Audios S6
Active member
- Oct 12, 2011
- 1,634
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Full disclosure: I received this product as part of a giveaway and agreed to write a review. I will do my best to keep this unbiased.
Product description from the AG website:
Think of Black Label Diamond Coating Booster as a spray wax for coated vehicles. Formulated using a less concentrated blend of the same nano-glass ceramic particles found in Black Label Diamond Surface Coating, Diamond Coating Booster instantly restores the gloss, slickness, and water beading that made you speechless the first time you applied a Black Label Diamond coating. What’s more, Diamond Coating Booster can be used on paint, wheels, glass, chrome, plastic trim, and virtually all other hard exterior surfaces!
Black Label Diamond Coating Booster is compatible with paint, wheel, and glass coatings from various manufacturers. If your vehicle was treated with a permanent coating, and you want to amp up the gloss and slickness, apply a quick coat of Diamond Coating Booster - it only takes minutes to apply! Best of all, Diamond Coating Booster actually extends the life of your coating, further protecting your investment. It’s instant gratification!
As your vehicle is exposed to the elements, your coating of choice slowly begins to degrade, and so does the gloss, slickness, and water beading. Black Label Diamond Coating Booster fills in any microscopic pits, pores, and valleys on the coated surface, making it look, feel, and perform as good as the day you first applied the coating.
Directions from AG website:
Directions:
Shake well.
Ensure surface is clean and cool the touch.
Spray product directly onto surface and evenly distribute using a Gold Plush Microfiber Towel or Lake Country Coating Applicator.
Work product into surface until it disappears.
Buff off excess residue with a Gold Plush Microfiber Towel.
The bottle also notes that it can be used as a stand alone LSP with up to 6 months of durability.
Upon arrival at my door, it was about 5*F outside. Based on the normal delivery time at my house, the product probably at outside for 6+ hours. When I got it, neither were frozen. I did ask Nick about this and he assured me there are no issues with these products freezing.
My initial thoughts are that it smells like IPA, it would be nice to have a more pleasant fragrance or less noticeable odor. The trigger sprayer puts out a very fine mist, which is great. The spread of the mist is quite narrow compared to my typical gray trigger sprayer, so I have to sweep my hand as I'm applying to get even coverage- you'll note later this becomes a mute point for me. I'm not a fan of a bottle with a long and narrow base, it's too easy to tip over - but that's not a problem this time since I was stuffing the bottle in my sweatshirt pocket. Otherwise, the bottle is a good size to be handled when spraying, does not feel awkward in my hand. The sprayer has a small on-off switch which I like - my 2 year old can't start spraying this stuff everywhere when I'm not looking.
First up was my wife's car, this car has the bumpers, mirror cap and most other trim pieces coated with opti-coat for about 18 months, it get's hit with permanon platinum every 3-4 weeks. It also has Gtechnique C4 on most of the black plastic trim. The rest of the car has BFWD topped with Dodo light fantastic and many applications of Aquawax, D156 and OCW. The car was sprayed off, then got a 2BM with CG CW+G and dried with MFT korean WW towels.
I was taking this product to the environmental extreme: Panel temps and air temps were near freezing and humidity was 1000%. But that's the reality of a maintenance wash in Minnesota.
Is it freezing? Yes.
I started by priming my MF towel with 2 sprays of the coating booster. Then proceeded to apply about 3 sprays per panel and wipe on in two directions. Initially, this worked very well on the hood, the product faded right in, no buffing was required. I did run a towel over it for good measure and found the surface to be quite slick. After the hood, things went down hill a bit on the application side, I'm guessing that the hood was a bit warmer than the rest of the panels due to the motor. When spraying the rest of the panels, I found the product did not want to spread very well and left some very obvious high spots right where it was sprayed. These high spots took quite a bit of effort to remove, way more than other spray wax and detail products.
High spot - this took some elbow grease to remove, which made me a bit uncomfortable about marring even hard audi paint. But I did not find any ice crystals in the towel after buffing.
Final results with some beading from a trigger sprayer
B-pillar
Corner of hood, you can see the bigger beads starting to run
Done
The look of PBL Coating booster on the light silver is ridiculously glassy. Honestly among the best looking products I've used on my cars.
Here's a comparison - same paint code from audi on both cars. The foreground is PBL coating booster, the background is DG aquawax. Both have BFWD+Dodo Light fantastic+numerous spray waxes prior to current LSP. The PBL coating booster blew aquawax out of the water - I should hope it does for 10 times the cost.
