Ceramic Coating Experiment! Am I just wasting time and money?

PaulMys said:
I really liked this thread. I read every word.

Great experiment and info! :props:
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Appreciate it, I may give it another shot in say 6-7 months or whenever Spring shows up here. Idk how much of it was due to the heavy dew with a large temperature drop and limited cure time and how much was due to only using prep spray and not real decon or polishing.

Still have my Collinite trio to fall back on ;) love using 476 for wheels! 915 for the zen of hand applying and 845 for speed machine application!
 
DMiglio said:
Appreciate it, I may give it another shot in say 6-7 months or whenever Spring shows up here. Idk how much of it was due to the heavy dew with a large temperature drop and limited cure time and how much was due to only using prep spray and not real decon or polishing.

Still have my Collinite trio to fall back on ;) love using 476 for wheels! 915 for the zen of hand applying and 845 for speed machine application!
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I know I'm late to this thread but, like Paul (Mys) said, I both read every word and appreciated this experiment. Thanks DMig!

Also, I think you have us plenty of updates.

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Thank you for your experiences and honesty. We may not know exactly what made the coating lousy, but something can always be learned. I think this shows that an average Joe who thinks they can slap a true coating on their car with no prep or thoughts about cure time will soon understand that this isn’t their grandpa’s wax... hence the high price of having a professional installation with the prep that goes with it.
 
acuRAS82 said:
Thank you for your experiences and honesty. We may not know exactly what made the coating lousy, but something can always be learned. I think this shows that an average Joe who thinks they can slap a true coating on their car with no prep or thoughts about cure time will soon understand that this isn’t their grandpa’s wax... hence the high price of having a professional installation with the prep that goes with it.
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Couldn’t have summed it up any better than that! Thanks for the kind words and also reminding me of why I tried this in the first place, Average Joe!
 
Excellent write up, updates, pics, thoughts/comments/dialog. Appreciate you taking the time, thought, and effort to conduct this experiment and share your findings with us!

And, I agree with Acura, he summed it up well!
 
That’s the way it should be done ceramic coating were invented for daily drivers not show cars...at least I 🤔
 
I've been doing this for quite sometime on many different applications and I've had great results.

You are doing more work then I am, this spot was just McKees coating prep wash inns spray bottle, wiped on and dried and then I applied quartz lite. It's been about 4 months or so and I've only washed the car 2 times in a coin up by just spraying on the soap and then rinsing off.
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Cruz, that’s pretty interesting, I really appreciate you chiming in on what you’re experiencing with a similar situation and the pics to go with it. To double check, all you had was Mckees coating prep wash, used like a waterless wash basically and then applied cquartz-lite on it? No other prep at all like decon of any sort?

Mine only showed beading like that for a week or so and then looked to go downhill from there and at a month I couldn’t stand it and had to do something! If that’s all that you did prep wise I’m really starting to think the morning dew had something to do with it. Unfortunately I think Illinois’ good weather days are behind it and I won’t be able to give this another chance til Spring.
 
DMiglio said:
Cruz, that’s pretty interesting, I really appreciate you chiming in on what you’re experiencing with a similar situation and the pics to go with it. To double check, all you had was Mckees coating prep wash, used like a waterless wash basically and then applied cquartz-lite on it? No other prep at all like decon of any sort?

Mine only showed beading like that for a week or so and then looked to go downhill from there and at a month I couldn’t stand it and had to do something! If that’s all that you did prep wise I’m really starting to think the morning dew had something to do with it. Unfortunately I think Illinois’ good weather days are behind it and I won’t be able to give this another chance til Spring.
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Correct, no other prep at all, I've been trying this with a handful of coatings and all have basically been the same, not all are sold her so I won't mention them but all applied with just the wash and that is it. Here's a pic from just nowView attachment 68282

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Nice to hear your process. I believe the hardest and most time consuming ceramic coatings are the multilayer ones (e.g. Ceramic Pro). If you apply it incorrectly and a high spot appears it can take many hours to fix thru wet sanding to remove and re-apply.
 
so ive done this with left overs of multilayer ceramics as well, granted it hasnt been years so i cant say how true it is or not but its lasted well over a year and still going strong and of course a lot has to do with how its driven daily and teh local envirmoent etc.

but heres the thing. looking back when wax was the one and only things most can get and apply to their cars it was the same thing, clean polish apply for maximum results right? but even then as we all know you would be lucky to hit a few weeks let alone a few months of protection and shine before you had to re-apply. then came sealants with the same thing and now ceramics. of all of them you will almost always hear "the car MUST be corrected before you can apply a ceramic" almost as if the chemical make up of the ceramic can tell the difference between polished and deconed to just washed paint. like if the ceramic would just jump right off the paint if it wasnt polished and clayed before hand. this is not a thing, the ceramic will go on and protect whatever you apply it to in what ever condition its in, same for wax and sealants.

no will the coating last as long on the piant if its not polished first.. IDK so far i have not seen a difference, the only difference ive seen is with swirls. on my daily that i take off road and get scrached to hell from the trees and bushes as i 4x4 though, idk if its corrected or not but i do want to to be protected from teh sun and when i do decide to wash it which is rare i want it to be easy so i do have it ceramic coated and it works great for what its intended to do and thats to protect my cars paint from teh elements.

to kinda of switch subjects here it kinda goes along with clay bar, and how you always hear " to make the paint smooth you need to clay" or "if you dont clay you will marr the paint while polishing" to the first point, my eyes can see the difference between clayed and unclayed paint. i can feel it yes but one im not touching my paint because to see if its smooth and second no one else should be touching my cars paint either. to the second point ive polished countless cars in my 15 years of doing this and ive never made the paint worst then it was by not claying it.

now please dont think that im putting on professional coatings and skipping steps because that is no the case, there is a time and a place for clay, decon, etc but its not every case. some people just want long last protection and thats it, they dont care about the swirls and or that have a lower budget just still want the benefits of ceramics. i think that we have come to a point now to wear we can give them the benefits of ceramics and not do that added steps because their budget may not fit that. and yes many if not all of you here would likely say "i dont want my name attached to that" and thats fine but at the end of the day when you educate with client on all things, give them what they are wanting and at the price they can afford and it gives you the result of a satisfied customer i so notthing wrong with that.
 
