I think a very common element a lot of us face is that most people don't realize that a quality detail isn't cheap and they can be put off by the cost. Most think a good car wash is something you pay $5.00 at their corner gas station so when they hear the cost for a real detail they often :scared: On some local forums I'm a part of, I did a write up to better help the average person understand why we won't detail their car for $50. It's very basic in explanation as I didn't want to get too technical so if any of you think you could benefit from it, please feel free to use it and just change the names in it to yours. Again, the info is pretty basic but I didn't want it shooting over people heads. Here's the write up...
Anatomy of a detail
VERY often people will contact me for a detail and once they hear it can cost $300 and up they sometimes go
ut:. I think it's important for people to understand just what really goes into a quality detail. If you're sick and need a doctor are you going to seek out who can do the best job or who's the cheapest? If you're having bodywork on your car done do you want someone with experience and a record of quality or just some that is cheap? If you want cheap, head to your local car wash but don't complain when the sun hits your car and it looks worse than it did before. A quality detailer is an artist at what he or she does. It's someone that's going to have your car looking better than when it rolled off the showroom floor. It's someone that's going to treat your car the way they would treat theirs.
Detailing a car isn't just washing it and then throwing some wax on and then calling it a day. It's understanding what's wrong with the car and knowing what tools it's going to take to get that paint looking and feeling like glass. Each job is 100% CUSTOMIZED for that client's car. Is the car super swirled? Well it will probably need a fairly aggressive polish and maybe and pad which has some decent cut to it followed by a finishing polish with very little cut and a pad which has little bite to it. Do you need to start with 15 pounds of pressure or 10? What speed does the polisher have to be at and for how long? The combos can go on and on depending what you're trying to accomplish. Fully understanding how to attack jacked up paint is what turns this....
to this....
to this...
You also have to look at the costs the detailer has to incur. You need polish and quality polish can easily run $45+ a bottle. A quality sealant can be $25 - $50 a bottle. Quality wax can run $45 - $200 (though there are waxes over $1000), a DA or rotary for polishing can be $150-$350+. You need a LOT of polishing pads for the machine and those can be $5-$10 each and there's still metal polishes, clay, tire cleaners and tire protectants, leather cleaner, etc etc. Also, a quality detail is usually going to be at least 8 hours long, assuming it's one person doing the job, though I don't remember ever doing one that fast if polishing was involved. Maybe you can now see why you're not going to get a QUALITY detail for $100. There's MANY detailers that just want to get the job done fast and get the next person in so they don't take as much times as they should. In this picture you can see TONS of buffer trails
all over the trunk of this '71 Sting Ray which was caused by going super fast and not allowing the polish to fully break down and do it's job....
Now here's a half and half shot of the same trunk when time was actually taken to do it right....
I know it's not easy these days to have a ton of extra cash laying around but there's no feeling like picking your car up from the detailer and seeing that transformation. When you do that, you will immediately forget what you paid because you won't believe your eyes. Whether it's myself, itskrees, lustr, danny etc, we aren't people that are going to skimp because all of you that are driving around in cars we've detailed are rolling billboards for the work we do. So the next time you want your car detailed and you want us to cut our costs, tell us first which steps we can skimp on.
Seriously though I hope this helped everyone get a better understanding of all that is involved with a
quality detail.
ancing Dot:
