Avoid these OVERRATED detailing techniques: 5 tips to save you time | Podcast #83 #diydetail

the top five most overrated detailing techniques hi I'm Ivan I'm Nick this is DIY detail today we're going to go over top five we may even have a bonus one at the end stay tuned but top five methods or techniques that they've uh overstayed their welcome yeah we're talking about car wash methods we're talking about polishing methods even camma coating tips there's certain things that just take way too long out there we think our humble opinions that we've got better methods so we're going to say these are the most overrated methods out there and we're going to start with ceramic coating application right the crosshatch so the cross-hatching it's been done since ceramic coating started 25 years ago and it's a technique that works there's nothing wrong with it but it's wasting your time it's wasting coating it's causing high spots and it's hard on your body so let's break that down a little bit first of all what do I say wasting coating so the first thing it's wasting coating and the reason it's wasting coating is you're putting a lot on there and every time you stop that's a potential High spot now we favor the circular motion and no circular motions do not cause swirls uh we apply in about an 8 to 12 in circle when we're applying there's no 8 to 12 in circles on the car when we're done there's no swirls swirls are actually a collection of straight lines that because your light is in one point Point looks like a circle around them but if you to take a like a lightsaber just a very thin line over the top of it and you're reflecting that thin line You'll see it's all straight lines I don't see a lot of people out there criticizing the circular coding application for causing swirls although I'm sure that's something people might think out there I think the whole dogma of wash in straight lines is probably why people end up applying ceramic Coatings in these straight lines yeah but another thing and you know it takes a while for this to catch up to you is a lot of this actually is hard on your shoulder right I'm old I don't like to have a sore body so the ceramic coating applying in in circular motion is just easier on your body there's no stopping and starting there's just one continual Easy Motion and how do you recommend people do this because I know it's easier to learn in person like I did circles and then a while back you noticed that I was kind of doing small circles so you're like going bigger circles like well if I go in bigger circles am I going to be missing things as I cross it so how do you explain the circular motion how to do it right well if you look at what your polisher is doing so your polisher is going in a circular motion and you're moving it across the paint at a certain speed there's no misted areas you're getting everything and it's the same thing our applicator pad is roughly about 3 in in diameter 76 mm and we're doing about an 8 in circle so every time we do an 8 in circle we move forward about 2 in or about 50 mm meaning that we're overlapping every time so we're doing like the crosshatch we're overlapping but we're only doing it once and we're going in One Direction it's easy it's quick it's a lot more efficient that makes sense that makes sense and that just as a bonus tip is that the way we teach it is we apply yeah specifically outside of the lines and then we level outside of the lines of each panel right we're we're building that redundancy into our application yeah you know let your inner 2-year-old come out and color Outside the Lines it's that simple yeah it's that simple all right I wrote down our five plus a bonus stay tuned to the end for that uh it's it's a pretty good one I'm not going to promise the world no it's not our favorite it's not that we're saving the best to last but it's a pretty good one all right number two is applying pressure when polishing and I know there's lots of people out there who disagree with you so yeah let's talk about why adding pressure to your machine is an overrated technique a it's hard on you if it feels like you're working you're doing something wrong secondly it's very hard on the pads and if your pads start cupping if the the velcro is deformed that's a sign you're putting too much pressure on your pads they're they're actually paying for the pads right yeah they're paying you're paying for the pads so you're destroying pads willingly by putting pressure on exactly we're trying to protect your your purchases here make them last longer and the other thing is pressure was a good thing when we were working on lacquer paints we haven't had lacquer Paints in decades we're working on plastic that's what the clear coat is it's simply a form or a sheet of plastic that's over the car and when we apply heat to plastic it softens when we soften the plastic the abrasive instead of going across the surface and shearing or taking off a little bit of the paint which is what we're doing when we're polishing the abrasive now that it's got this sort of gooey plasticky stuff underneath it and we don't perceive it as gooey but on a microscopic level it actually is the abrasive is actually grabbing and rolling grabbing and rolling grabbing grabbing and rolling so it's not effective anymore and then by doing that it creates more friction creates more heat