how to tackle a situation like this

E

Envious Eric

New member
So, I arrived to this clients house and he says, its not bad, but I know it will take some time...uh, yeah it will!



cars023.jpg




thats what it looked like ALL over the car, every inch that was painted was heavily contaminated.



here is the difference I made, but the whole car took me a little over 2.5 hours. I really need to speed things up regarding claying, but I have a hard time not claying to perfection, especially on white cars:



1/2 & 1/2 with clay magic red and then switched up to overspray purple clay (both removed about the same speed, but the overspray clay scuffed more, so I switched back)

cars025.jpg




so how else would you have gone about this?:think::think::think:
 
Are you only waxing this car, or are you correcting also? I would tell the customer that the car has heavy contamination, and you will need to use the clay sponge, but due to the heavy contamination it will need to be polished afterwards and charge accordingly. Best of luck.





John
 
wow that is some heavy contamination eric! G'z man. I hope that you charged accordingly for that if it took you 2.5hrs just to clay. Although i usually find myself overworked and under paid LoL. I haven't encountered many vehicles with that much fallout though recently.



My friend who use to work for a bulk detail shop over here a long time ago said there is a product that they use to use (be it correct or not) to spray on the vehicles and let it sit and then they pressure washed it off and it removed the fallout but i'm not sure what the product was called.
 
For every car I see that is not too bad, I get two of those cars!!!! Its really ridiculous! Of course being me, I do it for free because of my OCD. I ended up two stepping this car with PC 105/204 cyan and tangerine. This one was done about a month ago
 
toyotaguy said:
For every car I see that is not too bad, I get two of those cars!!!! Its really ridiculous! Of course being me, I do it for free because of my OCD. I ended up two stepping this car with PC 105/204 cyan and tangerine. This one was done about a month ago
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we seem to have a lot of the same traits. Sometimes it bothers me when people choose to not take care of the defects and i will sometimes do a little extra work at no charge.



I want to re-do my pricing but it's bad enough as it is that people don't want to pay for things to be done the correct way.
 
Not sure if I should create a new thread for this question, but since it does relate to the OP's quesiton I'll start it here.



On average, how long should it take to clay an average size vehicle? I know lots of variables can be added or subtracted.



Mark
 
An "average" vehicle shouldn't take more than 20 minutes claying. I clay as I wash, which saves lots of time. I have had vehicles like the OP has posted as well ("not that bad" hah...) and then you just need to grab the spray lube and go at it.



I think this situation would fall under the 'excessive damage' clause where you should requote a price before getting to work. You need to explain to the customer why their vehicle really isn't "not bad" and will take much longer because of the contamination. I had a white Armada come into the shop once that took almost 4 hours of claying. The guy lived next to a rail yard and worked for a steel fabrication plant.
 
todd@bsaw said:
I had a white Armada come into the shop once that took almost 4 hours of claying. The guy lived next to a rail yard and worked for a steel fabrication plant.
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Thanks for the reply Todd.



Nice double wammy for that guy. LOL
 
I was thinking the exact same thing. I detailed a Lexus last year that was pretty bad, though not as bad as the car TG was working on. It took me over 30 minutes just to clay the back hatch (Lexus SUV). I finally broke out the FK Decon Kit. Made a pretty big difference. Next time, I'll break out the decon kit first.





Aesop F1 said:
I wonder how a decon wash would handle that level of contamination?
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toyotaguy said:
For every car I see that is not too bad, I get two of those cars!!!! Its really ridiculous! Of course being me, I do it for free because of my OCD. I ended up two stepping this car with PC 105/204 cyan and tangerine. This one was done about a month ago
Click to expand...





I use the Magna Hi-Tech Body Sponge. For me it seems to work faster than clay, but as they say, your mileage may vary.
 
todd@bsaw said:
An "average" vehicle shouldn't take more than 20 minutes claying. I clay as I wash, which saves lots of time.
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20 minutes? Wow. It takes me 20 minutes to wax a car. I'm a not perfectionist and I'd say it takes me 2-3 hours to clay a whole car including bumpers and wheels to the point where the clay bar stays clean on the last pass.
 
AeroCleanse said:
I use the Magna Hi-Tech Body Sponge. For me it seems to work faster than clay, but as they say, your mileage may vary.
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Yup, that's the clay sponge I was talking about. Works great for heavy decontamination, but it does slightly round the top of orangepeel, and MUST be polished afterwards. Wax will not do the job.
 
I would personally leave out any clay lubes in this situation (don't know if you used any or not). Using water only gives a much better bite. Also, at the point when you see that this is not your average "crud" (looks like a lot of rail dust to me!) you should let the customer know that if you remove this, it's probably going to scuff the finish so a light polishing would also need to be done. PM me if you need some better stuff than Clay Magic red!
 
JohnKleven said:
Yup, that's the clay sponge I was talking about. Works great for heavy decontamination, but it does slightly round the top of orangepeel, and MUST be polished afterwards. Wax will not do the job.
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Never had to polish after using it, but then again I tend to use a pre-wax cleaner if I'm not getting out the serious polish / compound.



In the OP, I would say its serious contamination :)
 
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