New with Cquartz question

MeanMike

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Hello, I'm somewhat new. I joined not long ago but never posted. I'm just a hobbyist that likes to keep my personal rides clean.
My daily is an 07 Ram 1500 that I haven' taken the best care of. My play toy is an 09 CTSV that the previous owner didn't take the best care of. My wife is in between daily drivers so as soon as we find something it will get the full treatment.

My Cquartz question.

I recently decided to try a coating. CQUK. I wanted to use it on my truck first because it's outside 24/7 and gets the most use. I cleaned, clayed and polished it with Meguiars M83 on my Rupes 15. Only one step because it's huge and it's silver. I can't see a swirl in the paint in the best light anyways. But I wanted to get the grime out of the paint and get a good base for the coating. After polishing, I wiped the whole truck down with CarPro Eraser, then on to the coating. It was a 60-70 degree day and other than the roof, I did it all inside my garage. The coating seemed to go on well, I worked it in 2' square sections for a couple minutes, gave it a minute or two to flash and buffed it off with the suede micro fiber. It took me about 2 hours to do one coat on the whole truck. I followed up after that 2 hours with a coat of reload. That was 3 weeks ago. I sprayed some water on a couple days later just to see how well the water ran off and it was great.

Yesterday I washed the truck for the first time since then. Rinsed, foam cannoned with Meg's gold class, rinsed then hand washed with gold class on a microfiber mitt. I blew it dry which seemed to be more work that I thought it would be. Then dried the remaining water with a plush microfiber. A few hours later I was checking the paint and it seemed very "dry". It was squeaky like there was no protection. The water beads on it, but does not run off. It seems like the coating is gone and the water beads because the paint is polished. Some areas are still slightly slick and some are "squeaky". I hit it with reload and it seems slick again, but that's probably only because of the reload.

Is it possible for it to come off that quick? Or is it more likely I buffed to quickly after coating? On silver it's extremely hard to see it flash.
 
I have personally seen Megs gold class "clog" a coating before. Not necessarily saying that's what's going on here but the so called conditioners in that soap don't play well with a coating. It won't remove it but can have an effect on hydrophobics. I would stick with a soap designed for coated vehicles such as Carpro Reset or Mckees 37 extreme foam shampoo.
 
Thanks, I never thought of that possibility.

That was the last of my Gold Class. I have some Optimum Car Wash to try also, but I was planning to use ONRWW from here out. It's just too hard to "rinse" wash this monster without the roof drying before I can get back to dry it. Would the two optimum products be better?

I have the CQUK on the V and enough left to do whatever we buy my wife, so I want to make sure I'm treating it right in the future.
 
Sounds like what you are exhibiting is normal. Some coatings are not that slick. This is one reason why some coating manufactures offer some sort of rejuvenation/maintenance product (ala Reload, Ech2o).

I agree with Justin on Gold Class shampoo. It can mask the behavior.
 
I agree with Mike and Justin about the Megs Gold class. It never really rinses well for me. If you want to stay in the Megs fam for soap, I'd recommend Hyper wash. Or get CarPro reset, ECH2O, Hydrofoam (which is awesome) to maintain.
 
I hope you guys are right. I was pretty frustrated when I thought that all the coating work was for nothing.

Something that may have contributed. I used more soap than normal on this one just because I was almost out and wanted to try the new stuff. I wanted to empty the bottle of gold class because I hate to let things go to waste. Also, the horizontal surfaces seemed more squeeky than the vertical. I guess that makes sense because the foam sat there and also from the soap sitting during the hand wash.
 
I used more soap than normal on this one just because I was almost out and wanted to try the new stuff. I wanted to empty the bottle of gold class because I hate to let things go to waste. Also, the horizontal surfaces seemed more squeaky than the vertical. I guess that makes sense because the foam sat there and also from the soap sitting during the hand wash.

It really does sound like the coating's behavior is masked by whatever is left behind by Gold Class. The coating installation process that you described sounds okay and so I strongly doubt that any sort of permanent damage was done by a car soap. Cleaning the paintwork with a product that does not "leave behind" any sort of gloss enhancers, wax, polymers, whatever, should help to unmask the water beading that you desire.

McKee's N-914 is a multi-purpose product that does not leave behind any sort of pesky residue. If you like to rinseless wash your vehicles I highly, highly recommend N-914.

McKee’s 37 N-914 Rinseless Wash
 
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