it just ex ex exactly exacerbates thank you the problem so what if I'm trying to remove a defect though don't I have to add pressure to make sure it goes away no just use the proper pad and the proper tool to remove that well what if I'm using the wool pad and our gold standard polish as our heater comes on on this cold Omaha evening yeah not sure when you'll be watching this could be summertime if it's summer of 2024 leave a comment down below I'll send you a free gift and that free gift is thanks for watching yeah exactly but no but no but what if I want to get a defect out and the gold standard polish at speed two uh with our wool pad isn't working so I'm going to go to speed five and I'm going to hammer down cuz that's going to give me the result right no you're actually going to slow down the cut the more pressure you apply the more heat you generate the slower the work will get done you have a feeling that you're accomplishing more it feels like you're doing doing more you're not what if you want more cut than it's giving you on speed two like what if you just can't get that scratch out then what do you tell folks I'm talking about the real world where you're using the method as we teach it and something's not going the way that it looked on the internet and I don't want you throw the baby out with the bath water and be like well that's not working Ian must be lying right cuz the next thing you're going to try if you're me I remember this is I better put more pressure on I better ramp the speed up on my machine and whether it was swelling the pain or whether it actually got it out it sometimes did work yeah sometimes it does but you also have to look at it another way do I really need to remove that defect and as detailers we see it as a defect the customer may not even know that it's there and in reality you're not removing the defect you're removing all the paint or all the clear coat around the defect down to the level of the defect so you're actually damaging the paint absolutely and it may be something that you're the only one in the world who sees it maybe it's your paint nobody else sees it shiny scratches are the goal right ex trying to teach preservation over Perfection so pressure is not your friend sometimes it may work sometimes it may swell the pain in the moment and it will it will reappear these scratches will later yeah um but we can give you a safe method to get shiny paint where you're not going to risk damaging your clear coat it's finite it's not going to last forever and if you abuse it and you remove too much of it it's gone and if you have that one deep scratch you can try the 555 method so there'll be a link down below about the 555 method with the 555 method it's a 21 mm or in our case a 25mm polisher wool pad a spray of the Polish and you're putting 5 lbs of pressure for 5 seconds on speed five we're going to get to some car washing techniques in just a second so don't think that we're getting too advanced on you here so stay stay with us but there's one more polishing technique that I almost forgot that I used to use yeah and it's swapping my pad after every panel because I wanted that perfect finish yeah exactly I wanted the perfect finish so I would do one panel I'd say I've been cleaning it with compressed air but it's been compromised it needs to go into the pile of pads that I will regret creating later when I have to clean these out with a pressure washer cleaning pads the old F like that is a that is so timec consuming so first of all three things he said there cleaning the pads with compressed air do you like breathing dust I don't and your pads really really don't like you when you're using compressed air because the little uh membranes that are between the cells when you use compressed air you're blowing them apart and you're actually destroying your pads they may still look fine but you're actually destroying your pads the other thing that he said is clean them with a pressure washer that's just as bad as compressed air so those are two of the things the third thing is ripping the pad off and that's the main thing when you're ripping the pad off especially if the pad is warm so you just finished polishing that pad is actually the foam is warm it's soft and it's at a danger point and you're ripping it off and if your velcro is good in your machine it takes a bit of force to rip that off and it's hot you're usually yeah you're damaging the pad you're damaging the velcro and before you know it your backing plate isn't holding the pads anymore that's one thing but the time that you're spending removing moving the pad getting another pad centering oh it's not quite centered let me put it back on and then polishing you do just that one section then you're starting over and every time you need to Prime the pad and you need to get it ready it takes less time to use your pad washer as you're going through the process and another video link below even if you don't have a pad washer we teach you how to clean your pad with without a pad washer and keep it damp a damp pad and I don't care what polish you're using try the Polish with a damp not wet a damp pad and you will see a big difference in the cut it's going to cut better because the pad is cooler it's going to cut easier because now the pad that moisture actually softens the pad and the pad is not wet when