The green of the golf course, a chair poolside and other summertime distractions are not alluring enough to beckon Gary Kouba’s weekend warriors.
To Kouba, these are the people who spend leisure time detailing their cars.
“Many people consider their cars an extension of themselves. And their cars are an investment. They want to keep them longer,” said Kouba, explaining why some people throw themselves into weekend detailing.
As valiant as Kouba’s warrior label sounds, there may be nothing more daunting to these people than the rows of car-care products at the store.
Kouba said he is not surprised that many people feel bewildered as they search for a product to give their cars a shine or address a specific need, such as removing minuscule scratches or cleaning the windshield.
Kouba operates Perfect Finish Detailing, a Roselle-based business specializing in detailing high-end cars.
“I do all kinds of cars,” he said. “But the meticulous people with expensive cars know the kind of time I put into detailing them.”
Kouba began detailing cars while working for Turtle Wax.
“I’ve been a weekend novice,” said Kouba. “I’ve walked into the stores, and I’ve seen all the different products. It’s overwhelming.”
Kouba covers detailing in a 1 1/2-hour class. Students typically pay about $6 or $8, depending on the location of the class, which is often a library or park district. He usually gets about 35 or 40 people in each class.
Topics include exterior and interior tasks, such as conditioning leather seats.
“Leather needs to be treated otherwise the oils dry out and splits occur,” he said.
Kouba divides the process of exterior detailing into five steps: hand washing, removing contaminants by claying, polishing, waxing and maintenance. He said it need be done only a couple of times a year.
He said it’s not unusual for novices to be unfamiliar with even the most basic terms, such as the difference between polishing and waxing.
Polishing brings out a car’s shine and waxing protects it.
Claying, rubbing a clay bar over a car’s surface to remove contaminants such as grease or bugs, was new to Wayne Pionke, a Roselle resident who recently attended one of Kouba’s classes. “I thought that sounded quite silly,” he said.
But Pionke spent part of a weekend claying his 2000 Saturn.
“It’s like a putty or clay that you form into a hamburger patty and rub over the surface of your car,” said Terry Freiberg, owner of Tampa-based properautocare.com, a car-care Web site. “It pulls off the contaminants, but it’s non-abrasive. When you’re done claying a car it’s as smooth as glass.”
Kouba said he not only explains products, tools and techniques to students, but he also tries to promote maintenance.
“The big thing I push is regular maintenance. You don’t want people to let their cars go into deterioration.”
Learning about products and how to use detailing tools should not be a trial-and-error process, said Kouba. For example, using high-speed buffers to remove scratches often is unnecessary and can do more harm than good.
“I don’t encourage people without experience to use the high-power buffers,” he said, opting for an orbital buffer or dual-action polish instead.
“There’s only so much material to work with before you go through it. The normal clearcoat [finish] is thinner than a piece of notebook paper,” he said.
As intrepid as Kouba’s weekend warriors are, some in the industry think car detailing is best left to experts.
“Vehicles today are much more sophisticated in materials, coatings and surfaces. You have to be a lot more sophisticated to know how to detail it,” said Mark Thorsby, executive director of the International Carwash Association in Chicago. “Unless you know what it’s made of, it’s very difficult to know what to put on it to get it back in original shape.”
The association has 2,800 members. Thorsby estimated that carwashing/detailing at retail shops is a $2 billion a year industry.
Pionke, however, is glad he worked on his own car, which he said had tiny scratches from going through a carwash.
Pionke said Kouba’s class taught him that detailing is a mix of art and science.
“The science is in the chemicals and the products that properly clean a car to bring out its brilliance,” he said. “That art is the skill, the elbow grease and the attention to detail.”
Though he said it took about six hours to detail his and his wife’s car, it was worth his while–especially because his wife’s turquoise 1995 Saturn earned compliments.
“Even people who work with my wife commented on it. They said, `Oh. Your car looks different. It looks great.'”
He said he would not hesitate to take on the job again–in six months or so.
“It doesn’t take that much time or money,” he said. “And you have to do it only twice a year.”
For information on locations and times of classes, contact Kuoba at turbomangt@hotmail.com.
Internet awash in car care suggestions
For those who may not have time to take a class in exterior appearance, the Internet has some options.
Terry Freiberg, owner of Tampa-based properautocare.com, agrees with local detailer Gary Kouba that consumers may have trouble getting the information they need to select the products that would best suit their cars.
“You can go into any store–a Wal-Mart, Target, even an auto-care store, and you’re looking at a wall filled with waxes and polishes,” said Freiberg, who has operated auto-care product stores since 1988.
Freiberg’s site offers products for sale and lengthy reviews of products and descriptions of their characteristics and results.
A certain wax, for instance, may last 60 days and another lasts several months. One might be suitable for someone who shows his car and details it frequently. The other might be geared toward someone who waxes twice a year.
“We’re trying to match the products’ characteristics to our customers’ needs,” he said.
Another detailing site, www.rightlook.com, offers products, chat rooms on detailing and technical advice from staff. It also sells three videos with step-by-step information on washing and preparing the car, engine detailing, exterior and interior detailing. The videos are $297 for the set.
Detailing “is not rocket science. But if you’re uneducated, you can ruin the paint on your car,” said Catherine Henry, marketing director for www.rightlook.com in San Diego.
To help determine what product are needed, Freiberg suggest would-be detailers start with a question.
“Are you the enthusiast who’s willing to spend hours and go through four or five steps? Or are you a person who likes to play golf and wants to be [done] in 20 minutes?” he asked.
— Annemarie Mannion