Cruzscarwash said:
... there is a time and a place for clay, decon, etc but its not every case. some people just want long last protection and thats it, they dont care about the swirls and or that have a lower budget just still want the benefits of ceramics. i think that we have come to a point now to wear we can give them the benefits of ceramics and not do that added steps because their budget may not fit that. and yes many if not all of you here would likely say "i dont want my name attached to that" and thats fine but at the end of the day when you educate with client on all things, give them what they are wanting and at the price they can afford and it gives you the result of a satisfied customer i so notthing wrong with that.
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Neighbor had asked me a few weeks ago if I had anything that would give him longer and better protection than OTC wax has done. Had him stop by yesterday, quick foam and wash, wipe down with Eraser and then apply CanCoat. No clay, no chemical decon, no other prep....45 minutes start to finish and done. We'll see how that holds up.

He's gonna do his wife's SUV himself, gave him some Gyeon Bathe, Eraser and CanCoat so will watch how that goes as well.
 
BudgetPlan1 said:
Neighbor had asked me a few weeks ago if I had anything that would give him longer and better protection than OTC wax has done. Had him stop by yesterday, quick foam and wash, wipe down with Eraser and then apply CanCoat. No clay, no chemical decon, no other prep....45 minutes start to finish and done. We'll see how that holds up.

He's gonna do his wife's SUV himself, gave him some Gyeon Bathe, Eraser and CanCoat so will watch how that goes as well.
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Sounds great, keep us posted on the results!!

Cruz-I hear everything you say loud and clear, thanks again for everything you’ve added to the thread!

I think far too many people “front” and say things that, if they were in your position, they’d do the same as you. This whole, I won’t coat a car if it’s not getting a 3 or 4 step paint correction because my customers deserve the best and I won’t put my name on anything less, is just to stroke their ego and make you look less than them. Meanwhile, they’re not getting the same business, turning people away or shocking them with a price to install a coating, because it must be corrected and perfected first!
 
Thanks for shareing your work and experience with us DMiglio!

I think also that the dew was it's problem. Maybe a thorough decon would have get you a longer longevity from it. But when dew mess up the cureing it's messing with the hydrophobic top layer of the coating or sealant. It has with higher concentration with the hydrogen and oxygen atoms in water from the dew. When the coating is bonding it switching atom to get the intended chemical layer of the coating. And since the air picks up the oxygen atoms easier it's usually how it's designed. But when the air gets saturated with more oxygen atoms with the dew and or high humidity this gets a problem for a coating to cure properly. That's also why on most coatings you need to be drying any water of the first 24h as it's more intense in the cureing. When this time has passed or certainly before but it's a safety zone of time. It's not affecting the hydrophobic top layer anymore or the mass of the coating so much. Look at as paint and it's need to be outgasing properly. Heck the high humidity messed up my test spot polishing the other day with over 90% could be close to 100%. And what happens it's dusting like crazy! Polish Angel Esclate Lotion and Scholl S20 Black SS was used on brand new Rupes Yellow Foam Pads. And 4 passes per sections with the inch per second of armspeed. And the last pass was just dusting off. Also no cut what so ever. When I looked at the face of the pad I noticed that the polish didn't spreading out like it normaly do. The most extreme was the S20 as it's a gray color. But they where don't far from where I placed the polish spots. Tapped it out on the paint and spread it out on low then raised the speed to 3.5 speed setting on the polisher. Have the backing plate marked and it spinned nicely. Wipe it off the little that hadn't dusted off LOL. And it's a Kia cee'd SW with a softer paint. Got the Scangrip Sunmatch light out and boom nothing was corrected! Either the dew or I have a such of high build up with the LSP I have used so it didn't cut through it LOL. I have honestly been thinking of the later but no a light cutting compound on a Rupes Yellow Foam Pad on a 21mm longthrow polisher should cut through any LSP. The strange thing was that it beads up great on the hood where I did 3 test spots on 3/4 of the hood. And the whole hood has the same beading shapes. I just stood there and scratch my head LOL. Some polishes can gum up instead and you get like long strands out from between the pad and paint. Think it's the older polishes with petroleum based carriers in them. The emulssion water based polishes seems to be dusting like crazy and maybe even gel up in the pad too so it don't spreading out like normaly. I need access to a garage LOL. Heated and climate controlled and measure everything humidity and temperature and all LOL. I gave up!

Please share again if you do some testing later on. It's of a big value for many and for me this was a very interesting testing that you did.

/ Tony
 
BudgetPlan1 said:
Neighbor had asked me a few weeks ago if I had anything that would give him longer and better protection than OTC wax has done. Had him stop by yesterday, quick foam and wash, wipe down with Eraser and then apply CanCoat. No clay, no chemical decon, no other prep....45 minutes start to finish and done. We'll see how that holds up.

He's gonna do his wife's SUV himself, gave him some Gyeon Bathe, Eraser and CanCoat so will watch how that goes as well.
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if it last longer then his OTC wax and his happy with the timeframe, then it did exact what it was supposed to do
 
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