you spin the pad out at full speed on your machine you actually have less than one gram of water remaining in the pad and it balances the machine on a dual action machine it's actually really interesting it will spin the water out until it's perfectly balanced and then it stops spinning water up so it's a very interesting concept but once you try it once you understand that hey this is actually working and it's actually speeding you up because you're getting more cut from your pad therefore you're spending less time on the panel you're getting more life out of your pads uh in my shops we put a pad on a machine the only time it left that machine is when it was time to go in the garbage and that was 10 15 cars later I I was just reminded of of a former version of myself we had Luke from ceramic Coatings of Omaha or Omaha ceramic Coatings in do you remember which name is it Luke Hayward Luke Hayward but is ITA ceramic Coatings well this is his wife car he's over here I don't know when the video is going to come out where we ceramic coded his already Co car so that's an interesting question can I ceramic coat my co car yes and we demoed how to do it but a couple of things as we were chatting off camera reminded me of me Ivan is like he's like yeah I I have the pad washer but I never use it me yeah I bought the pad Watcher thought I'd use it went back to the compressed hair yeah and he was telling me how he swaps the pad out after every panel I'm like I used to do that yeah like in about 2 hours today I can't remember how long it took but we were walking talking filming everything we washed Deon water spot remover polished Ramic coded this thing and he was shocked that it could be done in a day my former self would have been shocked it could be done in a day it's so doable but it's not doable when you're doing all these things that you think the internet detailers tell you to do because it looks cool like use a pad washer don't swap out the pad it's an overrated me as simple as that as simple as that you really just need one pad yep per job one oh one pad for five or six jobs for that matter yeah but like maybe you're going to do a twep you could do one pad clean as you go and then you know Ro jeelan pad or yellow waffle for your second step all right so swap P every panel overrated pressure one polishing overrated cross-hatching when you apply Coatings overrated the two bucket method when washing so the two bucket method and I'll add a little bonus in this one as well but the two bucket method the traditional two bucket method is you take your pressure washer you wet the car down then you take your foam Cannon you foam the car then you take your two buckets one with just water in it one with the soap and then with that two bucket method you dip it in the soap you go over a panel you bring it back to the rinse bucket to take the grit off the the uh the wash media then you put it back in your soap soapy bucket you go back to the car takes a lot of time we use what we affectionally call the foam rinse foam method and that is first of all we don't hit it with a pressure washer while it's dirty that is actually a potential scratch risk you're taking 1,500 2,000 PSI to that little piece of dirt and moving it across the paint until eventually the water gets below it and dislodges it for some reason when you say pounds per square inch it seems to like drive that point home more too just thinking about like what's actually happening on the paint with that pressure washer if you haven't pre-treated the paint so to put it in context if you have a 1500 psi pressure washer that means in one square area or one square inch or 25 mm x 25 mm you have 1,500 lb in that square now the jet is a little bigger than that it's bigger than 1 square in so you're reducing it a little bit but still you're moving that dust and dirt ACR across the surface instead we foam it first let the incredible Suds do its thing start to emulsify the dirt get in there add some lubrication lift the dirt off the surface sort of a a pre preo as some people like to call it then you bring out your hose or pressure washer foam rinse foam if at that point you want yeah I I just fast forwarding here but if at that point you want to use two buckets you can it's up you right but now that we've foamed we've rinsed there's no more grit on the car there's traffic film you know there's a little few things there but not much then we do we remove the traffic film first and then it's what left is the grit I think that's the way you've described it in the past no we we're removing the grit what's left is the traffic film okay so the grit comes off first yeah so the the grit anything that can scratch your paint is now gone yes and it's been removed safely on that bed of Suds and every now we foam it then once it's foamed now we take our wash media out of the foamy wash bucket and wash it again and that's when we're doing our contact wash and the little bonus I talked about a lot of people do this you see it especially on the Instagram and places like that Tik Tok they'll foam the car so they're just foaming the car then they take that fancy Little Brush and go around the emblem go around the door handle and all that what are they doing to the grit that's on the paint with that brush yeah there's scratching around those areas ah you can't tell it's around the