ardandy

Yeah, spend thousands on a car and never look after it properly. Never get that! That BMW is worth about £400-£500 more than the state it came in as, so not that expensive when you look at it! (The guys selling it, which is why he wanted it doing)

No, exterior only. The arches and wheels took me about an hour alone. Do I always get the arches as clean as possible even though you hardly see most of them? No, normally it would be a quick scrub and degrease but thats what he wanted so thats we got. I try not to have a 'stage 1' this and a 'stage 2' that as each car and owner is different and so the time spent on them will be different.

Your not paying £80 minimum, you can have anything done you want. Let's not forget it wasn't just a clean and wax, it included claying the whole car which all takes time. Do you really think we'd work for £5 an hour?

Take them off usually. But thats extra! :)

Sites not live yet unfortunately. The price depends on the state of the car and what the customer wants. If I did the exact same job on another 3 series that had being sat under a tree soaking up sap for a few months then that would cost slightly more as more work is involved. The prices on my site will be a guide, can only give a proper quote (for more complicated jobs anyway) by seeing the car.

£80 inc the claying for a 3 series size car.

Came with the car if I remember what he told me.

:roll:

This is the first car I've done since actually having a name - Executive Detailing. Not a full de-swirl un-fortunately, just a full wash and wax was all the customer wanted. Started off with the wheels and the wheel arches, both of which were particularly dirty. The wheels had about 8 weeks of brake dust and the arches I don't think have ever being done! :eek: Spent about an hour doing those using AG Engine & Machine Cleaner. Had to almost scoop the muck out of the underside of the wheel arches which just plopped out onto the floor. Nearly had a garden on my drive when I'd done! From there I went on to do the door and boot shuts, as well as the the front of the engine bay. Once again I used AG Engine & Mach cleaner followed by some hyper wash using a couple of MF's. Rinsed the car down with the Power Wash, and then give it a good wipe down with some APC, followed by some TFR and Tar Remover on some stubborn spots. After rinsing the car down again I followed up with some Megs ClayBar, using a mixture of some QD and water as a lube. Unfortunately the pic I took of the Clay is a bit blurred but you can make out some contaminents.The pic is of just one squarefoot of the boot. After the claying I washed it down again and gave it a good rinse. Using the QD again (would normallly use Last Touch) and drying towels, I dried off the car, making sure all the water traps were waterless by using compressed air in a can. By this point the car was dry and the paint work really smooth, even though there was no wax left on the paint. The car was ready to be waxed and the customer only wanted a single application, partly due to him selling it and wanting to keep costs down. So I decided to use AG SRP and started to apply it all over the super smooth silver BMW. Went round the whole car putting it on and then wiped it off using Pakshak MF's (none left now :( ) Finally I cleaned the glass using Fast Glass and dressed the rubber and plastic trim. I also had to go around the car again using QD due to some overactive 4 year olds and water pistols! :mad: Thanks for reading, even if it is really long and probably boring compared to a full de-swirl! :) Here's some pics, unfortunately my missus only turned up with the batteries for the camera near the end so no before pics. :mad: The sun also decided not to come out so no sunny pics either! My drive had just being thouroughly cleaned and blasted before this. This is how it looks the day after! :eek:

I spend ages cleaning the car (and others now!) because I enjoy it! Bit of satisfaction at the end of it all, unlike my current job when people only talk to you if something isn't working! :x

That, or a minty VR6? Hmm!

Thinking of getting some of this http://www.cleanandshiny.co.uk/ProductD ... ctID=10012 What do you think! :)

Getting a lot of this from http://www.cleanandshiny.co.uk

The Porter Cable £135 I'm getting for my b-day in a few weeks! :)

Yep - the fecking import duty they'll sting you for if you're ordering it from the states (judging by some of the prices in dollars, I guess you are?) :( Bloody robbing taxman :( Apparently from these people who I'm getting it from with the voucher code I'm using its pretty rare but is possible! :x

Theres a few other things too. £150 - Paint Depth Gauge £450 - 6m x 3m Canopy with sides But yeah, as far as business's go not bad! People have to come to me though.

Just about to put a mega order in! Am I missing anything? Porter Cable with Sonus SFX Polisher Kit - $199.99 (3 pads) Sonus SFX-1 Swirl and Scratch Remover Pad - $11.99 Sonus SFX-2 Paint Polishing Pad - $10.99 Sonus SFX-3 Final Finish & Wax Pad - $10.99 (Total in Pounds - £135ish) Meguiars Lambs Wool Wash Mitt - £9.99 3x 3M 3434 Blue High Performance Tape 25mm x 50m - £8.40 Sonus Der Wunder Drying Towel - 2 Pack - £18.25 Meguiars Hyper Wash - £22.38 Meguiars Quik Clay Detailing System - £11.99 Meguiars #80 Speed Glaze - £14.04 Meguiars #83 Dual Action Cleaner/Polish - £18.10 Meguiars #26 Hi-Tech Yellow Liquid Wax - £11.38 Sonus Blue Perl Microfiber Applicator Pads 2 Pack - £7.90 Power Convertor - £35 Rough Total £293 :shock: :shock: :shock:

Yes, just no spare wheel. What I meant was if you have no repeaters, they dont have to work, like if you have a spare wheel it has to be legal even though it's not illegal to not have one. I always assumed side repeaters were mandatory.

So its like a spare wheel? If its there etc?

How'd you get round the side repeaters at MOT time?

Autoglym's not a bad product, quite good infact. Could try at http://www.detailingworld.co.uk I've learnt huuuge amounts just from that forum alone, even jedi-knights on there. Someone on there will have an answer.

Sorry, no insult intended. It's just anything from halfords is usually not the best for the job. Sorry but I'm use to talking to people who spend £££'s on new lights but baulk at paying £100 on getting their paintwork done properly, guess its almost a habbit now. :(

How do you get around the legality of not having side repeaters? Assuming I haven't missed them!

Get it done properly, I'm cringing at what your about to do to your paint! I'd at least get a paint gauge test done to make sure you've enough paint on your car! I could probably recommend someone in your area?

A full de-swirl WILL BE between £120 & £160, depending on how badly swirled it is. Probably charge a little less for the first official few! :wink: For that it'll take on average 6-8 hours & probably cost me about £30 in products. (not including wear & tear etc) I'm just about to order several hundred pounds of stuff so I can finally start doing cars at my house. Also getting the Porter Cable from America for my birthday so hopefully by October I can start doing cars here.