Top quality Carmax restoration....

I know detailers that buff with a rotary, and use a wool pad and they do not leave swirls. Is it the experence or the products they use. I would think a little bit of each.
 
That is unbelievable. What's worse is that people who are buying the cars don't even know that there is something wrong with that. Or they buy it when the sun isn't sitting right.
 
Damn....I didn't know I sucked that much at buffing. For real though I'm a detailer at Carmax and the problem is that most of the detailers are there to make $$$ and not pretty cars.

We are paid on commission and work 10 hours a day. The average car pays around 4.0 hours. We have guys that will do 5-6 full details a day. They work 10 hours a day and turn in as much as 25 hours a day. All they are worried about is money and many of them are making lots of it.



I actually care about what my cars look like and run a bit slower (turn in about 17 hours a day). I have one of the lowest efficiency rates in the shop, but I make good cars and good money. I know that there are a lot of hacks out there, but all of us aren't. They sometimes hint that I need to speed up, but when they have a horrible car they want to try and save guess who they come to??



Here is an Explorer I did the other day that looked like the hood on that blue car all over it. It looked like a mirror after I finished even with the crappy EcoLab/Blue Coral crap I have to use.



1FMDU84W24UC11388-4.jpg




My
 
Wow, who knew detailers got flagged for their time just like a mechanic. I think the proper way to phrase that, rather than "comission" is "flat rate". You are paid the "standard time" for a particular job (in other words, a flat rate), regardless of how long it actually takes.



The shortcuts you are describing also occur on the mechanical side, with the mechanic trying to get flagged for as much work as possible in the shortest amount of time.
 
Yeah...I was originally was gonna used "flagged" and "flat rate", but didn't know if most people who weren't in this type of industry would understand what I was talking about.
 
B-Diddy said:
Damn....I didn't know I sucked that much at buffing. For real though I'm a detailer at Carmax and the problem is that most of the detailers are there to make $$$ and not pretty cars.

We are paid on commission and work 10 hours a day. The average car pays around 4.0 hours. We have guys that will do 5-6 full details a day. They work 10 hours a day and turn in as much as 25 hours a day. All they are worried about is money and many of them are making lots of it.



I actually care about what my cars look like and run a bit slower (turn in about 17 hours a day). I have one of the lowest efficiency rates in the shop, but I make good cars and good money. I know that there are a lot of hacks out there, but all of us aren't. They sometimes hint that I need to speed up, but when they have a horrible car they want to try and save guess who they come to??
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While I only worked there a short time when I was unemployed, that was my experience. Doing a good job means you make less money. It only has to be good enough that it doesn't get kicked back to you, which as you saw isn't a particularly high bar.



Where I worked you really didn't have the facilities to do the best job either, they try to work more people and cars than they have bays for, like a sort of uncontrolled assembly line. You compete for things like rotaries, clean pads, and even clean towels.



That said, the cars generally did look better than when they came in. It amazed me how beat, dirty, and oxidized a car can look when it is only 1-2 model years old. The paint might be hologramed like crazy, but at least it has a shine to it.
 
OH. GOD. MY. EYES.



I gotta start sticking a "Warning: Graphic images inside" on the thread when you guys post these rotary-abused cars.



Tort
 
I should have taken a pic of the m coupe I saw yesterday that was done by carmax. Similar to the one in the OP, a shame too, it was a nice low mileage car.
 
[quote name='Aurora40That said, the cars generally did look better than when they came in.[/QUOTE']





I really dont see how.



You can make a vehicle look a 100 times better by claybarring and using a cleaner wax by hand than by improperly using a rotary.



And, in that case, you could pump out an exterior job in an hours time.
 
Coupe said:
I really dont see how.



You can make a vehicle look a 100 times better by claybarring and using a cleaner wax by hand than by improperly using a rotary.



And, in that case, you could pump out an exterior job in an hours time.
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Thats the thing. Most of these cars come from auctions where they are given a coat of wax with a dirty cutting pad. Most of the buffer tracks are already there when we get them. They look good after one of the detailers clay and put on a coat of an oily cleaner wax full of fillers.



