Corey you bring up an interesting point, one that I’ve been mulling over ever since I started using OC/OG many months back. However I think you are neglecting what I would call normal paint maintenance.
I think that you would agree that if you have prepped your paint and applied OC/OG correctly you should see beading like no other product. However at some point in the future the OC surface is going to need maintenance. At that point you are going to change the beading properties of OC and the paint surface will then assume the beading properties of whatever product you use. Some of us don’t like the non slick feel of an OC application, so we immediately top it with Poli-Seal (PS) and then maintain after washing with Optimum Car Wax (OCW). For others reading, as Corey already knows this, this is a standard recommendation by Dr. G for maintenance of an OC application. I also presume that their latest product the spray able version of PS, GPS could be substituted for PS.
My point is nothing lasts forever, therefore maintenance will eventually be required and hence the beading characteristics of your finish will change, but the underlying protection of OC should not be affected. I maintain my family’s vehicles and all the vehicles have been OC’ed or OG’d and maintained the same way. Two of the vehicles aren’t garaged and so I get to observe the beading characteristics each morning after it has rained. Both these vehicles are normally washed once a week but don’t always have OCW applied after each wash due to time constraints, but they do bead reasonably well. I certainly wouldn’t call the beading fantastic, the vertical surfaces are very good, the horizontal not so good, but they always look perfect after they have been washed and require minimal care.
So the question I’ve been mulling over the last 6 months is has the OC’d surface really made a difference to the appearance and maintenance of these vehicles. In all honesty I can’t really say. I doubt that my previous regime of BFWD would have held up as long as from past experiences it would have had to have been repeated at least a couple of times within that period to achieve the same results.
I can also easily observe a number of neighbour’s car that I have OC’d. None of these vehicles are particularly well maintained. None have had PS and OCW applied and these vehicles still bead well after rain. Since I haven’t washed any of them, I can’t report on the actual finish, but from the distance they do look good.
Layering OC/OG
This brings me to the subject of layering OC. I was not aware until a day or two ago that you could layer OC/OG, but I’ve often thought about trying. Well the following experiment may shed some more light on the change in beading characteristics of OC. I probably should make this a new thread, but since you seem to experiment about as much as I do, I’ll tack it on to here.
This experiment wasn’t originally about OC, but about MF pads. On the last couple of corrections I had done I decided to try MF pads and D300. I wasn’t overly impressed with D300 as compared to M105, but I would say it is a reasonable product to use as an intermediate polish after M105 much the same as one would use Menz P0203S after M105. What did impress about the D300/MF is that it appeared to flatten the paint adding greater clarity to the paint. I surmised that the thinness of the MF pad and the extra pressure required for D300 was the reason for this flattening affect. This gave me the idea that perhaps the MF polishing pad with either 85RD or Optimum Final Finish (OFF) might be able to approach the type of finish that you can get with 85RD on blue with a rotary.
I’ve never been impressed with either a blue pad or black pad using 85RD with a DA as I think the pads are too soft for 85rd used with a DA. The only pad I’ve ever had reasonable results for jewelling with 85RD with a DA is the Crimson pad, so consequently I’ve always finished with a rotary.
As I didn’t have enough time available while doing the corrections, I decided to do the experiment on the already OG’d bonnet of my car. While the MF polishing tests themselves where interesting in that both products produced a better finish on this car than I’ve ever seen before with a DA (still not as good as the rotary) I’d still would like to do some more testing on different paints before coming to any definite conclusions re the MF polishing pads. While doing the test I read about the ability of the new OC/OG to do layering, so since my present syringe of OG was the new stuff, the experiment got expanded to include layering of OG.
After the polishing and prep was complete, I OG’d the bonnet and waited about 22 hours before attempting the second coat. Prior to the second coat/layer I thought I’d try a light polish with PS on a red pad in an attempt for the ultimate finish. This was about when the test started to go pear shaped. Obviously because the PS contains some Carnauba, I needed to re prep the surface again to ensure a squeaky clean surface for the OG, so I used my normal prep which is the equivalent of your Dawn dishwashing liquid. I don’t like IPA at any concentration and have always preferred to use a strong detergent to remove polishing oils in preparation for OG or any other sealant. Obviously this last step of final polishing with PS between layers is something I haven’t done previously. When rinsing off, I immediately noticed absolutely no beading at all. The surface was dead flat with the water just sitting there. So what happened to the beading and the OG?
We all know detergents won’t remove OG, so that just leaves PS that must have done the damage. I really find this surprising and don’t actually have any explanation for it, because Dr. G and Chris have stated many times that PS is perfectly safe to use on OC and it will not compromise the protection provided by OC. From this experiment that certainly doesn’t appear to be the case.
I’d be really interested if you or anyone else would repeat this test just to confirm that you too get the same result.
I’ve since added the second layer of OG without any problems. It is has now been 24 hours since the second coat and I’ve repeated the detergent washing routine and the OG is beading just like you would expect, so the only obvious conclusion is that the PS removed the first coat of OG.
Chris I hope you are reading this and would pass along my comments to Dr. G. I’d be very interested in his response.
To anyone reading this please don’t confuse the issues here. My concern is not about layering OG, that test was certainly successful. However the layering test did introduce a new problem (PS removing OG) that I was not previously aware of.
My apologies for the very long post, I should have made it a separate thread.
