Detailing ruined my Cybertruck

[Tedacules]

yea I’ll be doing my own when it needs it, I’m just cheap like that.

Has anyone done nothing to it yet? Just to see what the Weather does to it over time?

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[HaulingAss]

You are dealing with complete buffoons who just want to make a lot of money with the minimum amount of effort. I still can't believe you paid them $6,000, considering they don't even know what they are doing. I'm a complete amateur and was able to follow Tesla's panel polishing procedures as laid out in their repair manual with excellent results the first time. The secret is to follow the procedure. I know, not much of a secret, right?

I think Gary @CYBERBRITE1 is correct, the buffoons got lazy and didn't remove the sanding residue before slathering on the clear plastic. I wouldn't go to Out of Spec detailing to fix your problems as they will likely create more with their chemical heavy approach.

What works very well for me is the procedure detailed by Tesla. Between every sanding step, I use a clean microfiber with isopropyl alcohol to wipe off the sanding pad residue. If a light pressure is used when sanding, there will be less residue between each sanding step. This is so simple a 5 year old could do it their muscles were developed well enough to operate the sander and wipe off with a rag.

This creates a beautifully smooth and even lustrous sheen over each panel, better than as delivered from the factory (because in the interest of production efficiency Tesla does the bare minimum of sanding to impart the factory texture). If I were going to wrap it clear plastic, something I think looks like crap compared to the bare metal, I would not wrap it until the passivation layer had developed for two days. For the best results you don't want any contaminates on the surface while it's passivating because that could cause it to passivate unevenly. If I were a professional trying to keep customer's car for a minimum of time, I would use Citrasurf 77 to passivate it in one step. CyberBrite would probably work too but I have no experience with it so I would just use what I know works.

This isn't rocket science, the mechanical sanding, cleaning, and letting the stainless steel naturally passivate in fresh air, or accelerating it with the citric acid in Citrasurf 77, gives the bright metal a very thin, self-healing protective layer that naturally stays looking good with nothing more than occasional soap and water washes.

You can't "ruin" a Cybertruck by detailing it. In the worst case scenario, all you have to do is sand it again to expose a new layer of the super hard metal. Your detailers are just lazy, ignorant, and took shortcuts. I imagine they just wanted your $6,000 bucks!

I don't understand the clear plastic film desire to begin with. Not only is it suboptimal to try to protect a super-hard and durable metal finish with a more fragile film of plastic, I think it looks like crap too. And $6,000 for that? The definition of insanity! That film would be completely trashed in 6 months of my typical usage. The metal is tough and can be occasionally sanded back to new. The plastic film has to be peeled off and thrown in the trash.

 

[UberNoob]

Has anyone done nothing to it yet? Just to see what the Weather does to it over time?

For mine, Nope nothing done it’s all still factory. I cleaned some bugs off the frunk with the greens side of a sponge so I gots a few scuffs and scratches on the front. Aside from that and some dirt it still looks good.

 

[jameslook]

Why didn’t you clean it yourself, or did you and it didn’t work? It is hard to blame detailing people for not knowing how to detail a Cybertruck; there just aren’t that many around and the super hard stainless has gotta be difficult to get a uniform look with. What about the guy that polishes Cybertruck’s? For sure they could fix it.

I’m lazy and I trusted them. I asked them, you sure you know what you are doing?
Also the Autobody shop polished out a scratch perfectly so I thought we were good.
This is some sort of weird thing. As you can see the marks were completely different, then they tried to polish it out and then it went totally different again.
Almost like the pad they were using was dirty or something and they couldn’t get the mark out. It’s really weird.

 

[jameslook]

Many thanks! Totally makes sense. I was really hesitant to do any film but I didnt want to keep sanding out scratches. Lesson learned.
I should have just got them to iron -x it and be done with it.

 

[jameslook]

I agree. That is why I don’t understand when he says the mark would t come out. If you keep sanding wouldn’t you get a clean surface???

 

[jameslook]

You are dealing with complete buffoons who just want to make a lot of money with the minimum . I still can't believe you paid them $6,000, considering they don't even know what they are doing. I'm a complete amateur and was able to follow Tesla's panel polishing procedures as laid out in their repair manual with excellent results the first time. The secret is to follow the procedure. I know, not much of a secret, right?

I think Gary @CYBERBRITE1 is correct, the buffoons got lazy and didn't remove the sanding residue before slathering on the clear plastic. I wouldn't go to Out of Spec detailing to fix your problems as they will likely create more with their chemical heavy approach.

What works very well for me is the procedure detailed by Tesla. Between every sanding step, I use a clean microfiber with isopropyl alcohol to wipe off the sanding pad residue. If a light pressure is used when sanding, there will be less residue between each sanding step. This is so simple a 5 year old could do it their muscles were developed well enough to operate the sander and wipe off with a rag.