Once they sit out in the rain and endure a couple pressure washings from the inventory washing truck all the fillers are gone and it's back to square one.



In the shop I'm in we have some pretty decent guys, but no one is gonna take 5 hours on the exterior when the entire detail is only paying 3.5-4.0 hrs.

You take several of the guys I work with and give them a couple hundred bucks a car, some good products, and no time limit they could turn out some really good work.



There are surely lots of hacks, but there are also lots of good guys who aren't given the chance to do anywhere near their best work. If anyone has seen pics of my vehicles I think they'd agree that even though I work at a dealer I can do pretty good work if given the chance.



When it comes to interiors I bet alot of people would struggle to keep up with some of our dealer guys.
 
How in the world do you make a car look like that? Seriously? I mean ***. Ive used a rotary before and im no pro at it yet but good lord you must have to try to get those results.
 
B-Diddy said:
When it comes to interiors I bet alot of people would struggle to keep up with some of our dealer guys.
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In what regard, quality or time or?
 
B-Diddy said:
Thats the thing. Most of these cars come from auctions where they are given a coat of wax with a dirty cutting pad. Most of the buffer tracks are already there when we get them. They look good after one of the detailers clay and put on a coat of an oily cleaner wax full of fillers.



Once they sit out in the rain and endure a couple pressure washings from the inventory washing truck all the fillers are gone and it's back to square one.



In the shop I'm in we have some pretty decent guys, but no one is gonna take 5 hours on the exterior when the entire detail is only paying 3.5-4.0 hrs.

You take several of the guys I work with and give them a couple hundred bucks a car, some good products, and no time limit they could turn out some really good work.



There are surely lots of hacks, but there are also lots of good guys who aren't given the chance to do anywhere near their best work. If anyone has seen pics of my vehicles I think they'd agree that even though I work at a dealer I can do pretty good work if given the chance.



When it comes to interiors I bet alot of people would struggle to keep up with some of our dealer guys.
Click to expand...





I dont think you get it.

Clay then a cleaner wax, all by hand. This will take about an hour per vehicle and look 100 times better than using a rotary the wrong way. DONT EVEN TOUCH a buffer unless you have the time to do it right.



Back to square one? Square one would look better than touching it with a rotary the wrong way. What you guys are doing is taking a vehicle in bad shape and making it way way way worse than before you even touched it.
 
First of all we don't wax by hand OR by rotary. We wax with a DeWalt 443 Orbital. I've seen cars come from the auctions JUST like the one pictured. If you clay then wax it with the orbital it will look halfway decent for a couple weeks until our cheap wax wears off and your back to the way it started.

If you buff it with some cheap polish with worn out 9 inch foam pads then wax it with the orbital it would look really good....again until the fillers go away.

Its not all the detailer's faults. I'd lay at least half the blame on the products we are forced to use. Better products would equal much better cars.

I've showed them the difference between our stuff and a bottle of MG #80 and while they were impressed they'll never spend the $$ on it as long as cars are flying off the lot.

Most of the cars coming through our shop don't even get touched with a buffer in more than just a couple places where there are bad scratches. I bet only 1 out of 10 get fully buffed.
 
Coupe said:
I dont think you get it.

Clay then a cleaner wax, all by hand. This will take about an hour per vehicle and look 100 times better than using a rotary the wrong way. DONT EVEN TOUCH a buffer unless you have the time to do it right.
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I think you are the one not getting it. Have you seen the vehicles that come in? If not you are just guessing. And of course every car that comes out does not look like the one in the OP.



But I don't believe anyone is saying that the way CarMax operates is a good way to detail a car.
 
Trade-ins can look HORRIBLE when they come in.



I'll vouch for Aurora40 because I've worked with trades for years in all capacities.



Most dealerships could care less about claying unless a car is coated with overspray or something highly visible.



Between the expectations and the time allowed, sometimes the swirl and wax is all that a dealership gets



Most people don't notice or worry about swirls, but if there's a scratch that is often a deal breaker for a customer.
 
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