Autogeek's Detailing Class in South America!


On Saturday April 5th and Sunday, April 6th, we held our two-day detailing boot camp class at my good friend Christian Thompson's detailing shop in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

In my detailing boot camp classes I teach the order to do each step when detailing cars. The pictures below are taken from the different steps after first going over the products and procedures in a power point presentation. After each step is presented in the power point the topic ends with a slide that reads,

Break for hands-on





These classes are fast paced with a little classroom time to get the head knowledge needed to do a specific task or procedure the right way followed with plenty of shop time using the products and tools to back up what was learned in the class.


Removing Scratches out of Glass
One of the demo cars was a restored Mustang in dire need of both wetsanding to remove surface texture as well as glass polishing to remove decades of wiper scratches in the windshield.

For this we used the Porter Cable 7424XP plus Ceriglass from CarPro which uses Cerium Oxide for an abrasive to actually abrade the glass and level it thus removing the scratches.


The first thing I teach guys is to never start on the driver's side where if something were to go wrong you could impair the driver's vision. Instead, I teach to start on side glass, back glass or in this case, the passenger side of the windshield.




Classic cars have what are called fresh air grills where vents inside the car can draw fresh air. In most cases you cannot get to the sheetmetal below the grill to clean and remove any splatter from the glass polishing process, (or the paint polishing process), so it's important to tape-off and cover up the openings on fresh air grills on classic cars.




Here were inspecting the sheetmetal below the grill as there is already compound splatter from the other people that have at one time or another buffed out this car.

We're not going to add to it at this class...




After covering the fresh air grill with some masking tape I start by demonstrating the correct technique for using a Porter Cable to remove scratches out of the glass.






After inspecting the results from the first few passes to show the scratches are being removed and optical clarity is being restored, it's time for one of the students get some hands-on training and experience.








Perfect technique his first time machine polishing glass....




When machine polishing glass it helps to have a buddy to mist a little water while you're buffing because glass polishes tend to dry up quickly. This works best with a water sprayer that really does a good job of atomizing the water into a fine spray as this dramatically reduces any splatter mess.







Next up... headlight polishing....