I took my baby to get washed and waxed at a "detail shop". Man these guys are idiots. I was sitting waiting and I seen these bastards drying me truck with some regular bath towels. I got pissed off at this dude and told him I thought they would at least use a chamoise or something. I told him to forget about the wax and to just finish off the wheels and tires.
They did a pisspoor job cleaning my truck. Left lint on my baby. I only went there cause I went to get an oil changr at the dealer and the guy there recommended the place. I wanted to take some pics of my truck after it got waxed to post them on this site. Now I'm gonna have to wait.
Anyone know about a real good detail shop in Houston I can go get my truck washed buffed and waxed????? The dumbasses left real light swirls in the paint.

 

Maybe you should research before you get your panties bunched up too much...

100% cotton made in usa bath towels are great to dry your vehicle with, reason being is they offer a space or buffer between your clearcoat and the towel and it wont accidently scrath the paint if it picked up something. A chamois can trap dirt or particles and you could scrath your clearcoat. I personally finish off with a microfiber towel to get rid of the lint and clear up any spots the larger towel missed.How is that possible if they didnt wax it? The dealer most likely did it when they detailed it. (thats what i had to do.)

Why dont you just do it yourself if your so "picky" ?

And the satisfaction of doing something yourself... (my truck)

 

Better than the last time I went to have mine washed. They put the keys on the windshield wiper blade to dry the truck, and when they went to lift the blade to clean the windshield, the keys slid down, and into the hole in the cowling, and right into the inside of the fender. Yep, the INSIDE on the fender. Had to rip apart a piece of the wheelwell plastic liner just to get the keys out. Needless to say, no tip.


NOTE TO ALL, GET SOMETHING TO BLOCK THAT HOLE!!!!

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by asinatra
[B]

Why dont you just do it yourself if your so "picky" ?

And the satisfaction of doing something yourself... (my truck)

If you really need to know why I dont do it myself homie, I work alot of OT. I just dont want to spend a long time washing my truck solo when I can get it done somewhere professionally. I guess I didn't spend a whole bunch of time on the net researching this kinda stuff like you might have. If I can afford to get it done proffesionally, I'd like to. And I expect for them to do a good job because thats there business. My whole point is that they did a phuc** up job on my truck. You know, asinatra, there sre some people that want to pay to get there vehicles washed. So just chill out.

 

i agree with him, though i do somewhat have the time to spend 2 hours washing, cleaning interior and waxing my truck, some people do not have that luxury..... im so picky about my vhichles and how they are cleaned and managed, which is why i do it myself, atleast hes picky enough and takes good care of his truck that he wants to have someone clean it for him and do it RIGHT.

find other detail shops and try them out, keep looking until you find that special one
nanner for you my friend

what the hell, nanner for everyone

 

I'm chilled out, just my steam starts bubling when someone complains about something they dont know about. And i am not a "homie"

 

I would have to go with asinatra on this one, worked for a detailing shope a few years ago and we used 100% cotton, and the lint that you had on your truck would have been taken off by the wax job they would of done right after they washed it. My 2 cents.

I agree that it is nice to have someone do it for you, and yes that is what I do now too, and I am pretty picky when I get it done considering I spend about 125 to get a good job done.

Anyways, sorry to hear that your truck is dirty.

 

Do you earn as much in your OT as you pay for the detail? If you make $50/hr in OT and they charge you $100 for something you could do in less thantwo hours, you should consider doing it yourself. Oportunity cost.

If a customer gets upset with how a profesiional is doing their job, I would not expect it to be treated well. They have their expertise, and you have yours. You clearly do not know detailing (no one uses chamios any more), so let them do their job, as long as you are paying them. You now have the work in progress, left partly done. They didn't polish it and remove the swirls which is what they do after they wash. Either learn the process, or let the professionals do their job.

BTW, this has nothing to do with 2004 F-150. Check out the General Care forums that has a lot of detailing information, or your local chapter if you want more specific people to recommend a detailing shop.

 

Gosh here we go again, It's just a Truck guy's. Wash it when it's dirty, wax it when it requires wax. Some of you are so **** about this Truck I wonder do you sleep in it/with it also. I had mine covered in mud the other day from working with it, I hosed it off, washed it, took some towels from the house and dryed it, job was completed. I didn't really worry anymore about it... Now I would like some additional horsepower to be able to throw that mud a little higher in the air.

