detailingworld.co.uk
Kudos to whatusername for the link.
For the record, I think it is Hacker News. I'm a hacker, I find it interesting, I think other hackers will find it interesting. Hacker News.
It's not very often you see something like this that is so focused upon acheiving perfection (or as close as possible). And I gained a bunch of respect for top flight car detailers.
I can see that my mundane comment of polite disagreement above is taking quite the karma hit. I guess the crowd prefers a wider topic scope.
That, and pretty much everyone is tired of "this does not belong on HN" comments.
I saw a very similar thread that was linked to me about 18 months ago, where the man in it was doing it to the nth degree - which I found very fascinating. One of the differences between the two was in this one he was taking measurements of the car and mapping it out on a laptop to work out the thickness of the paint.
Quote from thread
This showed that the roof panel was 155 microns at the thickest point compared to 120 at the lowest.....
I asked Paul why this was so important and he explained that for maximum reflection you needed to take away the peaks in the clearcoat to a maximum point of the lowest trough microscopically which should flatten the clearcoat to a reading of + or - 2 microns across the board and take no more than 8 microns from the clearcoat for fear of clearcoat failure in the future....
from http://www.corsasport.co.uk/board/viewthread.php?tid=347865&...
Perhaps the Lamborghini guy did the same thing aswell which could be how he was talking about how many micrometers he was taking off. Maybe his measurements were based off experience. Hard to know really.
For the record, I think this kind of variety can definitely be interesting every now and then. There's only so many Google Chrome threads one can take.
Never underestimate niches.
You can have it if you want it, you just have to work for it.
If he did the exact same thing to a 1997 Ford Escort instead of a new Lambo he'd be mercilessly mocked.
If he did the exact same thing to an ugly chick he'd be mercilessly mocked.
Also, I hear arm&hammer tooth paste can fix the fading that happens near the keyboard.
Uh... someone is posting on Hacker News about... some anal retentive dude cleaning a car? Is this some sort of circlejerk for neat freaks or QA engineers?
Now, after reading some comments:
Okay, I can see how it's a little interesting to see just how ridiculous you can get about cleaning stuff and how ridiculously detailed the techniques can get. Still, I have a natural aversion to cleaning and think it's useless and overdone half the time (thus, strong bias). The effort is appreciated, but really, big whoop.
Wow.
That car costs about 200,000 dollars. It's ugly, like a drugged-up Toyota prius. It costs more than a used twin-engine Cessna. It costs more than a Peterbilt. It costs about as much as a flying fortress [1]. It costs more than 99.99 percent of useful products. It's made of plastic and will not survive its first pothole. It just screams "douchebag".
"Look at me world!!! I'm a douchebag and I spent 200K to inform you of this fact!"
Is it all right if I upload some pictures of a successful appendectomy...cause, you know, "detailing" is not really the apex of "task execution". I think what we're really seeing here is the most thorough diminishing returns ever executed. Ten minutes with a cloth and dish detergent would have done the job.
[1] Well, in pre-inflated dollars. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B-17_Flying_Fortress
Sorry, I don't mean to imply that you are a douchebag, but perhaps the car's owner isn't, either. He obviously drove the car and got some use out of it (as the poster indicated), so perhaps he just enjoyed it. Life is short, what's wrong with doing what makes you happy?
As for the submission, I (longtime HN member) upmodded it. The post was very thorough, and it was worthwhile to get such deep insight into the workings of a field that I previously had no knowledge of.
His job status is professional detailer. Nuff said.