things I never used to notice!!!

[SenojNW]

washing swirl marks

buffing swirl marks

badly washed cars

scratches

dents



...always in other people`s cars of course!



...ever since I found this forum...



...what`s happening to me??? :confused:



HELP! :scared:

[mcnab]

Congrats! Your well on your way to become an Autopian :)



It`s an addiction....I do the same...I actually drive myself nuts looking at all these cars all day...Picking out imperfections in them.....



Basically every car I look at I say to myself "wow that needs to be detailed" for one reason or another...



I wish I could turn that off sometimes ahahah.. Oh...and my girlfriend thinks Im nuts

[SenojNW]

Yes - my wife thinks it is fascinating :) NOT!



Driving to work together has never been so interesting for her - "gee look at those swirl marks - that guy doesn`t know what he is doing" or "thats a terrible case of clearcoat failure" (she now points these out to me!).



Or better still - "what have you bloody ordered off the net now?!!"

[Scottwax]

I went to the Peterson Automotive Museum in LA a couple years ago with some fellow detailers. We spend more time picking apart the finishes than we did enjoying the amazing cars they have on display there!



It is a sickness and it doesn`t get better. ;)

[LucasZCPM3]

I do have to admit I when to a car show a couple of months ago where I couldn’t get past the Swirs on a Murcielago roadster. Then again the only Manufacturer there that had properly detailed cars was Rolls Royce.

[tailwind]

At a car show at Mohegan Sun last year I was looking at a couple Cobra replicas. One was yellow with black stripes, the other was black. While glacing over the paint on the black one, the owner walked up and asked "what do you think?"



I replied "The cars are awesome," then went back to looking at the paint over the car. He must`ve got curious and slowly followed me around before asking what I was looking for in the paint. I said "nothing in particular, really...just checking it out", but he insisted, so I (as nicely as possible) pointed out some holograms and swirls. He seemed a little surprised, so I offered to teach him how to clean it up for free if he wanted, but he declined.



There was a very rare Porsche Speedster there, and there was an insane amount of swirls in it.



No matter how nice the car, some people just don`t know any better. A few years back I didn`t either, I used to cake Gold Class on my old Cougar and buff it off with a cotton bonnet on a cheap Waxmaster thinking it was helping, with no prep.

[metal]

I`m starting to get this habit too haha. Just wander around and notice how horrible everyones paint is :)

[tomee]

yup, whenever im at a shopping centre car park, i always look at cars paint finishes..



and always think to myself... i never say it out aloud when my gf is next to me, becasue she will totall ignore it

[D Tailor]

My wife says that it`s in my blood to be addicted to something. I used to be a bike racer and for 17 years I was addicted to bikes. Then I had an accident in 04 that ended my career. What to do with all my free time????? Having detailed my own cars and some friends for the past 10 years, Now I am addicted to detailing. All of my friends laugh but my wife gets it. She encourages it b/c her car obviously wins as well :). If not, who knows what I`d turn to. When we go on road trips we play i spy with bad paint jobs and she asks me "what kind of car is that?" ""what would you do to fix it?"

I love it!!!

[drck1000]

I too never used to notice such things. Prior to starting browsing this forum, all I would notice if a car was dirty or not.



Now I notice:

-Swirling and how easy they are to see on certain colors

-Minor dents, scratches, scuffs and thing about how I would remedy them

-Whether or not other`s cars could use a claying/polish/paint seal



Mostly I notice how most people really don`t care for their car`s appearance. I asked my co-worker last week how often he waxes his car and he said "no need to". He washes his car every month but won`t wax it. It`s a nice deep blue Odessey van now. But we`ll see how it weathers.

[WSUcommuter]

I`ve had to justify the presence of other cars looking bad as nothing more than making mine look that much better.

[D Tailor]

ever get busted staring at a car in the parking lot by the owner as you figure out the process you`d go through to fix it only to scurry away when you`re caught like some sort of freakish fiend?? yeah, me neither :)

[Accumulator]

Warning: More of Accumulator`s Autopian Heresy follows :o



IMO we gotta watch that we don`t get *so* wrapped up in this stuff that it a) takes the fun out of the whole car-hobby thing and/or b) makes us marring-phobic fanatics :D And I can be quite guilty on both counts myself! Gee, if I didn`t care about marring (and all the time I spend detailing) so much I`d have a lot more miles on my good cars and a lot fewer miles on that minivan :rolleyes:



I know some guys whose cars could sure use some correction, but they`re having a ball with them so IMO more power to them. A perfect example is a guy who bought his XKE new in Germany back in the `60s- he and his wife are *still* having loads of fun with it and, while I cringe at how it looks, I know better than to tell the old guy how to treat his pride and joy.



And I sometimes gotta remind myself that correcting the original paint on a rare car means taking *off* a good bit of that original paint, and it`s only original once. Not that a striking a balance/finding a happy medium wouldn`t be a good idea....



But yeah, Accumulatorette and I are always :rolleyes: about the marring on everything we see. Heh heh, at [an event that had better remain nameless] she asked me "oh my, how would you ever fix *that* " :eek: ) about a show-winner that the owner thought was perfect :chuckle:

[Neo62381]

My GF hates me for it, we`ll be going down the highway, and some nice Vette or Hummer or something really nice will go by, and whereas used to she would say something along the lines of, "I want one of those!" now it`s "look at the orange peel and swirl marks!" I really is amazing how many nice BRAND NEW cars out there have such horrible paint.

[imported_bdornseif]

I even started to check out and comment on the swirls in the paint on the cars auctioned at the Barrett-Jackson Classic Car Auction when they televised it on Speed Channel in January. My wife looked at me like I was new to the planet.



Bruce