587 Pictures - No Chairs! No Sitting! September 2024 Detailing Class with Mike Phillips

[Mike Phillips]

Continued....

Here's the final results for the 2013 Toyota Matrix

Here's the final results for the 2020 Chevrolet Camaro

And just to show how bad this car was before the class worked their magic.

Here's the before and after for the headlights

And here's the after results

These headlights, which are 11 years old and from my own experience, have NEVER been touched since this car left the dealership.






Here's the team that made the magic happen!
And this is just the first two cars for this class, 7 more cars to go, each teaching different tools, products and techniques, and then of course on the third day, the Extreme Boat Detailing Class.

Nice work everyone!

Mike

 

[Mike Phillips]

Continued....

Day 1 - Afternoon Session - One-Step Paint Correction - Your mid-level detailing package
Now that I have everyone warmed up using a rotary polisher to bust out two severely neglected cars, it's time to learn how to do a proper one-step process.


TWO - 1932 Ford Streetrods
For this class session, I have two HIGH-END 1932 Ford Streetrods. One of them is a deuce coupe, or a 1932 Ford 3-Window Coupe and the other is a 1932 Ford Roadster.

In keeping with my decades-long history of photo-documenting the BEFORE condition, here's some before for the orange 1932 Ford, at the time I'm creating this write-up, I cannot find any before pictures for the red 1932 Ford. The paint on the red 1932 Ford was in much better shape but still filled with light swirls and scratches.

RaggTopp Fabric Protectant
After washing and allowing a convertible cloth top to fully dry, next you want to apply a fabric protectant. For this 1932 Ford we're using the RaggTopp Fabric Protectant.

After draining an entire can of the RaggTopp Fabric Protectant, next we massage the product INTO the fabric and then we'll cover the top to protect it while we do the paint correction step.

The directions on the can state to spray and let dry, but back in 2016 I tested out massaging the product into the top and then letting it dry versus just letting it sit on the top where it looks like morning dew. The technique worked BETTER in my opinion, and when I shared this with the owner/founder of RaggTopp, Rich Goldstein, he gave the technique his blessing. The rest as the saying goes, is history. And now you see everyone using this technique.

One-Step Test Spots
For the clearcoat paint on the red 1932 Ford, after doing a test spot, we found the Dr. Beasley's NSP 95 Primer plus a 6" yellow Buff and Shine EdgeGuard foam pad on FLEX gear-driven orbital polishers removed all the swirls and scratches to restore a true show car finish. Our Test Spot on the orange 1932 Ford showed us that in order to remove all the swirls and scratches we would need Dr. Beasley's NSP 150 Primer with 6" blue Buff and Shine EdgeGuard foam pads on FLEX BEAST 8mm gear-driven orbital polishers.

How do you learn?
Before signing up for any class, TRY to find pictures like you see for our classes. In the pictures below, plus ALL the pictures in this recap article for this class, all you're going to see are people on their feet, tools in hand, training on actual cars, not demo hoods or test panels. And not just cars, but COOL cars.

If you're the kind of person that learns better by doing versus sitting in a chair, then clear your schedule, budget for your travel expenses, and make the trip to Stuart, Florid for a future class. You will never be disappointed. Future Classes

Mike

 

[Mike Phillips]

Continued....

Dr. Beasley's Nano-Resin MX Ceramic Coating
After all the paint correction work, next up the class installs the Dr. Beasley's Nano-Resin MX Ceramic Coating

Here's the final results!

Here's the team that made the magic happen!

Here's a few shots of the orange Deuce Coupe, I think by now the red Roadster had already been picked-up and headed home.

Mike

 

[Mike Phillips]

Continued....

Let's check out the condition of the single stage paint on the 1976 Ford Grand Torino Starsky and Hutch Police Car with the car parked outside in FULL SUN.

Every inch of the paint on this car is totally swirled-out.

Now let's use the Lake Country Hand-Held Light and overhead LED lights to inspect with the car moved inside the Stuart, Florida O.R.

