Ceramic coatings!
- Thread starter RobinL
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Probably 'cos you never wash it. If you want to knacker your paint, wash and wipe it a lot.
Thats the sad truth of. Especially if you go with Fairy liquid !!
Id wager that preparation of the paint prior to ceramic coating is where it is at. Environmental factors may influence the cured chemistry somewhat..but that also applies to the paint you started with ?
Wattie
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Can you imagine how good that would look with Ceramic, PPF etcJust another take on this. This is
my mums 27 year old Metro. Solid red paint. Yes it’s only done 32k miles but the paint is shiny and immaculate and guess what is cleaned every weekend with Fairy Liquid
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Can you imagine how good that would look with Ceramic, PPF etc
And it'd be no less or more of a fanny magnet, either.
Chrisb2015
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I have cars with PPF, ceramic coating and traditional wax care. My thoughts as follows
PPF - good idea on factory fresh paint. Accept it is paint protection and not paint perfection and you will be reasonably satisfied. The corners will always lift in the end and it will start to look tatty. If you are OCD it helps in the early stages and may drive you mad in the latter.
Ceramic - I think this might be snake oil. It lasts a long time but I don’t think the scratch resistance is anything remarkable so if like me, you like to polish and correct your paint regularly it’s pointless as you will be removing it. It can also be expensive compared to traditional waxes and sealants. If you can get cheap one it may be a good compromise. Lastly it can water spot really badly and the shine is a little sterile. Did I mention snake oil?
Wax - there was a great thread on this recently with some good waxes. It’s where I would be spending my ££££
PPF - good idea on factory fresh paint. Accept it is paint protection and not paint perfection and you will be reasonably satisfied. The corners will always lift in the end and it will start to look tatty. If you are OCD it helps in the early stages and may drive you mad in the latter.
Ceramic - I think this might be snake oil. It lasts a long time but I don’t think the scratch resistance is anything remarkable so if like me, you like to polish and correct your paint regularly it’s pointless as you will be removing it. It can also be expensive compared to traditional waxes and sealants. If you can get cheap one it may be a good compromise. Lastly it can water spot really badly and the shine is a little sterile. Did I mention snake oil?
Wax - there was a great thread on this recently with some good waxes. It’s where I would be spending my ££££
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Oishi
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Along these lines, a few questions. I'm not up to date on modern paint finishes, I'm more familiar with laquer. (yes I'm old). How many times can you do a full on paint correction? Can you polish off the clear coat, and re apply the clear? When you are doing a correction, are you only dealing with the clear coat? I'm thinking long term preservation of the original paint. Thanks
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Chrisb2015
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Paint correction on modern cars is clear coat only. No colour transfers to the polishing pad, if it does then you have gone through the clear coat. The amount you remove each polish depends on how big and bad the scratches are you are tying to remove. It is normally only microns being removed. If you go through the clear coat you will need a body shop to repaint the panel. You can regularly polish to remove swirls without fear. Full paint correction regularly would probably need careful thought to avoid issues, depending on the level of correction required each time.
rossyl
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For anything on ceramic coatings, there's nothing that hasn't been discussed or tested on this thread
If you need more after that, here's another test!
Think I`m done messing around with coatings, final thoughts...
I`ve messed around with a pretty fair amount of consumer level coatings in the past 18 months including: Cquartz Classic w/ Gyeon Cure Wolfgang Uber Ce
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If you need more after that, here's another test!
2020 Ceramic Coating 1 Year Test
This should be an interesting test for some of you. Before I get ahead of myself I will mention the run rules for this test. This will be a 1 year long
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That’s a lot of reading,Ross! Did you get through it all what did you conclude?
rossyl
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Not the answer that you want...
I initially decided to either coat the car in Kamikaze Ceramic, then I saw the price! So then I decided CQuartz UK v3 + Gliss v2. Which I think is the best value/longevity/beading ceramic coating.
