Mike Phillips
Active member
- Dec 5, 2022
- 51,004
- 7
Review: Wolfgang Uber SiO2 Coating Wash
Wolfgang Uber SiO2 Coating Wash
BEFORE
Zero water beading Zero hydrophobic action
AFTER
Hydrophobic Water Beading from ONLY washing with Wolfgang Uber SiO2 Coating Wash
Wash-n-Coat
What makes this car wash unique is that like a traditional wash-n-wax, where a car wash will both clean and also leave behind some wax gloss and protection, the Wolfgang Uber SiO2 Coating Wash will clean and leave behind some coating gloss and protection plus all the benefits from a ceramic paint coating.
In fact, if you take a car that has been neglected and has no visible protection on the paint, simply using this product to wash your car will VISIBLEY create high surface tension on the surface, which will cause water to bead-up. You get the effect of a ceramic coating by simply washing your car. Repeated washing enhances this characteristic.
Preventative Maintenance - Preserving your car's finish
The most important "simple" thing you can do - wash your car
The factory clear layer of paint on modern cars is 2 mils thin. Your average post-it note is 3 mils thin. Hold a post-it note between your thumb and finger and it's pretty easy for you to wrap your mind around just how thin 2 mils is. It's THIN!
Now lets go deeper down this Rabbit Hole...
All the UV protection is in the clear layer and it has a half-life of 5 years. This means if you buy a brand new car in the year 2015 - by the year 2020, (5 years later), half of the UV protection that was in the clear paint when it was sprayed onto the car by a robot on the assembly line is now gone. I don't know where it goes but from my understanding, it's just kind of gets used up doing it's job - protecting your car's paint from the sun.
While it's a great practice to use products on the TOP of your car's paint that provide UV protection - a more important first step is to take care of the paint itself so IT doesn't degrade and that important first step is keeping your car's paint clean. This means one of two things,
1: Never drive the car. Park it in the garage and leave it there as this way it will stay clean.
2: Wash the car on a regular basis to remove any and all dirt and other substances like road film off the paint.
I don't know about you but I drive my car. I don't have the luxury of not driving it. So it gets dirty and I wash it often as I know all this stuff already. Plus I like driving a clean, shiny car.
When it comes to washing your car there are things you can do to do it right and there are things you shouldn't do because that would be doing it wrong. Below I'll show you a new product in the Wolfgang line specifically for ceramic coated cars PLUS some cool tools to make washing fast and easy. If you want to know how to do it wrong you'll have to go somewhere else - I don't teach or practice bad technique.
First gather your supplies - (see my comments at the very bottom of this review about the items in the pictures)
Note the Bug Sponge on the car? Look past the car at all the Love Bugs on the front clip of the BMW.
Step 1: Blast loose dirt off car first. (sorry no pictures but most of you already know this as it's fairly elementary stuff)
After ONLY rinsing car off - Zero water beading Zero hydrophobic action
Step 2: Dip wash mitt into wash solution and then starting at the top, wash one major body panel at a time and then rinse.
Look at the water beading after only washing and now rinsing...
AFTER - washing and rinsing
Hydrophobic Water Beading from ONLY washing with Wolfgang Uber SiO2 Coating Wash. Now this is what you would call a Maintenance Wash
Step 3: Dry any standing water using your favorite drying chamois or blow water off with a car dry.
There's always a sense of pride when it comes to driving around a beautiful, clean shiny car.
Ready to plow into more Love Bugs in style on the drive home!
Review
I spend a lot of time washing cars. That's because I detail cars and before I can do any paint correction I first have to get the car clean and here at Autogeek we do a lot of projects and almost all of them need a clean car and I seem to always be the lucky guy that gets to wash the car. My first video I ever made back in 2006 was, How to wash your car show car style, and I'm kind of a clean car fanatic, so yeah... I wash a lot of cars. When it's my own cars, I even enjoy it. I'll often times "time" when I wash my car to do it before I go to the gym. I know stretching before washing a car is important so you don't hurt yourself when lifting weights. I hate stretching out. So I use car washing as a way to stretch out. If you're focues, you can do a great job of stretching out all the major muscle groups simply by relaxing and washing your car.
