Car detailing: what is it
When buying a new car, every car owner wants it to stay as shiny and beautiful as possible for a long time. However, over time, the lacquer coating dulls, and the interior gradually gets dirty, even if the owner makes every effort to care for it. To help restore the original appearance can be a professional car detalining. In our country, this service is not yet widespread and not always at a proper level, since the motorists have a vague idea of what detaling is and what its result should be.
What is babysitting
It is impossible not to admit the obvious fact: the field of services in the West is developed almost to perfection. One of the important areas of automobile service is detailing, or the complex of procedures aimed at maintaining the appearance and interior of the car in perfect condition. As a rule, it includes professional washing, polishing of lacquer and paint coating, deep interior dry-cleaning and treatment with different kinds of protective coatings.
Due to dethyling, the car is kept in perfect condition, even after 10-15 years of daily exploitation, it looks as if it left the showroom only a week ago. Of course, in Russian climatic conditions it is much harder to achieve this impression than in Europe or the USA. Nevertheless, the use of modern polishes and protectors is very effective.
Why do you need car detailing?
As a rule, changes in appearance of a car become obvious after three years of exploitation. The smallest scratches on the paint coat remain after contact with small stones, flying out from under the wheels of other participants, tree and bush branches, ice freezing on the body in winter, etc. But the main enemy of your car paintwork is, oddly enough, a car wash.
An average car wash uses the method of non-contact washing with foam, after which the surface of the body is wiped dry with an artificial suede. Unfortunately, it is this wipe that leaves most of the fine scratches, because during a touchless wash, all the dirt particles from the body are not removed. To verify this statement, all you have to do is leave the car to dry naturally once after washing.
While wiping, the smallest solid particles damage the lacquer coating, leaving visible scratches on it. With each new visit to the car wash, the number of scratches grows, and after two or three years, they already cover the entire body with a dense grid. The luster of the paint fades, and the body no longer looks glossy and well-groomed. To minimize the damage, it is necessary to reapply the foam after a touchless wash and rewash the car by hand with a special sponge. But what to do with existing scratches? Only a professional detachment will help to get rid of them.
Read also : What is engine de-clogging and when it is necessary.
What is included in the car detachment
Qualified Detailing is a set of procedures that do not have strict regulations. Each car service determines the list of procedures and technology independently, not to mention the compositions used. Nevertheless, the basic steps and components of the process are the same for most similar services.
Detailing car wash
Before proceeding to any work, it is necessary to clean the surface of the body from dirt and dust. Detailing car wash is performed as described above, in two stages: the first is an ordinary noncontact washing, the second, after rinsing – a careful hand wash with a special sponge. To remove dirt from difficult areas (grills, badges, etc.) a brush with a soft pile is used. This method is called the “two-bucket method. It allows you to remove almost all dirt from the surface.
Salon cleaning
Quality detailing necessarily includes work to restore cleanliness to the interior. It’s not just shaking out the mats and removing the most visible stains. In the process of washing, the cleaners get to the most hard-to-reach corners of the car interior, removing the encrusted dirt. The seats are removed to make it more convenient to work in the cabin. All surfaces are treated with cleaners, achieving perfect cleanliness, and then modern protective coatings with a dirt-and-water-repellent effect are applied.
Paintwork polishing
Generic polishing is limited to just masking minor scratches with clear polish, so the result looks impressive, but doesn’t last more than a month or two. Detailing polishing is the removal of the top layer of varnish, so microscratches are simply removed from the surface. Special pastes containing a fine abrasive are used for this purpose. This procedure should not be repeated often, as with each treatment the varnish layer becomes thinner and finally disappears completely. To avoid this, it is necessary to use protective coatings.
Read also : What is carsharing and how it works.
Applying a protective coating
An exterior coating should protect the paint surface from damage, including dust and road dirt, raindrops, snow and snow removal chemicals. The market for modern protective coatings is extremely broad, but all compositions are divided into three main groups:
- polymer-based – the most affordable and least resistant protection, effective for 3-4 months and usually used as a seasonal remedy;
- Ceramic-based – premium protection, with a lifetime of more than seven years and characteristics that meet the highest requirements;
- hybrid-ceramic – medium-class coatings, with a lifetime of 3-5 years, protecting the bodywork from dust, precipitation, and road reagents.
