Sportwagon Pics

Pretty much any decent detailer will be able to do this, but...

... that's where you are getting the swirls from, most likely.

So you either live with what they do to the paintwork, or you get the car detailed, wash it yourself (look up two bucket method on detailingworld) and have the guy around every few months to freshen it up. If they use something the aforementioned Collinite 915, it'll last that long.

These are *really* deep and won't shift with T-Cut - I suspect it's had a power buffing session with Stevie Wonder at some stage in the past, given the swirls are perfectly circular all over the car.

As I say, no way this is down to being rubbed a little too hard with a sponge - the whole car is covered in uniform swirls that won't shift this side of being mopped off properly, and again, as I say, I'd rather pay someone who does this for a living and who has a good reputation to do it for me. :-)

-- JackH

Cleaning a car up is a pain in the arse (ie, mopping, doing all the fiddly plastics etc.). However, I'd be happy to stick a bit of wax on it every 6 months myself rather than pay a man to do it. It's not even difficult stuff to put on - rub it on, leave it a bit, rub it off. None of this leaving it until it goes white and takes two days to rub off anymore. There is still no magic apply once and it'll last forever sealant. Some do last a very long time, but anyone who claims their product will never need to be reapplyed is a bullshiter.

While I've got no problem with the concept of "Point and Pay", the justification above is iffy. It implies you have the opportunity and desire to take on more work to pay for your polishing, or would have to take holiday to do it.

Are the various good things about doing something yourself (satisfaction in a job done, mental release from all that rubbing, even the satisfaction of not spending money which some enjoy) outweighed by the fact that it does time, you could screw up and there could well be more satisfying things to so.

Once you can afford it, the only question is can you be arsed to do it. I'd stick with that simple decision, rather than trying to justify it.

cheers, clive

Or of course there's the other option - you have naff all free time and want to spend it all doing stuff you like.

Buffer swirls are about 6-8 inch across. Normal swirls are generally bigger.

We appear to have had our wires crossed. I thought you wouldn't wax it, you though I was saying you should fix paint defects yourself.

Covered by "would have to take holiday to do it".

I don't need to take a holiday to do it - I work Monday to Friday and my weekends are my own.

I'd rather be out on my bike or doing countless other things than mopping a car off!

-- JackH

Do you have the opportunity to do work for extra money in that time? (I don't without going out and finding extra private work - as per discussion a couple of weeks back, no overtime for those above a certain level). If not, you can't really claim you could be out earning money rather than washing the car, which is what my original point was about. The holiday argument is merely a variation - eg I could take unpaid leave to provide extra time for various things, which would obviously cost me money. (The fact that I'll be taking the maximum amount of unpaid leave the company will allow in order to go on holidays is irrelevant here :-) )

...

Excellent reasons, and more than enough to justify point and pay. You don't need to invoke the dubious "could earn more elsewhere" argument.

FWIW I can't be arsed either, _and_ I'm a tightwad. Fortunately I'm also a fan of the scruffy look of my car :-)

cheers, clive

I saw a GM900 today.

That's all I have to say, but it was notable as it was the only one I've seen for months.

Bad form - it was in a particularly crap area of Birmingham....

I'm not talking about washing the car though, am I?

I'm talking about getting the body buffed back and sealed up properly, and getting the inside scotchgarded or whatever - whether I do it or someone else does it, it's a fairly lengthy process - more than a days work for a luddite like me, I reckon.

So rather than DIY, I will get someone else to do it. It's going to cost =A3200+, apparently.

If I don't want to have a =A3200+ hole in my finances, I know that rather than do the job myself using my time, I can spend said time earning the money doing something I'm good at, and which I've got plenty of if I want it, to cover the cost of getting it done by a pro.

Nothing dubious or spurious about an argument like that. :-)

See above - nowt dubious about that.

Makes me laugh really... when I think back to the turds I used to lovingly attempt to polish, and now I've got a half decent car that I'm paying a fair bit for, I can't be arsed to clean it. :-)

-- JackH

...

You said that last time. I know the argument, and I've seen it used many times in many places. Doesn't make it valid though.

It's as sane an argument as PFI I suppose.