emblem right exactly good on the internet yeah exactly so if you foam rinse foam again then bring out your fancy little brushes yeah foam rinse foam or if you want to use rinses wash which many people say is the best Rines they've ever used it has exceptional cleaning power pre-spray Rines wash pressure wash it off pre-spray Rines wash again you'd be amazed how well that cleans yeah so or we could call it chemical rinse chemical I like foam rinse foam so you could foam rinse us as well I like foaming our Rines wash I think it's closer to a 32 to1 delution that you're really going to get good foam out of your you're going to get foam but now you're wasting product it's not economical but let's say you don't have Incredible S like I feel like foam today right if you feel like foam and you're a DIY and you just want to have fun do whatever you want Ivan knows how to teach the professional to be efficient but there's such a thing as just a love for foam just if you just want to have fun today and clean your car so right um that's when I recommend foaming the Rines is there a utility otherwise to me the rless no it's just for looks it's just for look yeah pretty much is but you know looks is a big deal in this world let's be honest with ourselves all right so we are now on to clay bar I mean a clay bar over or underrated what say you out there we think it's uh we think it's overrated right so clay bar still has its place very very small place in the detailing industry and that is heavy heavy overspray very heavily contaminated vehicles that you're not going to get it off with anything else that's its only place for regular maintenance for just doing a detail use a perforated synthetic decontamination towel it makes so much more sense first of all it lasts a lot longer secondly it costs so much less third it's more efficient you've got a much bigger surface area that you're working with you know and Clay bars if you drop the clay bar you're throwing it in the garbage you drop the perforated synthetic decontamination towel you put in your wash bucket keep going yeah you rinse that underwat put it in the wash bucket it'll last you hundreds of washes if you take care of it and we have plenty of videos on the PSD towel perforated synthetic decontamination towela find it as a fine grade clay towel on our website CU that's what people search for it as and you know we have SEO and we want to make sure people can find it so there's a link to that below actually a detailing 101 video on on what is it and how to use it but really it's just a it's a game changer I I have it in my bucket on every watch cuzz I like it for the windshield and the front bumper even if I'm not Decon the vehicle there may be some bug guts that I'm going after it's just a really easy way to do that yeah if uh if my wash process doesn't get to them exactly another myth that surrounds the clay towel is that it's going to scratch and Mar your paint and if you're not careful yes you can scratch and Mar your paint if you're careful and follow the way we teach to use it and with the chemicals we suggest to use with you're not going to scratch and Mar your paint so what are the key important principles when using our Decon towel to prevent Maring okay a proper lubrication and that lubrication we have five choices we have incredible Suds we have rless wash we have quick beads we have ceramic gloss and my favorite iron remover wow you had that in your head five different ways to lubricate yes almost as if you've thought about this or said it before oh yeah we've uh written it in the comments below many times which is great we love answering your questions by the way if you have questions please leave them below we always love answering them one common theme though here is built-in lubric lubrication lubrication it should be intertwined with common sense right so think about your your process no matter what situation comes up in detailing is do I have proper lubrication if I'm touching my paint with anything if it's a wash mint right we foam we rinse it off we foam again the wash mitts in my foamy wash bucket look at all that built-in risk mitigation on the front end and then lubrication with the with the foam and the foamy wash Suds uh on my mitt as I hit the paint so right that's just that's every time think where's my lubrication and scratch risk and use use that common sense as you detail right now the other part of this is the towel itself it's rather large we want you to fold it in four we tell you to fold it in four for a reason pressure points pressure points with anything you're using if you apply pressure even with a wash Mitt if you apply a lot of pressure on the wash B yeah you can scratch your paint and again it comes down to common sense but by folding the towel we reduce the amount of pressure points and the towel you don't take a dry towel you take the towel from your wash bucket when you start washing the car put in your wash bucket Let It soak let it absorb that beautiful lubrication and then when you're going to take it to your paint you fold it in four don't ring it out you want it nice and drippy put a spray of whatever you're using now we also when we wash the car with rinses with Incredible SS we don't rinse it off when we know we're going to be decontaminating it we leave that lubrication there and then if you want to just