Clint Eastwood (Dirty Harry) once said "a man's got to know his own limitations". It is unlikely that with my schedule I will be taking care of waxing my CS (received on Saturday) and conditioning the leather myself. In this regard, what instructions should I be relaying to a detailer? Are there do's and don't in terms of product use, techniques? Obviously hand wash and wax; any other advice? Thanks in advance.

 

If you need to explain to your detailer what to do, it's time to find a new detailer.

Remember, unless you're paying for a GOOD detail, a lot of these guys will just fly through your car and screw it up.

The guy I use in Illinois spends around 8-10 hours on my Cayenne ON THE OUTSIDE. Most places I've seen will try to do the whole car in half the time.

Tell them to use a good wax.. in the wax thread someone just started, we mentioned Zymol. It's a good price, it looks great, but you need to reapply a lot. Might be good to pick it up yourself and have your detailer use it!

What color ya got?

 

Silver. I have had several bad experiences with detailers; lousy jobs and even some damage to my Audi a few years back. I guess I am a little gun-shy. Most of the dealers here in the Raleigh , NC area basically do a wash and vacuum, then throw on some armor-all.

 

Stay away from that. Stay away from Armor All haha.

I'm not about to hand over a 150k car to someone who doesn't know what they are doing either. You can really screw up the paint, especially with black, if you are in a hurry. Hell, I use to hand wash my BMW M3 and a tiny car like that would take me hours. 10 years later the thing still looks great

But seriously, do you research on the place you're taking it first, I took the M3 to a detailer once and they scratched the leather on the inside, I don't know how to explain it but there were white marks all over the black leather on the door panel. They denied they did it

There are detailing forums, maybe you can find some recommendations there.

 

I had my A6 detailed 2 weeks after purchase and the detailer must have had something sharp stuck to his cloth: scratched the wood and the speedo plastic. total bummer. Anyways thanks for the advice Jesh; may have to suck it up and get busy myself.