A qualified master of detailing selects the coating, taking into account the composition of the paintwork, achieving maximum efficiency. In addition to the body, the windows and headlights are treated with special compounds. However, the presence of a protective layer does not exclude the necessity of the timely care of your car.
What is a detachment and why is it needed?
Good day to you all! Since you are reading this post, then most likely you care about the fate of the car you drive!
We want to share with you our thoughts and conclusions about a trend in the automotive beauty industry – “DETAILING”. What is DETAILING? Where did it all come from? Detailing from the English word detail, ie literally you can understand it as full detail, detailing of everything, this term means the most thorough and quality study of the exterior and interior appearance of the car to a state close to the ideal and maintain this result for a long period of time! All this culture, we want to underline the word culture, came to us from America and Europe, like many things in our everyday life, it is there motorists fanatically take care of their cars and put luster. Have you ever noticed that in Europe, there are a lot of very old cars in very good condition? Have you ever wondered why? All because, of course there is not so much dirt on the roads as we have, but that’s not the most important thing, the main thing is that motorists there take care of their cars and there are standards and rules which are respected when taking care of the car paintwork in car washes, unlike ours… Combined factors, the car in our operating conditions comes to a very sad state after, on average, 3 years – luster is lost, the reflection becomes cloudy, the body as if some sort of shroud, headlights and lights are worn out, there are stains in the cabin, dirt on the carpet and ingrained reagent from the roads. Concerning the appearance, the realization of all this comes when you get out of the car wash on a sunny day and look at a clean car and see something like this picture:
Sadness, sadness, longing… the car no longer looks as attractive as “then in the cabin”. What caused this to happen? It seems to have been washed, cared for, wiped with rags, cleaned from snow, why?! The answer is in the previous sentence, almost any contact with the body causes scratches, at first they are not noticeable, but they become more and more…and more, especially from snow brushes! The main problem is with car washes, 90% of all car washes nowadays are touch and go, then wipe them dry with an artificial leather, it’s not a very good idea to do that because there is a lot of static on the body when the car is already washed and they start to wipe it all with their rags. Ask to wash the car without touching it and not to wipe it, let it dry and see what happens.
For a right body wash you need to use a method of two-phase washing, when first the car is washed with non-contact foam and the basic dirt is washed away, then you use special shampoo for hand washing and wash with special sponges, causing minimal damage to paintwork in the form of scratches and making the body as clean as possible! Well and accordingly it is necessary to dilute the shampoos properly and use quality chemistry with a neutral Ph, but we have a little talk about something else, we can talk about the washing separately, if you are interested there is a great video from Nizhny Novgorod
So, after seeing the picture above, you start to think about how to fix it all and return the car to its former beauty and luster, and immediately remember about polishing, which, incidentally, was offered on your favorite car wash, and decide to appeal to the masters of their business. As a result, giving the car for polishing, after 5-8 hours you get a shiny car, but with probability the same 90% result will upset you after a couple of months or 5-10 washes, and the picture will change to something like this:
These are called holograms, which appear when you do not follow the technique of polishing, and when you turn the car they are simply filled with polish, which is subsequently washed away, and you again see your body in a slightly better condition than before polishing. After writing all this, you have several options: 1. Make a presale preparation and sell the car 2. Disappointed with polishing and drive as is 3. To address in a children’s center.
If you have chosen the third option, it makes sense to read on. We see a lot of reviews and comments saying that there is no difference between kids’ polishing and car polishing, so why pay more! Let’s try to explain. Since child labor became “fashionable” in our time, many are simply changing the label “polishing” at the plate “child labor, liquid glass, etc.” that is not quite true, because to do child labor, you need to understand how to do it, to have the necessary equipment and materials, know and comply with the technology polishing and protective coatings on the car body, have a suitable room (preferably not wet), and most importantly – DO THE WORK! All tend to make money on the liquid glass and ceramics, not really understanding how it works by the principle “just to sell. After visiting this kind of “retreating center” you will hardly get a good impression about the liquid glass or nano-ceramics, because all these compositions will not work properly on a badly prepared body, since they are only meant to improve and protect the work of a real retreader. The most important component in the exterior styling is a correct, professional polishing, after which various kinds of protective coatings are already applied, the correct polishing can take up to 3 days of hard physical work to achieve an excellent result that will last a long time. There is also no standard approach to polishing different cars, for each type of lacquer selected by the polishing system, which most effectively and gently do the job. Proper body polishing consists of several steps: 1. Cleaning of the paintwork from persistent dirt
