Hello, Kansas City. Welcome back to the Bespoke Automotive Refinement Podcast, the premier Kansas City Auto Detailing business. We are so glad that you are here with us today.
We have Thomas Till, the owner and founder of Bespoke. He is the man, the myth, the legend, the one who really, truly, if you just want to talk cars with somebody, please do give him a call. He is an absolute blast to talk to in general, but man, if you talk about cars, he could go for hours.
So if you were curious about even what kind of car you should get or any Kansas City auto detailing service package that you might want to be done to your car or anything about cars in general at all, Thomas is the man to talk to. It is a pleasure to be here. Thank you so much for bringing me on.
I just, I’m so passionate about providing Kansas City auto detailing services to the area and it’s an honor to be on your show today. Thank you. So first off, I want to talk about 10 mistakes that people make with the detailing of their cars.
I’m assuming number one, because I know that I’ve made this mistake and I didn’t even think about it being a mistake until we met. The number one thing that I think a lot of people do when you talk to them about detailing services in general is they say, well, I have a subscription to a car wash and I just take my car through a car wash. Why is that a mistake for somebody to go through a car wash to their car? Well, it’s a mistake because a lot of these automatic car washes have, a lot of these car washes have a sponge that turns at a very high speed that knocks all of the dirt and dust off of your car.
And that same sponge that’s whipping your car has, has hit hundreds of vehicles throughout the day. And, you know, you’re essentially slapping your vehicle’s paint with rocks and grit and grime and dirt. And you’re going to get scratches from that over time.
And sometimes people notice that the first time they run through an automatic wash, they notice that their car is already getting scratched up. And the other issue is those automatic car washes, they have a pre-soak that they spray on the car before it gets the foam. And that pre-soak is typically degreaser.
And degreaser is extra, especially if it’s acidic, and is extremely harmful to your clear coat. So another mistake number two that you and I have talked about is maybe not even a mistake, but it’s maybe not actually as beneficial as some might believe, is Rain-X. If you ever go through a car wash, they really pitch that hard.
You can pay for an upgrade for Rain-X. Why is Rain-X maybe not as great as they pitch it to be? Well, Rain-X is like wax. It’s not a bad product, but it’s an outdated product.
So Rain-X, and the other thing about Rain-X too, is it’s like a brand. So Rain-X is like the term goldfish. There’s so many different types of goldfish out there, like in terms of like the little crackers.
But when everyone thinks of goldfish, they think of the original brand. Rain-X is kind of like that. I mean, Rain-X has so many different other products they offer in their brand line, and I actually use one of them.
But their product for allowing the water to run off the paint, it’s basically just a highly concentrated silicone based product that, yes, it allows the water to run right off of it, but it’s so highly concentrated in silicone that it also allows dirt to stick to the vehicle and dust and doesn’t make it easy to keep clean. Number three mistake that I feel like probably a lot of people make is they don’t get their car detailed or washed enough. Have you ever washed somebody’s car, detailed their car before, and you’re like, this should have been done a long time ago? I drive one.
My car that I drive every day for work, it’s so, you know, when I spend all day keeping other people’s cars clean, as passionate as I am about detailing, when I get home from working, the last thing I want to do is detail my own car. So I have a pretty good idea of what that threshold between this is dirty versus this is not dirty. You know, the car I worked on today, this guy goes overlanding, and he will go spend three or four weeks out in the middle of nowhere where there’s no cell reception, and he’ll load everything into his truck, and he’s kind of turned the back of his truck into like a camper.
And he literally lived out of this truck for an entire month, and I detailed it today, and I showed up to work on it, and I’m like, this thing’s literally cleaner than my own car. Wow. So everyone has their own version of dirty.
You know, when it came to my Corvettes, if there was any dirt or dust noticeable on the inside or the outside, the car got cleaned. But on the cars that I drive every day, I already know they’re going to get dirty again. So for me, it doesn’t really make sense to keep them clean.
So I think everyone has their own version of what is too dirty versus what is acceptable. For me, it depends on the vehicle that I’m driving. I’d say mistake number four is sometimes people watch a video and they think, oh, I could do that.
For example, you just worked on a car for somebody that thought that they could do paint correction, and then what did they do to the car that almost ruined it? Well, the verdict’s still out on whether or not it’s actually ruined. So this guy watched videos on YouTube on paint correction, and he didn’t have a machine polisher. He didn’t have a rotary polisher or a random orbital buffer, but he thought that he could do it by hand using a rubbing compound.
So number one, you can’t paint correct a car without heat or friction created from any sort of machine polisher. So he proceeded to compound the entire hood of this truck and realized it wasn’t giving him the results he wanted. So instead of polishing it and then adding at the bare minimum wax to protect it, he just wiped the compound off and walked away.
Well, the compound opens the pores of the clear coat and exposes the paint to the sun and all of the other harmful chemicals and everything that can be exposed to the truck. So very quickly because of this, the truck began to sunfade. So I was able to wet sand the entire top layer of the clear coat off.
So it was basically like I cut the dead skin off of the truck, and then underneath it was a new layer of skin, and I brought that back to life and then ceramic coated it. So I think it’s good to go now, but that was a definite no-no. Number five, I would say leading into what you even just shared there, is people using inadequate products on their car.
Probably get something from a local gas station, just some sort of leather wipe thing. My biggest headache is whenever I hear someone use the word Armorall. I hate that word so much.
Armorall is one of the most harmful products that you can put on the interior of your vehicle.
Armorall, they use sheep fat to create that slick effect on your interior trim, but once that sheep fat begins to be exposed to heat, it dries out, and it looks for a place to dry into, and it dries into the finish of your interior, causing your interior to fade out. The Z06 that I bought, my yellow C6 Z06, when I bought the car, the entire interior was faded, and it looked like it needed the entire interior completely restored, and thankfully I was able to fix it, but that was thanks to Armorall.
So if somebody is wanting to get their car detailed by Bespoke Automotive Refinement, they want some sort of Kansas City auto detailing service package done, how do they get that done? Well, if you’re looking to have any Kansas City auto detailing service performed, go ahead and give us a call at 620-282-0402. We will get you taken care of. We’ll get you on the schedule.
Whether you’re wanting a basic Kansas City auto detailing wash or a full paint correction, we are here to take care of you.