Welcome back to the Bespoke Automotive Refinement Podcast. Today we have Thomas Till, the owner and founder of Bespoke Automotive Refinement, the number one Kansas City car detailing service. Welcome to the show.
Hey, I’m so thankful to be back again. How are you? I am fantastic. I’m so excited to be talking about cars today, specifically when it comes to the change of weather because today it is rainy and cold and it’s the beginning of the fall season.
The leaves are falling and it’s just absolutely gorgeous here in Kansas City, but there are definitely some things that car owners here in the Kansas City area need to be aware of in order to protect their cars, keep them looking nice and clean and shiny when it comes to the change in weather of rain to snow and ice and just all the things they put on the road that can ruin the paint. So specifically, number one, as a car owner, what are some things that somebody could do themselves to protect their car when it comes to the weather change? You know, I remember growing up as a kid. There were a select few people that lived in my hometown that no matter how nasty it was, how much slush and ice was on the road, their cars always looked clean.
And as a kid, I always admired that. I always wondered, hey, why do my parents’ cars look bad? And why do certain people around town’s cars look nice? What I realized was they always had the car protected. They always had some sort of wax or some sort of sealant on the paint, which didn’t allow salt road grime to stick to it.
And it made the cars easier to keep clean. So as I grew up, started learning different detailing skills and got into paint correction, ceramic coating in particular, I realized that ceramic coating will prevent road salts, de-icers from sticking to the clear coat. That’s not to say if you go on a long road trip or you drive the car a lot without getting it washed, it won’t start to get dirty again, but that ceramic coating is going to make it so much easier to keep clean.
So if you’ve ever had a ceramic dish, ceramic pot, when you go to wash all the grime and grease off of it and you go to rinse it out in the sink, the water just runs right off of it. Well, imagine your car, the surface of your car doing the same thing. That’s what a ceramic coating does.
Ceramic coating is going to prevent things from sticking to it and making it much easier to keep clean over time. So definitely recommend a ceramic coating or some sort of SiO2 hydrophobic sealant to go on the surface. And we offer that Kansas City auto detailing service to everyone in the Kansas City area.
Now, ceramic coating, is that something you need to do on your whole car? Is that something you can just do on your windshield? What does that look like to have your car ceramic coated? We do the entire car. So we do the entire exterior surface, the emblems, the wheel faces, the glass, the trim, all of the clear coated surfaces are going to accept the coating a lot better than non-clear coated surfaces. It’s like the trim may, the coating may fade down over time, but the glass and the clear coat are going to be able to hold the coating a lot longer.
We don’t offer ceramic coating just at the glass just because it takes so much time to do and it’s, you know, most people say I just want to do the whole car. So let’s say somebody wants to get their car ceramic coated and it is the fall season or winter season and it’s cold outside, does it matter the time of year when you get ceramic coated on your car? We do it year round. Our only stipulation since we’re a Kansas City auto detailing mobile service is we do require you have a garage that’s climate controlled for us to perform this service on.
So if you got a space heater, you can put it in your garage for the winter, great. During the summertime, you know, we can open some windows so that, you know, the temperature gets down. We can do it year round, just require you to have a closed garage area.
Okay, so you get ceramic coating as a recommendation for the winter season. What can you do to protect your car from the salts and things like that, like protect your chassis, the undercarriage of your car? What are some things you can do under your car to protect it? So we have a product that we apply to the undercarriage called Classy Chassis. Basically what we do is we start by completely pressure washing and scrubbing the entire surface underneath the vehicle, the exposed wheel wells, the exposed chassis, spring shocks, everything gets degreased and scrubbed down and pressure washed so it’s clean.
And then we have a product that’s a water repellent, but it also adds a ton of gloss to the surface and it’ll help repel water, road grime. It’s something that makes it easier to keep clean. I mean, obviously if you take it down a dirt road or you drive it on a salty road, it’s going to get dirty.
There’s nothing that you can put on your vehicle that’s going to prevent it from getting dirty. This will help prevent it from rusting and it’ll help prevent it from things sticking to the surface where you have to scrub on it really hard to get it off. It should just be able to pressure wash right off.
Now, I know that if you have pets, there’s a certain kind of rock salts you need to get. Is there anything specific that you’d recommend for somebody? Hey, beware of this in the wintertime, beware of that, don’t use this kind of product. Like if you go to the car wash, can you use Rain-X? Things like that people offer services that are for cars.
Is there anything that you’re like, that’s not worth it or that’s not a good product for your
car? So yeah, if you run your car through an automatic car wash and you choose to get the ceramic sealant that they offer, does it work? Yes. It’s not something that bonds to the clear coat. It’s something, it’s like a silicone base.
It’s going to attract more dust. It will work. I never recommend any of my ceramic coating clients use a car wash that use those waxes or those sealants because they can clog the pores in the coating and then after you get the clogs or the, excuse me, the pores clogged, you have to unclog them with a ceramic maintenance detail and that’s a huge pain if you’re constantly running the car through an automatic wash.
I recommend just having us come out and hand wash the car once every few months just to make sure that the coating is still working. So if somebody did want to during the winter season, I for myself do not like having a dirty car. So when winter comes and there’s a lot of rain or snow or you get those salts on your car and your car’s not as clean as it used to, are there things that you can do for more regular washings? Do you offer a subscription service or anything like that somebody wants to in the winter season up their amount of times their car is being washed? Yeah, so we do offer a Kansas City Auto Detailing Service that’s a monthly subscription.
It’s either monthly, weekly, or bi-weekly. Price varies depending on the size of the vehicle and how often you’re wanting it done, but we do offer that, yes. If somebody is like, hey, you know, the winter season my car just gets dirty all the time, I’m okay with that but I want the interior of my car cleaned out, do you offer just interior detailing in the Kansas City area? Absolutely, we do offer a Kansas City Auto Detailing interior package as well.
If you’re just wanting the interior done, you don’t really care about the exterior. We have numerous different tailored packages for your vehicle. So if somebody’s wanting to hire you or hire a team to come out and work on their car, what is something that they can do to get that started? You can go ahead and give me a call at 620-282-0402 or you can book online, but I do prefer you call me just so I can get all the specifics down so we figured out what goals you’re trying to achieve with your vehicle.