What's your earliest detailing memory?

Todd@RUPES

Todd@RUPES

Just a regular guy
My earliest detailing memory was when I was about 13 years old. I remember laying on the ground with my dad, polishing his Cragar wheels with Mother's Mag and Aluminum Polish for hours and hours. The rims where vintage and very oxidized. I must have hand rubbed each rim for 4-6 hours (each) until they were brilliant and shined like chrome.

Ironically, I can still remember the smell of the original Mother's Mag & Aluminum Polish like it was yesterday. My father and I (mostly I) would spend hours on his 442, cleaning the interior, polishing parts of the engine (I hand sanded the aluminum Edlebrock Torker II intake and hand polished the entire thing. It took me an entire winter, working several hours a week).

The next summer I started 'detailing' cars in my neighborhood, reading car magazines to learn more about the latest products (Hot Rod and Car Craft always had whats new product sections).

For a basic wash and Turtle Wax it was 15 dollars.

For my 'advanced detail' which included the entire Meguiar's DC System, it was 30 dollars. I really thought I was doing something special back then.

Anyways, I was curious if some of you remember your earliest detailing experiences/memories.
 
I guess my earliest memories are of me helping my father in the mid 80s wash my moms van. He was constantly yelling at me to get out of the water and put the brushes down lol. I also remember him and my uncle doing body work and restorations, and me always wanting to be right in the middle of it. Detailing, body work, restorations, classic cars, etc have always been a big part of my life, so its no surprise that i do what I do for a living. Sadly we lost him in July of last year, and I miss him more every day.
 
My Dad used to work for Dupont so he had access to all the Rain Dance products when they were released. I can still remember prepping and detailing the family station wagon for the prom :)
 
My brother taught me how to wash his '78 Toyota wagon. I remember he told me to dry the windows and chrome first to avoid waterspots. The funny part was he taught me to chuchuck the bucket of unused suds on the car before rinsing. I know that contradicts the two bucket method. Oh well. I had fun washing his car but I'm not sure he knows i remember that.
 
I suspect I'm like a lot of posters here, we followed our fathers love of detailing.

My father loved a clean car, he was a DuPont,Simonize,Turtle wax guy. I use to help him wash and wax the car, this was in the early 60's. In 1970 we painted my 67 Mustang 26 coats of lacquer ( he was an amateur auto painter) we wet sanded, compounded, polished the living day lights out of that car. I learned a lot about paint correction from him while he used a rotary buffer with a wool pad tied on to it.

In the late 70's I start detailing cars on the weekends, mainly my Mothers Friends ( lost my father in 75) I had quite a few cars on a regular bases. I did a pickup and delivery and charged $100 bucks for my full detail, more of a wash wax than anything. My go to for protection was TR3 Resin Glaze for paint and the dreaded Armor all for inside protection.

This part time weekend detailing biz still follows me today and with the invention of the net its allowed me to really learn a lot more about process and product. Today I have a decent customer base, still do pickup and delivery and select the car I would like to work on, rather than the old days where I would take anything.:D
 
I remember it was annoying. I always had problems buffing off the hazed wax (used way too much) and for some time just not care about maintaining the car's appearance.
 
Hey guys i remember when i was around 5 years old my brother use to wash and wax his ride on a Sunday morning. When he use to do this i use to take out my Hot Wheel cars and line them off in our porch and wax them. I had the most gleaming hot wheels cars on the block. To this day i still have those cars.

Wonderful memories
 
Helping my dad wash his old work truck, and him telling me not to cut my hand on the rusty spots, lol. That and helping him put turtle wax on our 78 T-bird in the mid 80's.
 
I remember helping my mom wash and wax her Pontiac lemans in the late 70s/early 80s.
I also remember being a teen and waxing with way too thick wax and having to rub and rub to get it off the paint.
 
my dad has always detailed so i can remember him doing it as far as i can remember, then istarted getting into cars and thought i could buff out my first car(89 ford probe non turbo) man i left some crazy holograms and swirls in that thing!! i can still remember what they look like, never got crazy about it as i was more into skateboarding and customizing my car at the time and not detailing. then i got older and workedfor a car wash and thats where i started to get into it, not like i am now...now im just obsessed with keeping my car clean and shiny...funny thing is, i do better work now then when my dad was doing it, then again he never used foam and was a production detailer, seen his car for christmas when i went to RI man he had some holograms couldnt dissapoint him and let him know it looks like poop with buffer trails. yet he says " i dont get swirls with wool" funny how the tables turn! atleast i got him more interested in the products that are not OTC. he tried collinite 845 and he told me" ive never seen a wax give this much shine to a car" and loved the ease of use with it....but thats some of my story!.
 