This creates a beautifully smooth and even lustrous sheen over each panel, better than as delivered from the factory (because in the interest of production efficiency Tesla does the bare minimum of sanding to impart the factory texture). If I were going to wrap it clear plastic, something I think looks like crap compared to the bare metal, I would not wrap it until the passivation layer had developed for two days. For the best results you don't want any contaminates on the surface while it's passivating because that could cause it to passivate unevenly. If I were a professional trying to keep customer's car for a minimum of time, I would use Citrasurf 77 to passivate it in one step. CyberBrite would probably work too but I have no experience with it so I would just use what I know works.

This isn't rocket science, the mechanical sanding, cleaning, and letting the stainless steel naturally passivate in fresh air, or accelerating it with the citric acid in Citrasurf 77, gives the bright metal a very thin, self-healing protective layer that naturally stays looking good with nothing more than occasional soap and water washes.

You can't "ruin" a Cybertruck by detailing it. In the worst case scenario, all you have to do is sand it again to expose a new layer of the super hard metal. Your detailers are just lazy, ignorant, and took shortcuts. I imagine they just wanted your $6,000 bucks!

I don't understand the clear plastic film desire to begin with. Not only is it suboptimal to try to protect a super-hard and durable metal finish with a more fragile film of plastic, I think it looks like crap too. And $6,000 for that? The definition of insanity! That film would be completely trashed in 6 months of my typical usage. The metal is tough and can be occasionally sanded back to new. The plastic film has to be peeled off and thrown in the trash.

Lessons learned. Usually the hard way.

 

[MyFirstElectricTesla]

Not sure if sanding will correct it. It looks tarnished. I sent him an email asking how can we fix it even though he told me they can’t get it out.

I got the similar look when first received my CT more than 2 years ago. It has 2 areas at tailgate like yours and driver's door where to open/close it. I did point them out to the dealer's guy, they drove my CT back to the shop to fix it but not possible. I really needed to have my CT after years of waiting, waited 3 months after paying cash to Tesla and the CT is still a thing back then so I just took it. I though I would wrap it but after been living with it for more than 2 yrs I'm OK now.

 

[HaulingAss]

For mine, Nope nothing done it’s all still factory. I cleaned some bugs off the frunk with the greens side of a sponge so I gots a few scuffs and scratches on the front. Aside from that and some dirt it still looks good.

You don't need abrasives to clean off dried on bugs. Just soak them in a little soap and water or rubbing alcohol and rub them off with a non-abrasive sponge made for non-stick pans. You can fix the fine scratches created by the abrasives embedded in the green side of the sponge by re-polishing the panel to a bright and beautifully even satin finish.

 

[MInnesooooooota]

Bummer.

I had an F-150 I bought in Alberta ruined by a detailer. As you know, lots of chips with the sand / rocks put down instead of salt. The guy I bought the truck from took really good care of it. Apparently had had is "squeejied." I brought it to Minnesota and no one knows about that method of filling in chips.

I got my truck back and it looked like someone had taken a BB gun to it.

And no way to get it squeejied here as the concept doesn't even exist.

 

[HaulingAss]

I got the similar look when first received my CT more than 2 years ago. It has 2 areas at tailgate like yours and driver's door where to open/close it. I did point them out to the dealer's guy, they drove my CT back to the shop to fix it but not possible. I really needed to have my CT after years of waiting, waited 3 months after paying cash to Tesla and the CT is still a thing back then so I just took it. I though I would wrap it but after been living with it for more than 2 yrs I'm OK now.

Don't be ridiculous! First, Tesla doesn't have "dealers" so I don't know what you mean by "the dealer's guy".

Secondly, any problem with the metal finish can be easily and confidently fixed by sanding to expose a fresh surface. If someone tells you differently, rather than being gullible, either fix it yourself or take it to someone who knows what they are talking about.

The amount of fake narratives surrounding the Cybertruck's ultra-hard, gleaming stainless steel shell is just mind-blowing! This ain't rocket science (even if the metal really was born out of rocket science).

 

[REM]

yeah, probably just stick to the original post.

 

[jameslook]

I got the similar look when first received my CT more than 2 years ago. It has 2 areas at tailgate like yours and driver's door where to open/close it. I did point them out to the dealer's guy, they drove my CT back to the shop to fix it but not possible. I really needed to have my CT after years of waiting, waited 3 months after paying cash to Tesla and the CT is still a thing back then so I just took it. I though I would wrap it but after been living with it for more than 2 yrs I'm OK now.

Well that’s the weird part. These marks weren’t there when they sanded the. They appeared after they sanded so…

 

[UberNoob]

You don't need abrasives to clean off dried on bugs. Just soak them in a little soap and water or rubbing alcohol and rub them off with a non-abrasive sponge made for non-stick pans. You can fix the fine scratches created by the abrasives embedded in the green side of the sponge by re-polishing the panel to a bright and beautifully even satin finish.

Yea I know, someday I’ll do that polishing. But I Only did that once wasn’t very smart. Live and learn I suppose.

 

[jameslook]

That doesn’t qualify as ‘ruined’ to me. That said, they definitely messed up. Cyber-acne :-(

Ruined is probably not the right word. I’ve been doing too many stop the scroll Instagram posts

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