Next up was Sonyhome's 2014 Lexus IS350 F-sport that was just coated with opti-coat a few weeks ago. Temps in the garage were near freezing again. I tried the same application method as above with similar results. Then I tried a different method: spray directly onto a yellow foam applicator and apply to the paint - this worked 100% better. There were still a few spots that took a little extra buffing, but not anywhere near as difficult as my first try. The majority went on easy, but the foam applicator was a bit grabby. There is definitely "stuff" in the booster bottle. You can see in the following pictures a powdery residue that is likely the nano-ceramic/silica magic.
And in the pad
We would find this at the end of a wiping pattern and at seams in the PPF. This stuff wiped off super easy, did not want to stick to the paint at all. I'm curious if this will clog up microfiber towels over time.
The PBL coating booster look on black was not as pronounced as on the silver, but is was still a great looking product. Sonyhome is interested in a coating topper for his own use, so we also tried Permanon platinum on the front bumper. I would dread doing this bumper with anything other than permanon or Hydro2; just too many angles. Coating the grill a few weeks back also drove me insane, I can't imagine adding a booster on a regular basis unless it was permanon or hydro2. Permanon was definitely slicker and gave a slightly wetter look to the paint. Application of permanon was also substantially easier. I do not expect permanon to last anywhere near as long as PBL coating booster, my experience has been 4-8 weeks for permanon depending on environment.
Lexus final shots - bumper and wheels done with permanon
One thing that I noted during application was a build-up on the spray nozzle. Halfway through the lexus, the nozzle started to squirt instead of mist. After cleaning off the residue from the nozzle, it misted just fine again. Below is a pic of the nozzle after finishing the car (essentially build-up from 1/2 a car).
Final thoughts
PBL coating booster did have a little learning curve in extreme cold, but ended up performing admirably after getting a method down. The glassy look is insane on light colored cars. Very good looking on black cars, but not as pronounced as the light color vehicles.
Pros:
Super glassy look
Easy to use after the learning curve
Can be used in extremely low temperatures
super fine mist from sprayer
can be used as a stand alone LSP
Cons:
Learning curve in low temps
build-up on nozzle caused squirting
cost - this stuff is expensive
Product description from the AG website:
Think of Black Label Diamond Coating Booster as a spray wax for coated vehicles. Formulated using a less concentrated blend of the same nano-glass ceramic particles found in Black Label Diamond Surface Coating, Diamond Coating Booster instantly restores the gloss, slickness, and water beading that made you speechless the first time you applied a Black Label Diamond coating. What’s more, Diamond Coating Booster can be used on paint, wheels, glass, chrome, plastic trim, and virtually all other hard exterior surfaces!
Black Label Diamond Coating Booster is compatible with paint, wheel, and glass coatings from various manufacturers. If your vehicle was treated with a permanent coating, and you want to amp up the gloss and slickness, apply a quick coat of Diamond Coating Booster - it only takes minutes to apply! Best of all, Diamond Coating Booster actually extends the life of your coating, further protecting your investment. It’s instant gratification!
As your vehicle is exposed to the elements, your coating of choice slowly begins to degrade, and so does the gloss, slickness, and water beading. Black Label Diamond Coating Booster fills in any microscopic pits, pores, and valleys on the coated surface, making it look, feel, and perform as good as the day you first applied the coating.
Directions from AG website:
Directions:
Shake well.
Ensure surface is clean and cool the touch.
Spray product directly onto surface and evenly distribute using a Gold Plush Microfiber Towel or Lake Country Coating Applicator.
Work product into surface until it disappears.
Buff off excess residue with a Gold Plush Microfiber Towel.
The bottle also notes that it can be used as a stand alone LSP with up to 6 months of durability.
Upon arrival at my door, it was about 5*F outside. Based on the normal delivery time at my house, the product probably at outside for 6+ hours. When I got it, neither were frozen. I did ask Nick about this and he assured me there are no issues with these products freezing.