I loved building plastic car models when I was a kid. From about age 8 I can remember getting so detailed. I would actually paint each and every nut and bolt individually. I could never get the bodies to a level I wanted though. If I only knew then what I know now I wonder how some of those might have turned out. The hours I put in would rival some of the major details I see here.

As for real cars, I started waxing my mom's car when I was about 12, primarily for Mother's Day each year. Turtle wax of course. The car was a '78 Grand Marquis. When I couldn't figure out why the paint wasn't smooth the way I wanted I asked the detail guy at the local car wash while waiting for the car to come out of the Swirl-O-Matic. That's when he showed me his "magic clay". I've been hooked ever since.
 
1956 - using Simonize on the chrome fenders of my first bicycle. It was a Schwinn if I remember correctly.
 
When I was 16 my dad owned a car dealership and I saw that he was paying these 2 guys to "buff cars" soooo I needed summer money and talked him into letting me do it instead. First Car I ever did was a black q45 with heavy water marks on it I used a rotary, wool pad, and that old 3M compound in the black and orange bottle then waxxed with turtle wax. It took me a couple years to figure out why that car looked so great in the bay and then out side on the lot depending on the light look "3d" thats how I thought of it. I probaly did 50 cars that summer and I'm sure I was hack at best, really just uneducated. It was like 2 years later when I figured out after you cut the paint on a car that before waxing you should probably polish it at least once or twice and checking your work in sunlight is a good thing.
 
Fall 2011, when I first found this forum and realized I had been doing a slacker job for the previous 20+ years.
 
I believe it was 1958 at the age of 11 when I waxed my parents 1957 Ford. I waxed the whole car then it was time to take the wax off and look at the shine. The wax didn't come off! Then I looked at the can and it was floor wax. I don't know what my Dad used to take it off but it must have been something really strong because no cloth (rag) would budge it.
 
It was in 64 when I was a little dude and my Dad wanted me to wax his Black 64 Olds Ninety Eight. Well I apply the wax ( Johnson Wax ) and then try to remove it and it beat me so badly ( couldn't remove any of it ) that my Dad had to did for me. He have a great laugh on my part.
 
My uncle owned a car dealership and I was drafted to be part of the slave labor force as a teen in the late-70s. I'd washed cars before but still remember my cousin showing me how to buff with a rotary and wool pad plus some Megs red bottle compound. "Keep the pad moving" he said as he burned through the paint on an edge. I decided against doing that and swore off of rotaries and Megs products for some 30+ years. Comes to mind every time I pick up my Metabo and Megs 105. (At least it isn't in a red bottle!)

Remember him peeling paint off with a pressure washer, too. Maybe that's why my uncle wanted me to take over that job. ;)
 
Hi There...

My earliest would have been in 1961. My dad bought a 1957 Chevy Bel Air Sport Sedan. It was black with the split in the rear quarter panel white. At that time we lived in a small town just outside of Montreal called Pierreville and my dad worked for Pierre Thibault fire trucks. At that time they were one of the only fire truck makers in North America. He had my brother and I first help him sand the car down and prep it for painting. I was only 9 then and my brother 7 years older. Once we had the car prepped he took it into the factorie's paint shop and had it painted fire truck red. Once that was cured we helped him cleanup the car and polishing it. I don't remember what products we used, by I do remember that thing was just like a mirror when we were done.

I washed and vacuumed his cars after that until 1970 with the occasional times where we would wax it with Turtle wax. Those cars were the Chevy, followed by a 1963 Buick LeSabre, then a 1964 Chrysler Windsor, 1966 Dodge Coronet with a 440 and he then started to drag race that car in the summers. He followed that with a 1968 Road Runner with the 426 Hemi and the last one I detailed for him was a 1970 Rebel The Machine and that was the first one I got to drive. That thing was fast and it was all about torque.

My first car was a 1966 Chevelle Malibu and I swear I washed that car nearly every day.
 
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