Washing ceramic coated cars
If you have a ceramic coating on your car, whether you installed it yourself, (do-it-yourself), or you paid someone to do it for you, (do-it-for-me), sooner or later someone has to wash the car. And if you do it carefully the coating will do two things,
Those are two very different things. You can have a coating last a long time but not look good a long time simply by the way you wash your car. Mostly it comes down to using clean wash mitts and careful technique but it also helps to have a great car wash and that's what the Wolfgang Uber SiO2 Coating Wash is - a great coating car wash. What makes it different is that all it does is clean and lubricate the paint. And that's all you want out of a car wash if you have a coated car. The cleaning agents are to dissolve, loosen and remove oily road film and other dirt and pollution that builds-up on your car's exterior as you drive it day after day. The lubricants - well they lubricate the surface so your wash mitt glides over the surface instead of grinding the dirt into the finish. (good technique is also important). And then you rinse so the coating is clean while leaving SiO2 behind to enhance gloss and maintain protection. That's how the Wolfgang Uber SiO2 Coating Wash works.
A couple of things I noticed about this car wash solutions.
1: Very silky and slippery to the touch.
That's what you're looking for from a great car wash solution for any car and especially a coated car.
2: Not a lot of suds.
I'm not a chemist but I think that the ingredients that make the car wash slippery also reduce surface tension, which is what holds a soap bubble together instead of simply popping. So while we all like to see mountains of foamy suds in our car wash I'm pre-warning you you're not going to see that with this car wash soap but you are going to feel the slick, slippery feeling when dunking a wash mitt into your bucket of soapy water and then gliding your wash mitt over the surface of a body panel.
3: Free rinsing
With a coated car and a coating wash, I notice the wash water slips or flies off car body panels fast and without any drag or resistance like some car wash soaps. This simply makes rinsing faster and also saves water.
4: Faster drying.
That's one of the cool things about coated cars. Because water beads-up readily, (and also streams off the body panels), the water would much rather reside in a drying chamois than on a body panel or blow off with a strong blast of air.
If you have a coated car, I'd recommend switching over to a coating wash. Measure out the water in your bucket, (see what I say about the CLEAR buckets below), and then measure out your coating wash solution. Do not use the Glug-Glug method I always joke about. With this wash you want to be precise as too much simply wastes product.
True Maintenance Wash
By simply washing your car, something you're going to do anyways, you can easily and effortlessly maintain a hydrophobic surface that repels water keeping your car cleaner longer and also maintaining the protection.
On Autogeek.com
Wolfgang Uber SiO2 Coating Wash - 16 ounces
Wolfgang Uber SiO2 Coating Wash - 1 gallon
The car washing essentials
If you have read a lot of my how-to articles and reviews you have no doubt seen in the pictures that every time I wash a car I have certain key tools to help me work fast and efficiently. Below are what I consider the minimum essentials for washing your own car. This doesn't include the brushes and products for washing and cleaning wheels, just for washing the car.
My comments after each item.
Grit Guard Universal Detailing Cart
Most of us wash our cars more than anything else we do to the car besides drive it. Without a car like you see in the pictures above, your bucket is on the ground. Think about how many times the rest of your life you're going to wash your car and then how many times you're going to BEND OVER to dip your wash mitt into your bucket each time you wash your car. That's a lot of bending over. Me? I don't bend over. Get the cart. Choke on the price and get it over with and then thank me later.
Professional 5 Gallon Wash Bucket- CLEAR
If you already have a 5-gallon bucket skip this purchase. If you don't, add one to your shopping car and get the clear buckets. They have graduated lines for each gallon of water. This way, if you want 3 gallons or 4 gallons or 2 gallons, the marks are clearly visible on the outside of the bucket so you don't have to guess when you want a specific volume of water.
The Grit Guard Insert
Grit Guard Washboard
Both the Grit Guard Insert and the Grit Guard Washboard are essential and I think it should be pretty much self-explanatory as to why.
Micro-Chenille Wash Mitt 4-Pack
Love these mitts. The Chenille mitts Autogeek sells don't fall apart when you wash them in the washing machine and dry them in the dryer. The cheapie mitts you find everywhere else are cheap and after a wash or two they simply fall apart. You can never have to many good, clean wash mitts in reserve in case you drop your current mitt or it gets contaminated with tar or some other offending substance.
3 Pack The Supreme Guzzler Waffle Weave Towels, 20 x 40 inches
Million ways to dry a car. These work well and last and last. The are SIMPLE. Don't turn washing and drying your car into Rocket Science.
