Todays 04 G-35

A

a.k.a. Patrick

New member
Another beautiful car in need of a little TLC. Tar on the wheels, pitted, front and rear spoilers scraped up. But the inside was prettys decent! Wait until you see the clay bar.......that pretty much tells the whole story........

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And this is what I had to start with........

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Doug and I used a variety of products: FS Body Shop Med Cut Compound, Orange Pad, UPP, Smart Leather, FS Rubber/Vinyl Dressing, Simple Green, Duragloss All Wheel Cleaner (Which the two of us liked!), Simple Green, Steamer for the matts and exterior trim.
 
nice man :)



Too bad you didnt get any close up pics. Thats when you can tell how good a silver car looks :)



Great work once more!



-Ryan
 
Man that flake is really popping; at first I thought the pics were blown out but then I realized it's just the reflection of the flake! Awesome.
 
nice, love that color! :2thumbs:



p.s. how is it working on the g35 paint, did the pc (assuming that's what you used) tackle it okay?
 
Ima, the main concern there was "clean up". You could tell from the clay bar, there was some nice pop hiding under all that fallout! I went with the FS Med. Cut compound, and found it removed the larger, more severe issues, as well as really clean the paint up. I dont like to hide the flake with glazes or anything. Silver is so difficult to bring alive, so I feel cleaning is actually more important then swirl removal. Silver has its own built in swirl hiding ability, and why remove CC if you dont need to. Now if the client had "an eye" and wanted them 95% removed, i would have done so, but i got about 90% out, and like I said, silver is a great color paint to own, and work with.......

The man who paid for it was very happy, as he's one of my reg's anyway. Hes leaving out of state, and gave this detail as a gift to a friend. This poor "G" was ab-used a little, and needed to breathe!
 
Thomas, Doug had one. Im not sure what brand it is, but i just tried to look at Costco for one, and I noticed they didnt have any..........Im sure Doug will chime in shortly.
 
I use a SteamFast Steamer Model SF-275 and I bought it at Costco about 6 months ago and it does a pretty good job for what it cost (less than $100) but it is not available anymore. I always like to buy from Costco (or Sams) because they have a life time warranty.



I am sure a professional steamer for $700 would work better, but so far it has done almost everything I have asked of it. It's small and very portable. Reliable so far with DISTILLED WATER, and it can steam for over 45 continuous minutes and has 1500 watts of power. Check out their products at www.steamfast.com



It is great for doing interiors, wheels, door jams, and engines, and carpets. It doesn't eliminate hard work, just another tool that speeds up the work and that help eliminate some chemicals.



If I had the money, I would buy a professional steamer and an extractor, but unfortunately I don't have $2k burning a whole in my pocket right now or the space in my rig. But in time, I might get that equipment, but many of my customers are more worried about the paint work than the interiors and mostly ask for a light detail on the inside, so it doesn't to make sense at this time.



But I was just at Costco Saturday in Santa Maria, and they had a very similar steamer that was used for steaming clothes, I am almost positive it is the same one just with a few different options and it would work perfectly for detailing cars.



I just bought a digital camera Saturday at Costco so hopefully I can post some pictures on here in the future.



I got to try the Duragloss All Wheel Cleaner, and to my surprise, it worked pretty good on the dirty wheels. G35's are notorious for wearing brakes out so it was an honest test for the product. One thing that was interesting, it did not turn the brake rotors to a rust color like other wheel cleaner do like Eagle One all wheel cleaner has for me, maybe just a coincidence, :nixweiss but for the initial try, the Duragloss Wheel Cleaner might be a product for me to put in my arsenal especially for alum wheels or polished wheels where YOU CAN NOT USE SIMPLE GREEN or ACID WHEEL CLEANER and soap and water will not get the job done. I would use Eagle One, but it stained a clients driveway and it was a major PITA to clean it and I am afraid to use it again :sadpace:



Another new product I used was Smart Leather, the end result was great. It enriched the black leather to look like new and it even smelled nice, but it was a minor PITA to put the product on. For someone doing their own car, no big deal. But for detailing where time is an issue, I could think of better products for dressing the leather. For everything else in the interior, I used One Grand Do-It-All "is a safe, all purpose preservative for vinyl, rubber, plastic, leather and leatherette surfaces. DO-IT-ALL+ leaves a satin sheen that is not greasy or sticky" I really liked this product for it's ease and the low sheen compared to other products. I didn't realize at the time, but I could of easily put it on the leather, and had saved about 15 to 20 minutes, but the leather was really dry, so maybe leather seats needed a dedicated leather treatment anyway. Every time I have tried One Grand Products, I have liked them. Maybe they are an underrated product line you don't here much about.



The floor-mats had some grease stains, but for the most part, I was able to get the majority of them away with the steamer. (Of course they were vacuumed and blown out with air). I know an extractor could do a better job, but they looked good, and no chemicals were put into the carpets to attracts more dirt and grime.



