Not quite as fancy as some of yours, but...

Very nice and clean setup. Right cabinet is only half your bulk with more pallets of supplies coming? Soon you will have more than Phil! :giggle:

 

Hey Guys,

I thank you all once again! Big time appreciated as always. Even more so for the kind words on my PT! Again so much appreciated bit time.

Well, today started with a delivery of a new LG digital front loading washer and dryer set. Kinda sorta bout half for my Wife, and half for microfiber. :whistle: More so cause they are a nice red color, play these musical ringtone things, use steam to clean, and are just kinda cool.

Next UPS dropped of my buckets (2 clear for wash/rinse with dollies and center plate so all one unit, another bucket which will go on a separate cart with seat set up for wheels, wheel wells, and so forth, pad cleaner, and some more chemicals.

Then another order of the good paper floor mats, plastic seat covers, steering wheel covers, white key tags with stock numbers, and a pack of those really nice clear heavy plastic work order protectors the dealers use to keep paperwork clean.

As far as getting much done, I did get a couple of fairly good industrial floor shop fans and mounted them in the rafters upside down to help better circulate the warm desert heat. Also started on my spot free rinse set up since I got a guy coming in the morning to hook up a couple of good chemical dispensers which will help dilute the soap, APC, Glass, and so forth to the correct dilution so I can fill my buckets and bottles at the push of a button which ought to make my bulk stuff go a bit farther I am hoping.

I do have to admit though, I am really starting to get kinda antsy after putting everything together I am really wanting to throw a car in my awaiting play room and start doing it to it already.

My biggest problem at the moment is we just bought this house, and since most of our stuff was old and worn out we decided it might be a good idea to just pretty much start from scratch so at least for the moment I have a constant flow of delivery trucks if not delivering more stuff for the garage, then furniture, appliances, and so forth which is cool and all, but hard to get much done when every time you go to start something the doorbell rings with another delivery. That and I think I kinda cornered the market on cardboard boxes! I just finished chopping up a ton of them last night trying to keep my garage clean and got 6 more in today. Moving Sucks!

Anywayz, thank you all big time once again, go easy, and I will be sure to keep you all posted on my progress as well as try to snap off some better pics as well.

Candyman

 

That's going to be an epic collection in no time. I'm interested to see what kind of working space you'll have if you get those surgical lights installed.

 

its perfect

 

Hey their Everyone,

Well, a little update. I have managed to pile up more work than I can get away with in my garage. Went on an extensive shop hunt but all the shops we found had major issues and couldn't see justifying $30,000 - $40,000 plus for improvements at the moment.

So after much discussion my partner and I opted to instead for the time being to go mobile for a bit and see how that works out for the time being.

We got lucky and stumbled across a van which someone had taken to a service truck manufacturing shop who managed to way overbuild things. Don't get me wrong, I am way into making things pretty heavy duty, but this thing is a bit overkill. I mean a 10,000 watt gen, 3000 PSI 11 horse Honda pressure washer, Craftsman compressor hiding on the left, hot water extractor in the middle, wet/dry shop vac on right, three hose reels for air, power, and pressure, 110 gal tank, rack up front for up to 8 5 gal bulk chemicals power inverters, pretty well equipped on a 2002 1 ton Chevy 3500 Express van.

Apparently the van had been in a repo yard for a couple of years till someone bought it stripped, put a brand new crate motor and trans 2000 miles ago, new wheels and tires, exhaust, and so forth, and somewhere along the way got into some financial problems and was selling the whole thing for $5500.00. I figured their was more in equipment and fab work than that so I went ahead and picked her up right quick.

Spent the last couple weeks outfitting her in my spare time with all my stuff, buffers, chemicals, waxes, pads, brushes, all new snap on tools, all my test equipment from my Sun Gun, PT Gauge, Gloss Meter, Paint Temp Gauge, and so forth, new CG wash mat, new 10x20 easy up, got my water guy working on setting up a closed loop full water reclaim and mobile reverse osmosis system with an additional 5 step filtration system which will be in front of the water tank to recycle and reuse the wash water over and over with an expected realistic reclaim of around 75%. You name it, its probably in their somewhere.

I found a couple of Stanley hard cases for bolts and what not over at Lowes which fits up to 12 pots of wax each in a nice and neat potable case which makes it way easy to move all my high dollar SV, and Dodo collections inside when the temps get to hot. I also found a cool tackle box over at Walmart which has a set up for all my smaller brushes, q-tips, and assorted detailing tools along with a place for my wax samples, and three additional small clear plastic cases which if you hit up the travel stuff in the pharmacy department at Walmart, they have cool and cheap small 3 ounce travel bottles both in spray, and applicator type that fit perfect in the small plastic trays and are a great way to carry sample chemicals to do quick demo's and what not all in one convenient box instead of running back and forth from the van. The way its set up right now I can have up to 4 3 ounce spray bottles and 3 applicator bottles per container and their are three shelved removable containers to work with plus brush storage, plus a separate compartment on the side for more wax, mf towels as well. Always looking for better storage ideas nowadays.

Got a new full wrap on but its going back at the end of this week to have some tweaking as the lettering looked good on paper but didn't translate well at all to the final product. Also went and got new puck locks all around with chipped keys which should make it pretty tricky to get into as well as a new Viper alarm, and a Sat tracker system by Qualcom going in as well here shortly which will be able to track the vans location within 5 feet anywhere via computer so it should be pretty secure.

Still waiting on my roof ladder rack, and mount for my laptop with credit card machine set up along with mounting my floor safe for petty cash, receipts and so forth, and locking key box up front, and she should be ready to roll hopefully. Anywayz, here are a couple not so flattering quick pics as things are still kinda being finished up but you get the idea anyway. Still a work in progress.








Will post some more pic's of the van in action once the wheels start rolling here shortly. If all goes according to plan, I should be close to having this van booked with regular production detailing at which point I already have my eye on a new Mercedes sprinter van and find a place for all my new equipment still sitting in my garage just waiting to go which will be equipped to handle more higher end Clientele

Please let me know what your thoughts are. Any ideas on better storage, cool things you have seen other mobile guys do, and so forth are always big time more than welcome anytime.

Thank you and go easy.

Candyman

 

Wow the inside of this van looks busy, if it's enough space for your to move around and get what you need then that's great but I guess your going to need all that product because your doing production type detailing.

 

2 quick things...the text on the van is pretty difficult to read...i can barely read it here on the screen let alone if i saw you driving by at an intersection. People just dont have the time to see you, find the number, and write it down so you have to make it as easy as possible. seems like you already have planned to have this changed so thats good. I know everyone like fancy text on vans but you are making it difficult for people capture your info.

Do you really need that shelf with the large chemical jugs? i cant imagine you need that much product on board. All the extra stuff is really adding a lot of weight to the vehicle which will lead to having to replace tires and brakes quicker, as well as lower MPG.

 

Looks good, very good.

 

Van looks great. As you mentioned yourself, the lettering is a bit hard to read. Also, I would swap the 5 gallon jugs out for one gallon units of concentrate. It will save you some space and as mentioned, probably some mpg as well. I ran a van like that for about 10 years and never needed gallons of anything other than APC and wheel cleaner.Other than that, looks like you are ready to take on pretty much anything. Very nice.

 

what dont you like about your spot free setup?

 

Here are some pics of my last van. I had everything I needed in here to do any job. It took 3 vans and 5 interior layouts to get to this point regarding what to carry and how much. This was my favorite van but 10mpg was ridiculous.