BEFORE
Zero water beading Zero hydrophobic action
AFTER
Hydrophobic Water Beading from ONLY washing with Wolfgang Uber SiO2 Coating Wash
Wolfgang Uber SiO2 Coating Wash
Wolfgang Uber SiO2 Coating Wash
BEFORE
Zero water beading Zero hydrophobic action
AFTER
Hydrophobic Water Beading from ONLY washing with Wolfgang Uber SiO2 Coating Wash
Wash-n-Coat
What makes this car wash unique is that like a traditional wash-n-wax, where a car wash will both clean and also leave behind some wax gloss and protection, the Wolfgang Uber SiO2 Coating Wash will clean and leave behind some coating gloss and protection plus all the benefits from a ceramic paint coating.
In fact, if you take a car that has been neglected and has no visible protection on the paint, simply using this product to wash your car will VISIBLEY create high surface tension on the surface, which will cause water to bead-up. You get the effect of a ceramic coating by simply washing your car. Repeated washing enhances this characteristic.
Preventative Maintenance - Preserving your car's finish
The most important "simple" thing you can do - wash your car
The factory clear layer of paint on modern cars is 2 mils thin. Your average post-it note is 3 mils thin. Hold a post-it note between your thumb and finger and it's pretty easy for you to wrap your mind around just how thin 2 mils is. It's THIN!
Now lets go deeper down this Rabbit Hole...
All the UV protection is in the clear layer and it has a half-life of 5 years. This means if you buy a brand new car in the year 2015 - by the year 2020, (5 years later), half of the UV protection that was in the clear paint when it was sprayed onto the car by a robot on the assembly line is now gone. I don't know where it goes but from my understanding, it's just kind of gets used up doing it's job - protecting your car's paint from the sun.
While it's a great practice to use products on the TOP of your car's paint that provide UV protection - a more important first step is to take care of the paint itself so IT doesn't degrade and that important first step is keeping your car's paint clean. This means one of two things,
1: Never drive the car. Park it in the garage and leave it there as this way it will stay clean.
2: Wash the car on a regular basis to remove any and all dirt and other substances like road film off the paint.
I don't know about you but I drive my car. I don't have the luxury of not driving it. So it gets dirty and I wash it often as I know all this stuff already. Plus I like driving a clean, shiny car.
When it comes to washing your car there are things you can do to do it right and there are things you shouldn't do because that would be doing it wrong. Below I'll show you a new product in the Wolfgang line specifically for ceramic coated cars PLUS some cool tools to make washing fast and easy. If you want to know how to do it wrong you'll have to go somewhere else - I don't teach or practice bad technique.
First gather your supplies - (see my comments at the very bottom of this review about the items in the pictures)
Note the Bug Sponge on the car? Look past the car at all the Love Bugs on the front clip of the BMW.
Step 1: Blast loose dirt off car first. (sorry no pictures but most of you already know this as it's fairly elementary stuff)
After ONLY rinsing car off - Zero water beading Zero hydrophobic action
Step 2: Dip wash mitt into wash solution and then starting at the top, wash one major body panel at a time and then rinse.
Look at the water beading after only washing and now rinsing...
AFTER - washing and rinsing
Hydrophobic Water Beading from ONLY washing with Wolfgang Uber SiO2 Coating Wash. Now this is what you would call a Maintenance Wash
Step 3: Dry any standing water using your favorite drying chamois or blow water off with a car dry.
There's always a sense of pride when it comes to driving around a beautiful, clean shiny car.
Ready to plow into more Love Bugs in style on the drive home!
Review
I spend a lot of time washing cars. That's because I detail cars and before I can do any paint correction I first have to get the car clean and here at Autogeek we do a lot of projects and almost all of them need a clean car and I seem to always be the lucky guy that gets to wash the car. My first video I ever made back in 2006 was, How to wash your car show car style, and I'm kind of a clean car fanatic, so yeah... I wash a lot of cars. When it's my own cars, I even enjoy it. I'll often times "time" when I wash my car to do it before I go to the gym. I know stretching before washing a car is important so you don't hurt yourself when lifting weights. I hate stretching out. So I use car washing as a way to stretch out. If you're focues, you can do a great job of stretching out all the major muscle groups simply by relaxing and washing your car.
Washing ceramic coated cars
If you have a ceramic coating on your car, whether you installed it yourself, (do-it-yourself), or you paid someone to do it for you, (do-it-for-me), sooner or later someone has to wash the car. And if you do it carefully the coating will do two things,
- Last a long time.
- Look good a long time.
