Foam cannon applied ceramic coatings--have tips?

wopachop

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Any of you have experience applying ceramic coatings with the foam cannon? Wish there were more videos on this. Im told applying dry and buffing lasts longer on the vehicle. It probably also uses less product.

For quickness i want to use the foam cannon. Ive got the cheap $20 amazon unit and the dial that controls ratio likes to move around on me. Last thing i want to do is blast $40 worth of product onto the vehicle just to have the majority fall onto the ground.

Trying to brainstorm here and wonder if using a very diluted ratio will be more efficient overall. Because you would be applying the product and spreading it with water at the same time. Then finish with a straight water rinse.

Or would it be better to apply less material at a stronger ratio. Then quickly remove the cannon and spread/rinse with water. That might have less wasted product on the ground.

I understand the foam cannon is the quicker more lazy way. Im looking to do this to an RV to maintain UV protection and not spend half a day waxing the darn thing that sits outside 24/7 and gets dusty within days.
 
Never heard of a coating applied by foam cannon. It’s a good idea but probably not possible because it would get all over including plastics and glass.
 
Are you referring to coating soaps? Or are you taking about air brushing the coating liquid on the paint?
 
You add the ceramic coating into the foam cannon. Spray onto the wet vehicle and do a final rinse with clean water. The rinsing is what spreads the product. The foam cannon method does not use towels to spread and level.

Even though the product can be applied dry with towels. Or you can spray onto the wet surface and rinse with water. Or final method is spray onto wet surface using a foam cannon.
 
why not just use a product which is specially designed as spray and rinse..Mckees 37 Hydro Blue Sio2 spray on coating
 
Yes the product i have is designed as a spray and rinse. Checked out the McKees Hydro and it looks like that stuff could also be applied with a foam cannon.
 
I am not understanding why you want to do this? I product like M37 Hydro Blue comes in a spray bottle and all you do is rinse with high pressure water. Nothing more than hose, nozzle & spray bottle is needed.


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I think I understand what you are trying to do here. I would suggest a pump sprayer to spray the product all over one side of the rv, then pressure washer(or strong stream of water)to activate the coating and rinse off. This way you don't have to wear out your hand trying to spray the solution over the entire rv with the trigger on the bottle it comes in. I don't think I would try to do more than one side at a time though.

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Thanks for the replies. Using the foam cannon for speed of application. Imagine how many squirts from a spray bottle it would take to coat a 30 foot RV. Moving the ladder every 3 feet.
 
Yes a garden sprayer is another option. One negative is that i would have to dump $40 worth of product into the garden sprayer so it has enough volume. With the foam cannon you can attach the bottle of product directly. Or pour a few ounces into the bottle that comes with the cannon.

To be clear this is not my idea. Im hoping other people have experience using the foam cannon and have experimented with different strength ratios. Whole goal is to protect the RV without wasting too much expensive product.

Let me find a video.
 
Thanks for the replies. Using the foam cannon for speed of application. Imagine how many squirts from a spray bottle it would take to coat a 30 foot RV. Moving the ladder every 3 feet.

Oh I know how long it takes to do an RV. I applied Wolfgang Uber Ceramic (syringe) using a coating applicator to a 41’ 5th Wheel —- never again. Next time I’m just using Hydro Blue.

If you want to save time use one of the pump Kwazers, that will minimize product waste & they work awesome.


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I have heard of this product but it sounds more like a sealant than a coating. Applied and acts just like wet coat and Hydro2. But they call it a coating.

Straight from their website also "..Recharge can be used as a stand alone product or as a maintenance coating to revitalize other ceramic coating brands."
 
Last edited:
•IMO:
-Trying to wash vehicles with a foam
cannon is about as useless as a monkey
beating on an engine with a hammer.

-Perhaps using a foam cannon to
apply certain types of ‘Coatings’
will be meritorious.


