Lighting

[eddie926]

How many flourescent shop lights do you think it would take to make sufficient light in a 19X20 garage for detailing? I have a 1000Watt Halogen rack on a tripod that I used the other night on my first night time detailing, and it made some decent light, but it was a pain working around it and move it and having to have it on just the right angle to see. Plus it gives off a lot of heat, etc.

[OCDetails]

I've got two 500w halogens on a tripod that I move around the vehicle. It is really the only way to get the light were you need it on the side of the car. I've got a couple 250w halogens mounted on the celing to give more light, but I rarely need them. The ones on the tripod do the trick. Sure it is a pain to move them around, but so is polishing out swirls on a black truck at night. lol Some things are simply a pain, but they work.

[eddie926]

That looks exactly like what I was doing the other night. I've got a tripod with two 500Watt heads. Polish, move, look, move, angle, more polishing. That's why I was thinking if I actually went pro I'd want to try to recreate daylight in my garage . But, knowing that you do it that way too tells me it must be an ok way to go.

Thanks for the input.

[OCDetails]

The big thing is to plug your polisher and your lights in at opposite ends of the garage so that the cords aren't ever tangled. Move the lights around one side of the vehicle and the polisher around the other. That will also help keep the cords untangled. Nothing would be worse than to pull the power cord and tip the tripod over onto the hood of a Porsche or something like that. It would be terrible for it to happen to any car, but especially bad if the car was someone's baby.