I guess I mentioned that simply because other than when doing side jobs, the products available at my disposal were determined by someone other than me - whatever was cheap and effective just about summed up their purchases off the detail supply truck (keep in mind this was before the internet was really popular and purchases were made the old fashioned way).
Back in the day, I used to have the fun time killing task of making the Lincoln dealership owner's new demo Town Cars sparkle like a diamond while a blizzard was going on outside the heated shop when things were slow, only to watch it all be undone within 30 seconds of heading outside, but I justified doing it telling myself one day I'd have a setup similar to take care of my own new vehicles with the same level of care regardless of what is going on outside. Fast forward 15 years and I've got the heated facilities complete with hot water to detail to my hearts desire at negative 15 if I feel like it, yet I've recently "opened my eyes" to find myself with a brand new GMC 2500 that I've barely only managed to wash less than a half dozen times and throw a quick wax job on twice now in the first 6 months of ownership.
In looking over the obvious signs of neglect starting to appear in my paint such as water spots I'll possibly date myself on by claiming are from acid rain perhaps, I've gotten the itch to return to my old pastime as a hobby to reduce stress and appreciate what I have a little more. While my toy collection took a backseat for business purposes, we've got a few drivers in our fleet worth looking their best which I intend to return to. However, after reading as much as I could off the site so far, the first thing I noted is the professionals don't mention the products I have on the shelf that were more popular back in my active times while working in the field that I've kept stocked over the years. I'm standing back looking at a slew of 3M products like Perfect-It and Finesse-It polishes and other compounds, waffle patterned foam pads beside some wool ones, etc basically things I haven't seen here! Even more surprising is I haven't found one mention (not that I've searched too hard for it) of my good old variable speed Milwaukee rotary polisher which is what was the only thing I used to see in shops back in the day.
I have no problem with updating my arsenal of products to some of the more modern lines out there now as I expect they're so heavily used for a reason, but I'm sort of curious more than anything to learn why "what i thought I knew" barely gets a mention anywhere? Did I not know as much as I thought I did or have times changed that much! With that in mind, I'll consider myself a newbie....
Anyhow, looking forward to returning to the art of detailing and learning as much as I can observing from the folks on the site. If there is a thread somewhere that can help an out of date person such as myself come up to speed a little quicker I'd appreciate help finding one that an out of touch guy can draw lines from what I worked with before to what is the choice of the pros now.
Thanks for taking the time to read the intro, I swear all posts will be much shorter than this one.
Greg aka Geech