Bob
 
Wonder if Carpro Hydro2 Foam would be a good choice for you? If you already has a clean surface when applying it. You could proberly foam with the foamcannon to a whole panel of the RV and then activate it by PW rinse it off. A longevity around 3 months you would get.

CarPro HydroFoam - 1 Liter

The problem could be when applying hydro2 foam it must be applyied in the shade or out of the sun. Or it will streaking badly on you.

I have a siloxane polymer concentrate that you dilute 5ml to 500ml of water in the foamcannon. It foams really well to my surprise and lets me foam a whole truck before drying on the paint. It can be diluted to 1ml to 500ml in the foamcannon for maintance. And 1:10 and apply as a sealant and get you 6 months longevity and the foamcannon application gives 3-4 months. You can ad it in the wash bucket solution and get a maintance car soap with the same protection. Have great experience with this to fire and forget on a work truck.
 
Thanks the youtube guy i like to watch reviewed that HydroFoam as well in his "spray on coatings" series. The stuff looks like a great way to wash a lightly dusted vehicle and leave behind more protection than you scrubbed off. Unless you always remove existing coating, but are just adding something different on top. Which might help your overall level of protection to stay strong and effective.

I tried a little experiment this morning. Using the foam cannon to coat the whole RV. The goal is to figure out how thin and diluted you can apply the product while still getting protection. Being a novice here i dont really have a clue how to judge protection besides just looking at the beading.

I mixed 1.5 ounces (44ml) of coating with 30ounces of cold tap water. (i have distilled dang it, next time). Now this is a very diluted mixture as the website says to use 250ml per vehicle when using the foam cannon. Thats kinda expensive for my hobbyist tastes when 1000ml cost $60. Especially when 250ml does a "vehicle"......so an RV would require triple or 4x that which equals the entire 60 dollar bottle.

So the plan was shoot this extremely diluted mixture very liberally onto the RV. Coating the same spots over and over. Hopefully spreading evenly and the repetition might cover any of my human error where i could miss a spot. I would watch the bottle and tried to use the 32ounces evenly over all the sides of a 30ft RV. I did not do the roof. I will tomorrow though before the sun comes out.

For a little test i applied more product using the dry method. In 3 different spots i applied about a 1x3 foot section of coating. The directions say it takes 24 hours to cure. So tomorrow morning i will just spray some water on the 3 sections and see if i can tell a difference. If its night a day difference then i guess you can conclude the diluted mixture i sprayed on today didnt work so great. I did the math earlier and think it was $3 of product to spray a 30ft RV.

Oh also in terms of the control on the foam cannon i started with it set to 50%. But that seemed to not use much product at all. Went to 75% and ended with it set to full 100% foam mixture and just watched the bottle to try and use 32 ounces on the rig for a base line type of test.

My initial thoughts are i need to go way stronger with the mixture. I did spray the product 100% dilution straight from the bottle onto a couple sections of the trailer. Then rinsed off. I didnt see a big difference. So maybe the diluted mixture did lay down a tad bit of coating.

One final topic is safety. When you use a spray bottle, seems like so much product gets wasted right into the air. Wasted money, and also youre breathing it. If the ceramic coating is advertised to stick to anything. Clear coat, metal wheels, rubber tires, .......your lungs? I dont want to breath the stuff and wore a straight up respirator. There is a mist of product flying everywhere when using the pressure washer. Using a spray bottle 2 feet from your face is also a bit scary. So yeah big whah whah ending here. If you read it all thanks and excited to hear peoples thoughts.

Please feel free to reply to any of the topics.
 
To update the thread i sprayed water on the 3 areas that i applied the coating dry. At first i couldnt really see a difference at all. But after time the areas i applied dry seemed to have less water beading on them. Which makes me think it has a more effective layer of coating that is repelling the water.

In the picture i applied the coating dry in a horizontal section under the windows. Again in person it was hard to see a difference. But looking at the pic i can see where the coating was applied dry.

My novice opinion at this point is that my super diluted mixture is not adequate. Especially for the first layer of coating.
 
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