However, as my car lives under a cover, that's removed and replaced frequently. Further, a cover is impossible to keep 100% clean as little bits of grit will always find their way beneath it, then be rubbed on the paintwork. Ceramic coating would NOT provide enough protection.
So, I went full PPF in the end. That's coated with Xpel Fusion Plus.
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That's a perfectly good answer and more or less what I did. My PPF is full front + roof and it's bearing up well after 2 years and about 7k miles. I'm a fan.
Trouble is, PPF is a whole different rabbit hole of makes, types and installers. Where did you get yours done?
RobinL
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That took a bit of reading! Some seriously geeky discussions in ceramics. But no-one came with a test if my £7.99 Mr Fix ceramics!
The more I read the less convinced I am of any significant differences in ceramic treatments?
There are detail differences, but no clear (sic) winners...
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You're almost certainly right, Robin. Horses for courses, and it's clearly a highly competitive market. I'd love to know how much spend is on Marketing vs R&D. I suspect Marketing may be the winner.
One other consideration is longevity. For many people, something that you can clean off fairly so that you can reapply something new would be appealing. Unless your paintwork is flawless there's probably little point spending large on a serious coating to lock in the swirl marks. At some point I'll probably get my car over to Azuri to get the PPF replaced, paintwork correction and then a layer of something good, but right now the PPF is holding up brilliantly (bar a couple of nicks that would have caused some nasty paint damage had I not had PPF) and the paintwork still looks amazing. I enjoy cleaning and waxing but only with products which don't get all demanding about how they get applied. Anything that you can use to f up your paint if you don't polish it off after the exact right amount of time in the exact temp and humidity would annoy me.
One other consideration is longevity. For many people, something that you can clean off fairly so that you can reapply something new would be appealing. Unless your paintwork is flawless there's probably little point spending large on a serious coating to lock in the swirl marks. At some point I'll probably get my car over to Azuri to get the PPF replaced, paintwork correction and then a layer of something good, but right now the PPF is holding up brilliantly (bar a couple of nicks that would have caused some nasty paint damage had I not had PPF) and the paintwork still looks amazing. I enjoy cleaning and waxing but only with products which don't get all demanding about how they get applied. Anything that you can use to f up your paint if you don't polish it off after the exact right amount of time in the exact temp and humidity would annoy me.
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Thanks, Ross, good to know. They sponsor Drivers Union and I've seen some positive comments there as well.
Do they also do the full prep - touching up of small stone chips, that kind of thing?
rossyl
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Yes they do. I was foolish and didn't do the touch ups.
You actually don't need to have your paint corrected before PPF. No one will ever tell you that though.
Here's the evidence
But you really should get touch ups done. I regret not doing that.
MrJoshua
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I had my Lexus RC F-Sport done with Ceramic 9H at a body shop.
They machine polished it before applying and it did look good out of the gates, but did hardly anything to prevent swirl marks on the super-soft paint in the medium term. I'm not sure I'd do it again.
I've been using the new Turtle-Wax Hybrid Ceramic range on my cars recently and the system seems to do a good job and isn't hard to use.
They machine polished it before applying and it did look good out of the gates, but did hardly anything to prevent swirl marks on the super-soft paint in the medium term. I'm not sure I'd do it again.
I've been using the new Turtle-Wax Hybrid Ceramic range on my cars recently and the system seems to do a good job and isn't hard to use.
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Thanks, Ross. I had mine machine polished prior to the front PPF. Hardly surprisingly, the front paint is still in great condition whilst the back is start to get some very light hazing, but it's only obvious in absurdly bright sunshine. Like we have now.
I'd be interested to know what you paid for the PPF (feel free to PM). The general rule of thumb seems to be about £1,500 for the front or 2x that for the whole thing. Less than a respray, plus the paint stays looking great for years. I don't think I'd ever bother getting the back done - it just isn't as vulnerable as the front.
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