I didn't get to do much with the exterior this time, wash (?), engine dressing, clean gunk out trunk crevices, wheels but I most say Patrick did an outstanding job getting the shine back in this car. Silver and white cars really never show up on camera how much better they look after a detail sometimes. It looked almost like a new coat of paint. This one particular client sure likes Pa tricks (or should I say our work) so much that he has had us do 3 cars in 3 months, and asked us about doing 2 more. Unfortunately he is moving away this week, but maybe he can send one of us plane tickets to Seattle to continue to do his Porsche. He is a super nice client that you don't mind going the extra mile as he appreciates the work, and he refers you to his friends.



Hopefully Patrick will be getting some Duragloss TPP105 and the PBA bonding agent this week, and I will be trying my new Hitachi rotary, I am curious to see what results I can achieve this week compared to some of the other waxes and sealants I have on my truck.
 
Mike



I am no expert on a steamer, but remember it is "VERY HOT STEAM" and it could damage materials in the interior. Most vehicles do not have real wood but coated plastic that looks like fau or simulated wood. However, when I was shown a M35 Infiniti, the owner, in fact it was the same household of this car, he drives a Porsche, and it was his Mom's car, he informed me that the M35 has real wood in the car.



If it had real wood, I would be careful. There is never a need to ever be over aggressive with a steamer. Same theory as cleaning and polishing paint. The least aggressive the better. Especially around the electronic, radio, the navigation system, wood, etc. However, if there is something sticky on the wood, and it will not wipe off, I think the steamer would be a better alternative than using a chemical product especially on wood. There are no hard and fast answers for everything on interiors, just use common sense, and try not to damage the interior. Just use the least aggressive approach. If you use a steamer, it's pretty easy to catch on. The closer you get with it, obviously the more aggressive it is, and the further away with it the less intense the spray and heat it is. Plus you can use different tips on the end to make it even more aggressive on some models. Or put a micro fiber towel on some of the fittings.



Mike Phillipps sometimes has a saying, you get it the best you can get it. I have found that out the hard way on my own personal cars using to harsh of chemical trying to get things better and than ending up damaging them instead. Not everything can be fixed if the owner damaged or neglected the car. That's part of a detailor's job is to explain that to the customer what can and can not be done.



Another tool that is cool, is the Mr. Magic Clean Eraser. Patrick showed me a couple weeks ago, I did a Google search on this, and than I actually tried it out on black door interior side panels on a scuff mark this week and it really does work!



There is no magic in detailing (except that Magic clean Eraser) learning the right techniques or ones that work for you, hard work and using good products .



I would imagine every detailer has their own way of doing things, and their is no right or wrong way. Whatever works for you, and achieves the results you desire that's fine. If you are still looking to improve, I highly recommend buying the new DVD by Mike Phillips on how to get a show car finish. I just bought it last week and it is about how to use a PC in short, but it is 2.5 hours long and has some many tips on how to improve your technique. Even if you don't agree with him on everything, I am sure most detailers will get something out of the video. Mike is supposed to shortly be coming out with another video on how to use a rotary, and I will definitely be purchasing this video too. (There is nothing on interiors, just exteriors in this video).



Here is his link. For $30, money well spent http://www.showcargarage.com/



Hope I gave some useful information Mike, sometime I just go on and on and on
 
Exterior Trim? Haven't had the need yet to really use the steamer on too many exterior trim except in the crevices of door jams or hood/truck jams. But I do use it on wheels. I see no reason why I couldn't use it on some nasty exterior trim if claying or washing did not get it off. But steaming would not be my first option. If it is exterior metal trim, I would use a polish with maybe steel fine wool #000 with something like NXT metal polish or MR Buffer Polish, or I even like Mother's Polish. If it is plastic, maybe the steamer would be work well if your favorite product didn't do a good enough job.



Expanding on the trunk jams, I find it useful to do this before you wash the car or polish the car. Blow out the gunk in like leaves. Than, spray some APC, let it dwell if you have time or patience, and wipe most of the junk out. Blow air again, get as much junk out again, and go back again with the steamer with brushes to get the nitty gritty out and use micro fibers and APC to get it the best you can. Now don't spend an hour doing this, as the customer really cares about how well the paint looks, and is more interested in how the interior looks, but just an added 5 to 10 minutes in the small details can make a big difference in the final outcome and the customer will know you did a thorough and professional detail. You can lightly clean the engine, and door jams, and customer will see a big difference, this is where a steamer comes in handy. It will not win any concourse awards, but the customer is not paying you for this on this particular detail. Instead, his engine and door jams are clean and dressed with QD and everyone is happy, and you have exceeded the customers expectations. If the customer is paying for a 10 hour detail, than maybe you should spend considerable more time on door jams, hood trim, trunk, etc, but for what I charge they are paying for Paint Polishing and LIGHT INTERIOR WORK.



As many more experienced detailers have said before, it's better to exceed your customers expectations than to just meet them. It gives them a reason to keep coming back to you and not try someone else.



Hope this sheds some light on using steamer on exterior trim, it mostly for the crevices that get really grimy that you can not get a rag too. Using it in combination with compressed air, APC, brushes, you can make your life easier and make your customers happy and surprised at the same time. Don't forgot to QD to get some shine and pop!
 
Stickman81 said:
I really like the G35's.
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Me too, and especially that color. The owner obviously has great taste in vehicles and color.



You did great work on that one...it is amazing how much the appearance of the color changed. It looks like it got some fresh paint.



-GT
 
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