Barry's Visit to the Meguiar's Detail Center

It was the 3rd and also the last day before Barry flew back to the States. We had a Friday night party at Meguiar's Detail Center along Jalan Templer and Barry dropped by for a visit and press interview. Here are the pics...

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Barry Meguiar & I

More than 10 years ago when I first started using Meguiar's products (which was the Cleaner/Wax and Clear Coat Body Scrub), I always see Barry Meguiar's photos and videos over the Internet. He's such a wonderful person and I would consider him the father of detailing. He might not need to be an expert in machine polishing like Mike Pennington or Mike Phillips, but his experience is more than enough for him to handle Meguiar's Inc. When he was giving a speech during the dinner, I can feel how passionate he is in managing Meguiar's. Seriously, nothing beats meeting the real person who is "As Seen on TV". Here is a priceless "souvenier" he left for me. I guess it's my first time posting my own photo, except for that tiny blog avatar. :-)

Barry Meguiar is in Town

Car detailing enthusiast will definitely know who Barry Meguiar is. Just in case you don't know who Barry is, he's the president and CEO of Meguiar's Inc. Barry's grandfather, Frank Meguiar, Jr. is the founder of this prestigious international company.

Barry has just touched down at Kuala Lumpur today at around 11AM. He'll be attending the Meguiar's conference held at Sheraton Imperial Hotel later at 6PM till 10PM. I'm assigned to be the official photographer for this event. It'll be an honour for me to meet Barry in person.

Time off from my studies...

KL Vintage & Classic Cars Concourse 2009

I know, I know, I know...I haven't been updating the blog for more than 2 months. Thanks to a few projects running concurrently, plus my CCIE studies. Sometimes I just have to force myself to take a break else I'll start to neglect things/people around me.

Currently KL Vintage & Classic Cars Concourse 2009 is held at Titiwangsa Lake, Kuala Lumpur from 21st till 22nd March 2009. You should check it out if you happen to be around here. I was there shooting for half a day for Meguiar's. This round I use my good old EOS350D coupled with EF24mm F/2.8 and my favourite EOS5D coupled with EF135mm F/2L. Since I had to carry two cameras with lens attached, the Lowepro Flipside 400AW does the job very well.

True enough that prime lens is not as flexible as a zoom lens, but I do enjoy such kind of limitation. The reward is extremely sharp images and ultra thin DOF made possible by the large aperture characteristic.

Alright, here are some of the photos. Click on the Gallery if you wish to view all other photos.

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Experience at Perodua HQ

Two weeks ago, I was assigned a task to perform network assessment at Perodua's HQ in Rawang. One of the few tasks involve studying the current network design and performing site survey throughout the whole campus. During the past few visits, I've visited the casting department, QC department, assembly department, R&D department etc...What's more interesting to me is today's visit. I get to enter the highly restricted area: Paint Shop. It's a huge multi-storey building with conveyor transporting the car chassis going through several areas. It's pretty exciting to watch the robots painting the car, workers performing spot corrections, and cars going through the high temperature oven. Walking in the paint shop is pretty risky, one will easily get into trouble if he/she is not careful. Since the conveyor keeps moving, car chassis keep moving too. For those car chassis which just came out from the oven, it's literally "freshly baked from oven". I can feel the heat even the car is about 50cm away from me. As I walked past the QC area, I noticed a few workers were doing spot sanding and compounding on a few chassis, probably to remove dust nibs. And guess what, I saw tonnes of Meguiar's products in their storeroom of the paint shop. Products which I saw are SOLO system and M80 Speed Glaze. What a great day!

Meguiar's Ad

Meguiar's advertisement photos...

Meguiar's Users

Glass Cleaner Concentrate

50mm, F/3.5, 1/200s, ISO160

There're just a few drops of NXT Glass Cleaner left in the bottle. If I'm not wrong, I got it during the KLIMS 2006, it lasted me almost 2 years. Today I dropped by Meguiar's to pick up a bottle of Meguiar's Glass Cleaner Concentrate (1 gallon) and its 32oz spray bottle and chemical resistant sprayer. This product belongs to the Detailer Brand and it's meant for the production line. Similar to Safe D-Greaser, it's dilutable in the ratio of 10:1. From this bottle of liquid, I can dilute it into 11 gallons of glass cleaner! Let's calculate the cost of every mL as compared to NXT Glass Cleaner...

Glass Cleaner Concentrate's Price: RM115.50
Diluted Volume: 11 gallons = 41.627L
Price per 100mL: RM0.28

NXT Glass Cleaner's Price: RM38
Volume: 24oz = 0.7096L
Price per 100mL: RM5.36

This simple calculation shows that the NXT Glass Cleaner is more than 19 times more expensive than Glass Cleaner Concentrate. It's suitable for people like me who wipes down the glass daily, or even a few times a day.

50mm, F/2.8, 1/160s, ISO100
Canon EOS5D, EF50mm F/1.8 II

Product Shots

Just to share what I shot before I went to bed...Two light sources diffused with umbrellas. The bottle was positioned far enough from the background (which was my cupboard :P) to take advantage of the rapid light fall off and specular highlight (of the umbrellas).

Meguiar's Cleaner/Wax

Meguiar's M82 Swirl Free Polish

Canon EOS5D, EF35mm F/2, Speedlite 580EX (x2), PocketWizard Plus II (x3)

Meguiar's Show Car Detail Center: Grand Opening

28th March 2008, Hypercoat Enterprise.

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Meguiar's New Dual Action Polisher

Image Source: Meguiar's (USA)

This is not the latest news, but certainly I would like to share among all Asian (especially Malaysian) and European detailing enthusiasts. If you've been struggling with the limited choice of ROB (Random Orbital Buffer) and DA (Dual Action) polisher, yet unable to use the old Meguiar's G-100 DA polisher (for 110V source), now you'll certainly fancy this brand new DA polisher by Meguiar's. Most probably it'll come in 240V version, expected to be launched next year. Meguiar's will announce the details during the upcoming 2007 SEMA Show on 30th October 2007. Meanwhile, make use of what you have now and hold on your purchase.