(rock music)
- Hey everybody,
thanks so much for joining us,
for another episode of Nooners with Nick.
Now here in the detail garage,
we always go over how-to's
and the right way to properly detail your vehicle,
but today we're taking a step back
and going over the don'ts of detailing.
And to help me do that,
I have my good friend Joseph,
you've seen him here at our store,
Detail Garage,
Los Angeles.
And he's one of our very educated detailers,
as well as one of our on-camera personalities.
So today we're gonna go over the don'ts of detailing,
right?
- Let's do it Nick.
- Let's jump right into it.
What's some of the don'ts that you see,
that come into the detail garage a lot.
Very often questions you get,
or things you just see on the day-to-day basis.
- So,
one of the main things we always get asked is,
"Hey, can I use the same wash mitt for my wheels,
as on the body?"
- [Joseph] And I'm not a fan of that at all,
because you're gonna pick up all those little remnants,
all that nasty contamination,
smeared it all over that body of the vehicle
and that can cause for some problems.
- [Nick] Right.
- [Joseph] That's a don't.
- [Nick] Break dust is very abrasive.
- [Joseph] Yeah.
- And it scratches the paint very easily
and it scratches your wheels also,
so you need the proper detailing brushes,
or dedicated mitt just for your wheels,
right?
- That's true. Yeah.
- Another thing that I see a lot
is people using towels with tags on them.
That, as a detailer,
that's like really cringe worthy, right?
- That is.
- I didn't like using the word cringe,
but it's just like, seeing a towel with a tag
as people are wiping their car.
Towels with tags will scratch no matter what
because the paper is
- That is true.
- Even though it seem like it's not very abrasive
it actually has the ability to scratch
even the hardest paints,
so even before you start detailing
remove the tag that way you're not inducing
any kind of imperfection.
- Remove the tags. That's right. Yeah, definitely.
- Grip it.
- Grip it before you slip it. Right?
[Snaps Fingers]
- All right. The other thing is,
hey, if you drop the clay just throw it away.
I get asked all the time,
hey, if I drop it real quick, ya know,
like that ten second, what was it?
The three second rule?
- It depends on who you're with.
- Yeah, so like, you're going to drop it down
a little bit, and then, yeah, just toss it.
It's really not, it's not going to break the bank
for you to come and buy a little bit more clay.
- That's right. That's why we recommend
using a small piece of the clay bar
because if you drop it you don't have to throw
the entire bar away because that will get
very expensive very quickly and we know it's very difficult
to hold the clay bar because we've dropped it before.
No one is born knowing how to detail
so things happen, mistakes happen,
but it's like a piece of gum so if you drop it
you got to throw it away.
- And three fingers usually works out perfect for me.
That's usually, I put it right about there.
About a silver dollar, so that's going to work out.
The other thing.
- You worded that pretty well.
- Yeah, thank you, man. Definitely.
So always ready.
The other things is that if you
if you drop the towel too, like that's another thing.
- Oh, yeah.
- Not just with clay, but if you drop the towel.
I see that all the time at some of these car washes.
You'll see a guy drop it down real quick
and then grab it and just start wiping it all off.
Always bad.
- Exactly. Same thing as the contamination.
You're bringing it from the floor back to the paint.
That's, you know, going to scratch no matter what.
- Yeah, yeah.
- Something going along with scratches,
is we've all seen people who do it.
Maybe some of you guys do it yourself
when you're taking that perfect picture
with your favorite product, you put the bottle
directly on the paint and/or you'll video tape
it sliding off the paint.
If you didn't know, that can scratch the paint as well
because you put the bottle on the ground,
you put it on the shelf, and it collects dirt
on the bottom of it.
You put it on the vehicle and now it's just
and abrasive disk sliding off of your paint.
I'm sure you have all seen videos of some dummy doing it.
But just as a pro tip, don't do it, right?
- Don't do it. That's a real bad one.
I'm glad that you brought that up
because I'm seeing a lot of videos like that now,
and they act like it's a real good thing to do,
but it's not.
Another thing that's not good to do
is the circular motion.
We get asked that a lot of times,
you know, especially for the older folks that are out there.
We saw the videos, right? Back in the day.
Karate Kid, you would see wax on, wax off.
And a circular motion is something
you definitely want to go ahead and stay away from.
So that's a key thing.
We teach that in all of our videos,
classes, all that good stuff.
- And the reason being because if you pick up again
like any kind of contamination, anything that's abrasive
it creates a swirl, which is difficult to polish out.
It's very noticeable, and although when you look
at a vehicle that has swirls you see a lot of
straight line scratches just because of the light
that refracts or reflects against the scratches.
It gives it that swirling effect,
but if you actually swirl the paint
it's very difficult to polish out,
so avoid doing circular motions.
Anything else?
- You know, for me speaking about swirls
and stuff like that, the other thing is
a lot of people ask us about shammies.
You know, and shammies has been around for
a very, very, very long time.
For us, we do prefer going with a Wooly Mammoth.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
And that's going to really absorb.
Whenever you got a lot of suction
like that, whenever you put down a shammie
you're just literally dragging against the car,
and if there's any type of remnants or anything like that
on there, you know, so that's another thing.
For me I kind of stay away from that.
- A shammy is like a piece of skin,
if you think about it in that sense
it's very, there's nowhere for it to go
if you're picking up water or anything like that.
At least with the microfiber
you have the fibers that will absorb
water or particles or anything like that,
but a shammy it's just basically dragging the water.
- Old shammies were actually skin.
- Yeah.
