What is Detailing?

Today, there are different methods for maintaining or cleaning your vehicle. The roller in the car wash leaves micro-scratches; the karcher cleaning in the car wash does not clean thoroughly and leaves traces. Washing at home with products that are often cheap and bought in car centers which, if not properly used, can cause micro-scratches or even scratches and not live up to your expectations, so money spent for nothing! The best method to maintain or renovate your car is detailing. This discipline, which is widespread in England and the United States, is practiced by professionals. It is divided into several essential steps, with professional equipment and products carefully selected in advance. A true Detailer respects the methodology, the steps and opts for top-of-the-range equipment and products.

Detailing, the definition

Detailing is a term from England that could be translated as "automotive cosmetics". Detailing is a complete process broken down into several steps to wash, renovate and protect a vehicle, whether it is for a €20,000 or €200,000 vehicle. Unlike a traditional car wash, detailing gives your vehicle a new look or even better! It requires several hours of work from simple maintenance to complete interior and exterior renovation. The Detailer who carries out these interventions must be attentive to his client, in order to understand his wishes. Today, we have a multitude of products and tools at our disposal that allow us to carry out localized repairs or more generally to carry out exterior and interior aesthetic repairs. We can work on a bodywork element as well as on a leather element, a carbon part, or a chrome element... The main stages of detailing can be broken down as follows:

• Pre-washing,
• washing,
• decontamination,
• polishing/correction,
• polishing,
• Protection and finishing.

Unfortunately, this term of detailing is nowadays degraded and is not respected at its true value. A real Detailer or renovation center uses professional equipment, adapted premises, and suitable products and respects the steps and working method.

Why detailing?

This renovation process allows us to obtain striking results, even for the most demanding customers. The advantages related to its services are numerous:

• Protect your vehicle from the moment it is purchased, in order to withstand the vagaries of time
• Keep your vehicle in new condition for several years
• Stand out and benefit from significant added value during the sale
• Restore a collector's vehicle by removing its defects
• Facilitate its maintenance without causing new defects
• Correct a set of defects such as micro-scratches, more or less deep scratches, orange peel, holograms, etc....

Avoid repainting elements, depending on the extent of the defects, in order to avoid paint or varnish splashes, color defects or incorrect application, such as "orange peel".

The different steps of a detailing

First, you have to make a statement, make the condition of the vehicle. Indeed, depending on the condition of your vehicle, new or used, scratched, micro-scratched or not, you have the choice between different restoration options and options. However, each step must be respected and follow a logical order. The washing is a crucial step. It is divided into two phases, pre-washing and then washing. We use a high-pressure cleaner to which we connect a super-spray or foam lance. These allow creating thick and dense foam that fits on the bodywork. By acting and gradually falling back, it softens and removes dirt. Before or after this step, we use various more or less aggressive products to facilitate the cleaning of wheel wells and rims, such as an APC multi-purpose cleaner and a ferrous decontaminant. The vehicle is then rinsed and more than 50% of its contaminants are removed. Thanks to two special shampoo impregnated gloves (the shampoo is pre-selected according to the condition of the vehicle), we use the two bucket technique. A specific glove is dedicated to the lower parts, often the dirtiest, and another for the upper parts. In parallel, we work with brushes adapted for wheel wells, rims, tires... But also with special brushes to clean the smallest surfaces such as emblems, grids, seals, etc... The vehicle is then rinsed and dried using custom-made microfibers. Water is flushed out of the smallest spaces with a compressor or hot air blower.