 

I would agree that there are some real detailing idiots out there. I took my truck back to dealer shortly after I bought it to have a few small "scuffs" polished out of the fender flares, and one small scratch on the fender. To make a long story short, I had to remove the remaining scuff marks from the fender flares with wax when I got home, and I still haven't gotten the scratches out of the paint on the fender where they used some gritty rubbing compound.

Of course I had to special scheudle this appt. because they brought in their "special detailing dude" to do this.

Moral of the story - want it done right, do it yourself.

 

I get it, but the way those guys were drying it didn't look right to me. It looked as if they were trying to scrub mud off or something. Anyways, I guess I would have been alright if they were using those waffle towels or microfiber towels you guys talk about on this site. I guess I was wrong 'bout them making those light swirls but it just didn't look right. And they used a long brush to scrub the roof of the truck.

 

Whatever man. If I take it to the detail shop I'd just want to get it washed, buffed and waxed. No shampooing, leather cleaning or any of that extra fancy stuff. I doubt it would cost me over $100. And for your info I can afford it. Its not like I'd be doing this every week. Like I said before, I dont want to take the time and do it myself for whatever reason. And about posting this here. My bad if it pisses you off but I was talking about my 04 F150. But whatever man. I dont know why some of you dudes gotta be so rude man. Iwas just asking if someone could recommend a good detail shop.

 

Dude, take a pill!!! The other guys here are trying to get a point across - you didn't let them do their job because it "didn't look right" to you. WTF?! And they are right - those terry cloth towels didn't put any swirl marks in your paint. That giant brush is a soft-bristle tool that short people use... you would have bitched if they climbed in the bed to clean the roof, wouldn't you? "Hey man, your getting shoe prints in my bed!! I'm taking my biznaz elsewhere!!!"

Go open a phone book, find some places and take a look at them. If they look good, drop off your truck and let them do their friggen job. If you get the truck back after ALL the work is complete and it looks like crap, then bitch. Also, talk to the guys and set your expectations.... if you want the swirls polished out, make sure you PAY for it and they know you want them gone. Buyer beware, detail shops aren't mind readers.

 

I bought some Zaino Bros products a couple of years ago to use on my car. They recommended 100% cottom white towels for drying your car. That's what I've always used. Recently I did by this light blue microfiber car-drying towel at Wal-Mart for $6.00 though, and it works like a champ. When I have my cars washed by someone, usually following an oil change, I expect it to look decent and not sustain any damage. When I want my cars waxed and polished to a mirror finish, I pull out the Zaino Bros and do it myself.

 

Okay...

First and foremost, high-quality 100% combed cotton towels are FINE for your finish. Meguiar's, in fact, recommends utilizing a nice terry towel in many of their training videos as well as in their in-house training (which I've attended). Further, as a detailer, I can tell you that my personal preference is a nice cotton towel over a chamois. You see, a cotton towel will provide more of a nap so that any grit/road grime can be sucked into the fiber of the towel. A chamois has no such nap (or very very little) and thus, if you were to pick up a grain of sand on the chamois, you're going to drag it around all over your paint and ultimately cause some big problems. Been there, done that, threw away all my chamois.

Moving forward. Someone made a comment about no swirls because they didn't wax it. Again, this is a misconception. The simple act of rubbing your finger across a painted surface can, and in fact will, marr or swirl your finish. Try this sometime; douse your hand in gasoline and allow it to dry off. Ultimately, you're going to have VERY rough skin because of the volatiles contained in the gasoline stripping away necessary moisture. Rub that same hand across your perfect paint. You *WILL* almost always scratch or marr a modern day painted surface. It's the nature of the beast. In fact, a simple action of dragging a towel across a painted surface will cause some marring no matter how hard you try. This included high-quality microfiber towels as well. It's a necessary evil.

Lint on your vehicle. Almost all towels (including most very high-quality microfiber towels) will leave a very small amount of lint behind. Most are pretty good however; there are oodles on the market that are lower quality and will leave it behind. This is why it's almost always necessary for a good detail person to go back, as a very last step, and utilize a detailer product such as Meguiar's Quick Detailer or Meguiar's Last Touch (formerly known as Final Detail). This product will help to remove the lint and allow it to stick to the microfiber towel that you're using to remove it in the first place. There is no perfect towel or product to prevent this but, this very last step (which typically takes no more than 10 minutes top to bottom) is critical to really make the vehicle 'pop' and give a professional and quality detail in my opinion.

Good luck finding someone to detail your truck. I'm available and cheap but, it's a long drive up to Kentucky.

RP