- Real skin, so yeah, that's pretty cool.
- What kind of skin?
- It all depends on what type of big animals
out there, right?
[Laughs]
- All right, yeah.
- Look it up, people. It's real.
- That's right. True. True story.
- Also, polishing. Polishing people,
not a lot of people have patience to polish
with a machine, I know by hand it takes a very long time.
By machine it saves you time and effort
but there are still people who will rush the jobs
and when they take their vehicle outside
they see marring or holograms
because you're not giving the machine
the proper time to break down.
You want to slow your whole process down
and move about an inch or so per second
when you're using a duel action polisher.
And covering 50% of your last pass
making sure that you diminish the polish that you're using
this way you're not leaving any kind of pig tails
or, again, that hologramming effect.
- That's true.
- Yeah.
- Well put, Nick. I like that.
- Wiping your vehicle while still dirty
with your bare hands or just using
a dry towel, even a duster that scratches your vehicle
beyond all belief, right?
- That is true.
Yeah, big time. Not only that,
but like just don't be that guy,
like, you know, you go up to somebody's car,
you see it's a beautiful paint job,
but then you also notice that
there's a little layer of dust,
and what do you do?
You literally just do those,
now it's two fingers, a lot of times.
We brought up three fingers earlier.
People take the two fingers
and do that. Look at that!
And it's like, dude, that's just all bad.
- Even on a clean car though, you know,
people will want to see how smooth your paint is
because it looks like a mirror, or whatever,
and then they drag their fingers across it,
and the next thing you know
you have those two hideous little scratches,
so avoid touching your car at all cost
because that is the only way to
make your polishing job last,
and your coatings last
because your not touching the car, right?
- Sure.
- Whenever you touch the car, no matter what
it will scratch.
- Yes. Unless if you lube it up,
so like if you were to, like if there was some
like dust on there, and if you did have a quick detail
spray, then you preheat that and lubricant on there
and that's always important.
Don't ever go in dry.
- Yeah.
(giggles)
What else you got, Nick? All right. We got it.
- And lastly, using a dish soap as a car wash soap.
Now why don't we want to do that, Joseph?
- It's horrible stuff to end up using.
It's made for dishes. It's not made for your...
(laughs)
- Essentially, it's a degreaser, right?
So it's going to remove anything that's on the paint.
Maybe you're trying to stip your vehicle
of sealants, waxes, coatings, whatever it is,
but don't use it as a routine wash
because eventually that can start staining your paint
or it gives your vehicle a very dull look.
So that's why you want to have a dedicated soap
such as, you know, Mr. Pink.
- Yeah.
- One of your favorite soaps,
just so that you're not damaging your vehicle
because, again, detailing is a process of making a car
look it's best, so hurting it or harming it
with some kind of dish soap
is not the idea that you want to be doing.
- And if you do want to get rid of those like, ya know,
let's say, contamination or waxes or something that on there
we have clean slates, stuff like that to go ahead and use.
- A dedicated soap that's meant to remove
anything that's on the vehicle
rather than, you know, buying some cheap knock-off
or something that will harm your vehicle.
- Yeah. No, for sure. Yeah, definitely.
- Now there are many more different detailing don'ts,
but as for today we're going to finish off
with one of our pet peeves, and that is people
looking for a really glossy interior,
especially on the dash using...
- Oil-based. Oil-based. That greasiness,
that which you will see on there
it attracts dust. I mean, I don't know about you,
but I love driving with my windows down.
Sometimes if you have a convertible
or whatever, top down, just like you've seen it before.
They pull up, and, oh, my inside looks great.
Dude, that greasiness is not a good look, right?
- Also, when you're using it on the dash
you have the sun reflecting off that
becomes a glare, potentially a hazard,
so using a water-based or, like myself,
I like a very mat sheen, where I use something like
Natural Shine, or interclean by itself,
this will prevent you having that
glossy/sticky finish, and it also makes your car
look it's best.
- Yeah, the stickiness is never good, right?
- It's never good.
- When something just, yeah, no stick.
- Thanks for that.
- You got it.
- Alrighty, guys, thanks so much for hanging out with us
here in the detail garage.
If you liked today's video, or want to see more videos
like it, or if you just like pressing the buttons
be sure to give it a thumbs up.
Drop your comments down below
and future videos you want to see,
and if you haven't already, check-out Joseph
at Detail Garage, Los Angeles.
He'll help you out, have some laughs,
and as always, we'll see you guys next time
right here with Nooners with Nick.
(hits table)
- Okay, you want me to talk. Is this on?
Everybody's gone?
So, I'll tell you about my don'ts, all right?
Don't ever fall so in love with your car
that you just find yourself at two in the morning
in just a silk rob, nothing else on,
you walk down to the car, you open it up,
you just sit there and you puff a little gum cigarette,
you know, not a real cigarette,
because real smoking is bad for you,
so I just sit there and I...
(inhales)
Puff it, listening to smooth jazz.
Probably Kenny G. Very low. Volume three.
And I just lay back and I have my Martinelli's in one hand,
my little gum cigarette in the other,
and I'm just thinking about life,
thinking about that wax that I just put on the day before
that glistening, dripping wet filthiness that I have,
and I just caress the leather seat
with my right hand again because I did drop
that glass of Martinelli on the carpet,
but I have Lightning Fast to clean it up,
and I just think to myself, God, the passion.
That's what it's always about,
the experience here at the detail garage.
All right, see you guys soon!
Hopefully this made it, Nick.
Hey, hey there! Oooo! I like that.
All right.
(twangy music)