Those are two very different things. You can have a coating last a long time but not look good a long time simply by the way you wash your car. Mostly it comes down to using clean wash mitts and careful technique but it also helps to have a great car wash and that's what the Wolfgang Uber SiO2 Coating Wash is - a great coating car wash. What makes it different is that all it does is clean and lubricate the paint. And that's all you want out of a car wash if you have a coated car. The cleaning agents are to dissolve, loosen and remove oily road film and other dirt and pollution that builds-up on your car's exterior as you drive it day after day. The lubricants - well they lubricate the surface so your wash mitt glides over the surface instead of grinding the dirt into the finish. (good technique is also important). And then you rinse so the coating is clean while leaving SiO2 behind to enhance gloss and maintain protection. That's how the Wolfgang Uber SiO2 Coating Wash works.
A couple of things I noticed about this car wash solutions.
1: Very silky and slippery to the touch.
That's what you're looking for from a great car wash solution for any car and especially a coated car.
2: Not a lot of suds.
I'm not a chemist but I think that the ingredients that make the car wash slippery also reduce surface tension, which is what holds a soap bubble together instead of simply popping. So while we all like to see mountains of foamy suds in our car wash I'm pre-warning you you're not going to see that with this car wash soap but you are going to feel the slick, slippery feeling when dunking a wash mitt into your bucket of soapy water and then gliding your wash mitt over the surface of a body panel.
3: Free rinsing
With a coated car and a coating wash, I notice the wash water slips or flies off car body panels fast and without any drag or resistance like some car wash soaps. This simply makes rinsing faster and also saves water.
4: Faster drying.
That's one of the cool things about coated cars. Because water beads-up readily, (and also streams off the body panels), the water would much rather reside in a drying chamois than on a body panel or blow off with a strong blast of air.
If you have a coated car, I'd recommend switching over to a coating wash. Measure out the water in your bucket, (see what I say about the CLEAR buckets below), and then measure out your coating wash solution. Do not use the Glug-Glug method I always joke about. With this wash you want to be precise as too much simply wastes product.
True Maintenance Wash
By simply washing your car, something you're going to do anyways, you can easily and effortlessly maintain a hydrophobic surface that repels water keeping your car cleaner longer and also maintaining the protection.
On Autogeek.com
Wolfgang Uber SiO2 Coating Wash - 16 ounces
Wolfgang Uber SiO2 Coating Wash - 1 gallon
The car washing essentials
If you have read a lot of my how-to articles and reviews you have no doubt seen in the pictures that every time I wash a car I have certain key tools to help me work fast and efficiently. Below are what I consider the minimum essentials for washing your own car. This doesn't include the brushes and products for washing and cleaning wheels, just for washing the car.
My comments after each item.
Grit Guard Universal Detailing Cart
Most of us wash our cars more than anything else we do to the car besides drive it. Without a car like you see in the pictures above, your bucket is on the ground. Think about how many times the rest of your life you're going to wash your car and then how many times you're going to BEND OVER to dip your wash mitt into your bucket each time you wash your car. That's a lot of bending over. Me? I don't bend over. Get the cart. Choke on the price and get it over with and then thank me later.
Professional 5 Gallon Wash Bucket- CLEAR
If you already have a 5-gallon bucket skip this purchase. If you don't, add one to your shopping car and get the clear buckets. They have graduated lines for each gallon of water. This way, if you want 3 gallons or 4 gallons or 2 gallons, the marks are clearly visible on the outside of the bucket so you don't have to guess when you want a specific volume of water.
The Grit Guard Insert
Grit Guard Washboard
Both the Grit Guard Insert and the Grit Guard Washboard are essential and I think it should be pretty much self-explanatory as to why.
Micro-Chenille Wash Mitt 4-Pack
Love these mitts. The Chenille mitts Autogeek sells don't fall apart when you wash them in the washing machine and dry them in the dryer. The cheapie mitts you find everywhere else are cheap and after a wash or two they simply fall apart. You can never have to many good, clean wash mitts in reserve in case you drop your current mitt or it gets contaminated with tar or some other offending substance.
3 Pack The Supreme Guzzler Waffle Weave Towels, 20 x 40 inches
Million ways to dry a car. These work well and last and last. The are SIMPLE. Don't turn washing and drying your car into Rocket Science.
BEFORE
Zero water beading Zero hydrophobic action
AFTER
Hydrophobic Water Beading from ONLY washing with Wolfgang Uber SiO2 Coating Wash
Wolfgang Uber SiO2 Coating Wash
