Detailed my B13 (kinda long)
I detailed my SE-R today and I can't speak for everyone else but after 10 straight hours of cleaning, dressing, waxing, buffing oh and drinking....I step back and gaze at the fruits of my labor I think to myself...I don't care about those over priced technologically advanced pieces of shit out on the road, this is an SE-R and it captures the essance of what being a car enthusiast is all about. This is the best forum IMO it's my Facebook....
Here is how I would detail my car, or any other car for that matter. I would do this up as a "how to" but CONWRATH beat me to it and did an incredible job by the way....
I APOLOGIZE FOR THE LACK OF PHOTOS BUT THIS IS WHAT I DO EVERY TIME I DETAIL MY CAR SO IT'S MORE SECOND NATURE TO ME SO I JUST GET INTO A ZONE AND HAVENT PHOTOGRAPHED THE WHOLE DETAILING PROCESS BUT I WILL IF YOU UGYS WANT ME TOO
1. It is imperative to determine if the weather is going to foil your plans to achieve an extreme detail. In this case, it was 70 degrees, low humidity with a slight breeze, perfect weather conditions if you ask me.
2. Get clearance from the wife because I would be outside literally the entire day and for some women that don't fly over so good...(you married guys might get a laugh out of that)
3. I prefer to work from the inside out. Common sense tells me if you wash the car from the outside first, you tend to track water and contaminants to the inside as you work and that defeats the purpose.
4. The job cannot begin without "mood" music, in this case I chose "Rush" the Moving Pictures CD and placed the entire album on repeat....
5. Cooler is full of cold beer, now we can begin.....
6. Beginning with interior, remove the floor mats, all trash, debris and misc crap that does not belong....
7. Depending on how long it's been since I have thoroughly shampooed my carpet, I would remove the seats because they are easy to remove and much easier to detail the rest of the interior so in this case the seats came out....
8. Since I keep all my interior console trim pieces relatively clean, I will not remove the trim but if they are caked with nasty soda,food,snot and vomit, yeah take em out and drench them in a mild degreasing solution....(for the record I speak of other vehicles being like that, not mine) as a detailer I've seen it all over the past 18 years.
9. So, once on the inside, I start from the top down, headliner first, gently brush and vacuum, work my way down the windows and trim to the front and rear console, vents, cracks, crevices, creases, glove box just going over with a gentle brush follow by a vacuum as to remove all dust and debris...
10. The carpet gets a preliminary vacuum but will be the last thing I shampoo and vacuum, once the interior is complete, there is no going back inside until all is dry.
11. Using my applicator pad and trim and plastic dressing I coat all plastic trim except the steering wheel and pedals to achieve that clean shiny clean that has people saying "wow" when they get in....
12. Using my "windshield buddy" laugh but it works...I clean each window two times over, ultimate test for smudges is the sunlight, the sunlight will reveal all you have missed.
13. At this time I will vacuum, pretreat, scrub and shampoo the floor mats, once rinsed off they hang in the sunlight for the rest of the day so they are dry by the time I am done.
14. Hit the seats with a vacuum and mild shampoo scrub, again sit them in the sun until they are dry.
15. Once complete on the interior and this includes vacuuming, the trunk and spare tire area, don't forget to shine that spare tire...the trunk jambs, door jambs get a coat of wax and the rubber trim get dressed so as to try to keep them from drying out, but as well all know, that's a difficult task unless you replace them. Don't forget to hit the door hinges and moving mechanical parts with a shot of grease just to keep em lubed up.
16. OK, so I think we are ready for the exterior....I usually start from the front left and conduct a complete 360 around the entire vehicle. Again, I must stress, I do one quarter panel at a time. this includes a claybar, cleaner wax, polish wax and carnauba wax and final machine buff, basically a five stage process not including hand drying the claybar solution or hand buffing with a microfiber towel. I take about 45 minutes or so per quarter panel....
17. I repeat step 16 all the way around the car.
18. Now, as far as the hood and roof are concerned, I break the surface area up into 4 sections with painters tape and once complete I blend the areas where the tape was. There is nothing worse then racing against time while wax is drying so do it in small sections and life is alot easier. The rear trunk area I will usually do in two sections, it's less surface area.
19. I treat the front and rear with plastic polish, regular wax doesn't do what it needs to do on plastic as it would on painted sheet metal....
20. usually about now I treat the glass, headlights, foglights and mirrors with glass cleaner, wax and rain-x....it may seem extreme but when your caught in a down pour where your wipers dont wipe the water away fast enough you will thank me....I don't know if you guys use rain x at all but it is the next best thing to breasts and beer
21. So, pretty buzzed at this point, but, non the less....I will put the vehicle up on 4 jackstands, this allows me to clean the inside of the wheels and rotating them in the process....it also allows me to clean the inside tire walls and dress the rubber....
22. Same process for the outside of the wheels...in some cases if the wheel wells are really bad I will remove all the wheels and clean them off the vehicle.....this allows me easy access to the wheel wells, calipers and internals of the steering assemblies....
23. Once the wheels are done and I have removed any remaining tape, I treat the left over exterior trim pieces as well as compounding and cleaning the muffler with stainless steel cleaner....the muffler can be a PITA. I may not scrub the entire undercarraige but the rear sway bar is a must because it is visible will driving from the rear....
24. At this point for about an hour or so I just keep circling the vehicle looking at it from different angles and hitting the little spots I might have missed. I also use my little stiff detailing brush and hit those areas where wax tends to settle...nothing worse than a black car with dried wax on it...the was jumps off the black paint, very easy to see...
25. That's really it, whole process takes 8-10 hours....many of you may not spend that kind of time on your car and thats ok, on this particular day I just blew out my engine bay with air, it was still pretty clean from the last time I detailed it....if you guys want me to do a story board with pictures and post it I would be glad to but again, CONWRATH did a great write up in the how to section....comments?
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Originally Posted by Ulysses 
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