My initial thoughts are that it smells like IPA, it would be nice to have a more pleasant fragrance or less noticeable odor. The trigger sprayer puts out a very fine mist, which is great. The spread of the mist is quite narrow compared to my typical gray trigger sprayer, so I have to sweep my hand as I'm applying to get even coverage- you'll note later this becomes a mute point for me. I'm not a fan of a bottle with a long and narrow base, it's too easy to tip over - but that's not a problem this time since I was stuffing the bottle in my sweatshirt pocket. Otherwise, the bottle is a good size to be handled when spraying, does not feel awkward in my hand. The sprayer has a small on-off switch which I like - my 2 year old can't start spraying this stuff everywhere when I'm not looking.
First up was my wife's car, this car has the bumpers, mirror cap and most other trim pieces coated with opti-coat for about 18 months, it get's hit with permanon platinum every 3-4 weeks. It also has Gtechnique C4 on most of the black plastic trim. The rest of the car has BFWD topped with Dodo light fantastic and many applications of Aquawax, D156 and OCW. The car was sprayed off, then got a 2BM with CG CW+G and dried with MFT korean WW towels.
I was taking this product to the environmental extreme: Panel temps and air temps were near freezing and humidity was 1000%. But that's the reality of a maintenance wash in Minnesota.
Is it freezing? Yes.
I started by priming my MF towel with 2 sprays of the coating booster. Then proceeded to apply about 3 sprays per panel and wipe on in two directions. Initially, this worked very well on the hood, the product faded right in, no buffing was required. I did run a towel over it for good measure and found the surface to be quite slick. After the hood, things went down hill a bit on the application side, I'm guessing that the hood was a bit warmer than the rest of the panels due to the motor. When spraying the rest of the panels, I found the product did not want to spread very well and left some very obvious high spots right where it was sprayed. These high spots took quite a bit of effort to remove, way more than other spray wax and detail products.
High spot - this took some elbow grease to remove, which made me a bit uncomfortable about marring even hard audi paint. But I did not find any ice crystals in the towel after buffing.
Final results with some beading from a trigger sprayer
B-pillar
Corner of hood, you can see the bigger beads starting to run
Done
The look of PBL Coating booster on the light silver is ridiculously glassy. Honestly among the best looking products I've used on my cars.
Here's a comparison - same paint code from audi on both cars. The foreground is PBL coating booster, the background is DG aquawax. Both have BFWD+Dodo Light fantastic+numerous spray waxes prior to current LSP. The PBL coating booster blew aquawax out of the water - I should hope it does for 10 times the cost.
Next up was Sonyhome's 2014 Lexus IS350 F-sport that was just coated with opti-coat a few weeks ago. Temps in the garage were near freezing again. I tried the same application method as above with similar results. Then I tried a different method: spray directly onto a yellow foam applicator and apply to the paint - this worked 100% better. There were still a few spots that took a little extra buffing, but not anywhere near as difficult as my first try. The majority went on easy, but the foam applicator was a bit grabby. There is definitely "stuff" in the booster bottle. You can see in the following pictures a powdery residue that is likely the nano-ceramic/silica magic.
And in the pad
We would find this at the end of a wiping pattern and at seams in the PPF. This stuff wiped off super easy, did not want to stick to the paint at all. I'm curious if this will clog up microfiber towels over time.
The PBL coating booster look on black was not as pronounced as on the silver, but is was still a great looking product. Sonyhome is interested in a coating topper for his own use, so we also tried Permanon platinum on the front bumper. I would dread doing this bumper with anything other than permanon or Hydro2; just too many angles. Coating the grill a few weeks back also drove me insane, I can't imagine adding a booster on a regular basis unless it was permanon or hydro2. Permanon was definitely slicker and gave a slightly wetter look to the paint. Application of permanon was also substantially easier. I do not expect permanon to last anywhere near as long as PBL coating booster, my experience has been 4-8 weeks for permanon depending on environment.
Lexus final shots - bumper and wheels done with permanon
One thing that I noted during application was a build-up on the spray nozzle. Halfway through the lexus, the nozzle started to squirt instead of mist. After cleaning off the residue from the nozzle, it misted just fine again. Below is a pic of the nozzle after finishing the car (essentially build-up from 1/2 a car).
Final thoughts
PBL coating booster did have a little learning curve in extreme cold, but ended up performing admirably after getting a method down. The glassy look is insane on light colored cars. Very good looking on black cars, but not as pronounced as the light color vehicles.
Pros:
Super glassy look
Easy to use after the learning curve
Can be used in extremely low temperatures
super fine mist from sprayer
can be used as a stand alone LSP
Cons:
Learning curve in low temps
build-up on nozzle caused squirting
cost - this stuff is expensive
