Road Film - If you drive your car in the rain your car has road film

Some coating manufacturers are touting their coatings as oleophobic to solve the road film problem. Being hydrophobic is not enough.
 
rlmccarty2000 said:
Some coating manufacturers are touting their coatings as oleophobic to solve the road film problem.
Click to expand...

Copy that....


Just knowing how things work, I still believe that if a car is a daily driver then it's going to get impacted dirt and pollution from airborne junk and road film from the rain splatter.

I've just polished out too many cars and seen what my pads look like when after buffing on anything that's been sealed for over 2 months looks like.


So here's my view,


If you want you car to look it's best then plan on doing "something" to the paint at least once a year if not more often.

If your primary concern is a layer of protection intact on the surface go longer without doing anything.


Something for everyone...


:)
 
I imagine using a cleaner wax every 1-2 months will remove road film...?
 
What about cleaners like ps21 total auto wash, polish angel ultrared and or mckees coating prep soap? I usually will use one of these say 3-4 months after polishing so I can lay some nice wax down on clean paint without having to re polish.

I feel like that is enough to remove road film?
 
fightnews said:
What about cleaners like ps21 total auto wash, polish angel ultrared and or mckees coating prep soap? I usually will use one of these say 3-4 months after polishing so I can lay some nice wax down on clean paint without having to re polish.

I feel like that is enough to remove road film?
Click to expand...


In my opinion and experience, even if these types of washes could remove impacted road-film I wouldn't use this approach to remove impacted road film. Machine polishing will 100% ensure the impacted road film is removed AND make the paint clear, defect free and shiny again. Washing won't do this like machine polishing will.

Washing is good, don't get me wrong I just wouldn't count on it for any car that has been exposed to the word for any length of time.


Good question.

:)
 
Just to give some recent first hand experience, I had a car that was coated with CQuartz UK for three years. When I polished the car out, I was using a long throw buffer with orange pads because to be frank, I had a few swirl marks and I had to make sure that I cut through the coating itself thoroughly because I've found that coated cars can be annoying to go through at times. But when I finished, the pads themselves were not dirty the way they were when I had sealant on the paint. A few smudged here and there but nothing like the black streaks across the pads I had previous to the coating. So I think coatings provide better protection against road film. Not 100% of course, but in three years time it didn't seem too bad at all.
 
:bump:


I've updated the pictures in the first post in this thread.

Out of all the articles I've written - this is one of the top articles I share. Mostly because it affects most of us that drive our cars and also detail our cars.



:)
 
:bump:


I've updated the first post in this article with some fresh pictures that show exactly what road film looks like from driving in the rain.


DP_Graphene_Wash_017.JPG



And the big picture point is this - over time - this film IMPACTS ONTO the paint. I does not simply wash off. The best way to remove 100% of impacted road film is via chemical decontamination plus machine polishing or just machine polishing. The polishing can be done using any of of these 4 things,

  1. Paint Cleaner
  2. Compound
  3. Polish
  4. AIO



And while it's easy to capture pictures of built-up road film and impacted road-film on white and light colored cars, it happens to all colors of paint.

This is why once in a while, if your car is a daily driver, you need to polish the paint.

Here's why you need to polish paint...


Dirty_Old_Ford_006.jpg





:buffing:
 
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