2021: The Year of the Detail
Back in high school I became somewhat obsessed with detailing the 3000GT. It started with regularly washing it, then wax, then claybar + wax, finally wash, claybar, polish, then wax. I absolutely loved how smooth it made the paint feel while driving with the window open.
In the years that followed I didn’t really own vehicles with nice paint nor did I have a garage to keep them in so they generally just got run through the car wash if anything. After buying the FRC I was pretty good about hand washing it because it was not a daily driver. So it would stay clean in the garage. After moving to Lodi the FRC became my summer daily driver and keeping it clean driving it 50 miles a day seemed impossible so I would just run it through a car wash every couple weeks.
I’ve been working from home since March of 2020 so my 50 mile daily commute is no more. Charlotte fully detailed her cars then and it inspired me to do the same but I was too busy with other projects. I was initially busy with supercharging the FRC this year, but come June I decided it was time to detail the FRC.
I started at 5pm one night and wasn’t done until 11. I spent a LOT of time cleaning all the bugs and tar off before moving onto a claybar and then wax.
Really pleased with how that turned out I did the 3000GT a couple days later:
When I was *just* about done with the claybar I dropped it which means you have to throw it away and get a new one. This is really frustrating especially when you are just about done! So started doing a deep dive into detailing products and talking to a friend who is pretty into it. Ended up replacing claybar and quick detailer (lube) with Nanoskin sponges and ONR for the lube.
The first vehicle I used these on was the M3.
The real test was Derek’s GTO as it was not only black but was covered in ash/soot from a fire it was fortunately spared from. It might look like the ash would just rinse right off but it took many many hours but came out mint!
I was slowly working my way up to the truck…the vehicle I wanted to detail the most but was also the most afraid of doing.