How to Test For Single Stage Paint
Testing is pretty easy for colored single stage paint, simply apply some white colored polish onto a white colored applicator or cloth, rub over the paint for a few seconds and then inspect. For WHITE single stage paint, it's a tick trickier because you'll want to use a dark colored cloth or applicator and if possible, a gray or colored polish.

An Ounce of Prevention is Worth a Pound of Cure
The owner is a super cool dude and because he knows what's involved with this type of paint restoration, he asked me to have the class be SUPER careful when buffing around the black vinyl pinstriping that separates any white painted sections for the red painted section, and we complied. You'll see a YELLOW painter's tape covering over and protecting the black vinyl pinstriping.



Mike

 

[Mike Phillips]

Continued....

When is the last time you washed a Pro Street 1962 Chevrolet Biscayne?

While I do like to cover a LOT of tools, products and techniques when we do the class session on Extreme Prep Wash, I don't like to have my classes spend a lot of time washing cars, so I'm always happy to take care of washing most of the cars before class starts.

Swirl City
After a thorough bath, I invested a few minutes in photo-documenting the BEFORE condition.

She's incredibly abused by the misuse of a rotary polisher
I start my classes teaching people how to use a rotary polisher, but we always finish with ORBITAL polishers to 100%, absolutely avoid the entire hologram issue in the moment and way down the road after the owner has taken possession of all our hard work.

Mike

 

[Mike Phillips]

Continued....

Saturday Morning - 1-Step Ceramic AIO Paint Correction
The third style of detailing we teach is how to do an entry level, or budget package detail job. For this we're using the Dr. Beasley's NSP Z1 Primer, which is a ceramic AIO or All-in-One. This means you start with the product and you also are finishing with this product. It's a one-and-done type process. The key variable, which is determined when doing the Test Spot, is which pad and tool will work best for a true 1-step process.

Polishing Pad
For the single stage paint on the Starsky and Hutch car, we found the yellow Buff and Shine EdgeGuard pads worked perfect to remove all the swirls and scratches. Except for single stage WHITE paint, most other colors of single stage paint tend to be on the softer side and thus easier to correct without getting super aggressive.

Heavy Polishing Pad
For the basecoat/clearcoat paint in the 1962 Chevy, because of how horrific the holograms, swirls and scratches were, we found we need a tick more cut and for this reason we used the Z1 with the blueberry Buff and Shine EdgeGuard foam pads. Buff and Shine describes this blueberry pad as HEAVY Polishing. So, more cut than normal polishing pads but less cut and less chance for pad-marring than actual foam cutting pads. A really nice balance of cut and finish.


Class starts at 7:30am sharp and after some Prep Wash to waterless wash the Starsky and Hutch Ford Torino, it's GO TIME!

No Chairs - No sitting - 100% Hands-On
I love these pictures. These pictures are what separates my classes from all the rest. All you see are people on their feet with polishes in hand, training on the real deal. No chairs. No comfy tables to sit at and no PowerPoint presentation. These classes are targeted for people that find they learn better by doing, not sitting in a classroom. If you're the type of person that learns best by taking an academic class, then I strongly recommend taking any other class besides the classes I teach.

YouTube Certified Detailers
YouTube is a great way to learn how to do something, but it will NEVER replace, in-person, hands-on training. In this example below, Wayne was able to remove all the shallow scratches, but the deeper swirls and scratches remained.

I watched his buffing style and saw that he was doing everything correctly, except he wasn't pressing on the head of the polisher hard enough. The benefit to a gear-driven oribal polisher is that when you need MORE correction ability, you can simply press harder to engage the abrasives and the cut of the pad with the paint to get the job done.

To show him how hard to press down while moving the polisher over the paint, I placed my hand on top of his hand and then simply pressed with the correct amount of pressure so he could feel this amount of pressure and perfect his technique. YouTube is good, in-person in the best.

Thank you John!
A special shout-out to my long-time friend John Carnevale from FLEX. John brough the new 24 Volt FLEX polishers for everyone to test out BEFORE they were made public at this year's SEMA show.

Sometimes there are defects that require a little more finesse. In this case, there was a deeper scratch that was resisting coming out.

Using the same product, pad and tool, I simply pressed a little hard, moved the polisher a little slower and that's all it took to convince the scratch to leave.

Mike