gloss up your paint and have fun you can use either quick beads or ceramic gloss if you want to truly deep decontaminate then sprayer of iron remover on your towel spray of iron remover on the panel marry the two up go from there no pressure whatsoever uh you know I think I've said this before might be a common theme in some of our videos but if it feels like you're working you're doing something wrong absolutely and it is so much work to use a clay bar now that I'm used to this Decon towel yeah it's like I don't even want to try it that way anymore because the towel is so easy and when you have lubrication it's easier and iron remover is going to be my first choice you know in terms of a good deep Decon but like for a maintenance watch let's say you've been taking care of your vehicle how often could I use ceramic gloss or quick beads as a lube for my Deon towel as often as you want exactly if you if you're in the mood to Decon your paint once a week it's fine you don't need it it's not going to degrade your wax or sealant it's not going to mess with your ceramic coating it's not going to Mar the paint up if you use proper lubrication so you can do it as often as you want there's no need to do it once a week no exactly obviously but if you let's say you're in Florida and you got love buds uh you want those off as soon as possible yeah so you could use the towel on your front bumper after every wash yeah exactly you can all right there's more to say there but I think we've about covered it all right here's our bonus one how do you apply tire shine out there what's the latest marketing gimmick that you've been sold is it some kind of hexagon foam pad is it a little applicator I mean what other options are there out there Ian a microfiber block there's all sorts of different things and my personal favorite and it's what we show in a lot of our videos is just to use a flag tip nylon brush we have a salt and pepper or black and white nylon brush that's a relatively stiff bristle but with a flag tip so it holds the tire lotion on there and it's extremely efficient with the product we'll start with three or four sprays on the brush and then every Tire after that you're just putting one spray on the brush and it's easy to control you can do those big knobby tires you can do the low profile tires you're not getting Tire dressing on the wheel you're just getting it on the tire it's just a nice easy way to do it it's simple it's efficient so those little blocks that are hard to hold on to or they're too small or they and they're going to be easy to lose like the beauty of the brush is you just get a nail in your garage a hook or something better than that you know but like you just has a place every every detail he just goes back on the wall yeah and you know some of those foam blocks tires now are not a smooth sidewall like we used to have there's all sorts of writing and little lines and pypes and all sorts of things that make it so that you're sitting there with that little foam applicator going working it in and trying to get into those lines where's the brush one pass and it's done absolutely well I just was listening to see if you had anything else to say no it's been a long day in the shop but we love talking about this stuff what are your overrated detailing techniques things that you've moved on from they don't have to be ours we're always learning just like we're always uh answering your comments so we'll have a discussion there and and maybe we'll learn something new yeah exactly and you know we release videos on a regular scheduled basis so when we do we always do it as a premier and that Premier allows us to chat with you live as the video is being premiered or being released so every time you see a Premier you know that you can come to the chat and say hi talk to us talk to other enthusiasts there's usually around 100 150 people there that are just spending time having fun together and talking detailing that's what it should be is fun exactly no more swapping pads every panel I remember those days and they're great I get it look I get it but saving time is a beautiful thing uh there's a lot of things out there that we could be doing detailing is a part of that but you know then there's like friends and family and kids and other life enriching experiences I just uh I don't miss the 40-hour paint correction jobs no and you know driving these things is almost as fun as cleaning them and they drive faster when they're clean so spend time doing that definitely you get better miles per gallon they drive faster more horsepower when a car is clean uh the DIY detail podcast is nearing 100 episodes if you want to check out some more of them we have a link to the full catalog right here

Channel: DIY Detail

Views: 93,743

Keywords: DIY Detail, Detailing car, Detailing, car care, Yvan Lacroix, Carwash, Foam, Rinseless wash, All Clean, Iron Remover, Incredible Suds, Ceramic coating, Clay towel, perforated synthetic decontamination towel, ceramic coating car, Nick Mcgurk, Ceramic Gloss, Quick Beads, Water Spot Remover, APC, training detailing, ceramic coating, keg sprayer, detail keg, pressure washer, kranzle, waterless wash, tree sap remover, paint decontamination, paint correction, how to detail a car

Id: r5pJW6SjSdQ

Length: 24min 59sec (1499 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 09 2024