Unless you're actually going and doing extra work for extra money to pay for it (ie overtime or getting extra work outside normal employment), it doesn't work. So, are you doing that - coz you said not very long ago you aren't. IIRC your hours and income are set, and you try hard to stick to that (FWIW that's a good thing IMO) so there's no opportunity to explicitly work extra hours to pay for a shine.

Of course there is the other thing - the 200+ quid is still play money if your description of your life is anywhere near accurate, so there's nothing to justify - you're not going to have to do without other stuff as a result of it, and that "other stuff" includes free time for stuff you want to do (ie neither work nor washing).

It's a bit of a pet rant of mine that people feel the need to come up with excuses for things - far better to say "I'm in control, I _want_ to do this" than "I need to do this because".

It's all those posts dissing repmobiles, they've sapped your will :-)

These are *really* deep and won't shift with T-Cut - I suspect it's had a power buffing session with Stevie Wonder at some stage in the past, given the swirls are perfectly circular all over the car.

As I say, no way this is down to being rubbed a little too hard with a sponge - the whole car is covered in uniform swirls that won't shift this side of being mopped off properly, and again, as I say, I'd rather pay someone who does this for a living and who has a good reputation to do it for me. :-)

Most of the swirls will just be from a life time of bad washing, you'd be amazed how much damage you can do with a dirty sponge and a bucket of hot, soapy with fairy liquid, water....

(fairy liquid strips everything off of paintwork - any wax etc - and some people DO use it.... Yes really :-))

I don't really see any Saabs /that/ commonly really.

I'm not making any excuses... and in particular for your pedantry.

Are you particularly bored this evening, by chance?

-- JackH

Where did that come from? It's nothing to do with pedantry - I can do pedantry, and indeed part of my living depends on it, but this is different.

You just tickled one of my pet rants.

Obviously at one level the "paying somebody else to do it" thing applies to the whole of life - I pay (indirectly) people to grow food for me, to dig coal for me, etc, even if it does get all a bit convoluted as eg I pay somebody to manage my payments to somebody else to manage a service composed of paying for some hardware and some more skills, etc. That's just plain money.

There are really direct examples of paying somebody to do something to enable you to work and earn more than you're spending - childminding being a great example. But what we're talking about doesn't really fall into that category - you're just spending money you've got on something you want done and don't want to do yourself.

The great thing about looking at it the way I do is that when you come to consider more expensive things, you don't have the problem of having to change your justification. The answer remains the same - want it done, don't want to do it yourself, can afford to pay - then do so. Nice and simple, no worries at all :-)

So can I...

So does mine, on occasion.

Your logic is flawed, no idea if it's as generally flawed in your working life, but I would hope not.

Yes, and I have been known to do some private work in order to raise the money to pay for something I don't want to do - this is a perfect example.

I want the car looking as it should do... I don't want to do it myself.

I accept it needs some time and effort thrown at it in order to achieve the desired end result, be that my own time which costs nothing, or someone elses for which I'll have to pay.

I'm happy to do a bit of private work to cover the funds required to get it done, and part of my reasoning is that aside from not having to do something I detest doing in my old age, I'll either spend less time to earn the money for the car to be done than if I did the car myself, or I'll do the same amount of hours or more as I would doing it myself, and end up with a bit of extra bunce for myself at the end of it.

It's not justification for spending some money, it's a method of pure common financial sense, and something which I'm happy to work with for the foreseeable.

Sorry if you can't grasp that as a valid way of working but that's how it works for me... and countless others, I suspect.

-- JackH

Ok, if you're actually explicitly doing that then fair enough. Most times I've seen the argument used, it's not come out how you're doing it - it's people just doing normal stuff. If it's well-defined piece of standalone work, it actually works quite well in terms of associating effort to result, which is a good thing.

(I used to do bits on the side. CBA now as the balance between income and expenditure has swayed even more towards the former - I thought you might be in the same situation, especially given your comments about the value of your time outside work.)

I don't know anybody who works that way. Most people I know do their salaried work, and live with that. This could of course merely be a reflection of the sort of people I know :-)

No need to get snippy :-( I'm trying to present a positive message - ok, slightly misplaced in this case, but the general idea is actually about making things better.