Mike: Feel free to correct me but it's not what I am working on, rather if a sealant will go over what I have on the car, which is a 2013 Nissan Murano.
I have or had a coat of Wolfgang Deep gloss Spray Sealant ( 2 to 3 months ago) and each time I wash the car I apply a coat of spray wax. This will be either Meguiar's Ultimate Quick Wax or Souveran Spray wax.
I understand each of these have a touch of sealant but probably not as much as a dedicated sealant.
With all the recent snow and ice followed by the salt on the roads I felt the need to reapply a layer of the WGDGSS. I don't want to strip the car down to apply the sealant and the question was, will the sealant adhere over existing spray wax?
The finish is in excellent shape with not even a need to clay or polish at this time. I am still confused about the two trains of thought, being, sealant can not be used over a LSP OR you can put it over LSP such as spray wax.
Optimum says their Opti-seal will go over wax as did the rep for Wolfgang on their sealant.
Appreciate your input.
Great questions and a normal line of thinking for a lot of people when trying their best to take care of a clearcoat layer of paint that is thinner that a 3M Post-it Note. See my article here
Clearcoats are thin by Mike Phillips
Or check out pages 4 and 5 in my how-to book.
The Complete Guide to a Show Car Shine
All of the products you're referencing are non-cleaning products. That's a good thing if the paint you're applying them to is clean. For situations like this I have two comments....
1. Whether or not any single product will bond, stick to, adhere, crosslink, attach etc. to what's left of any previously applied product, (remember most of what we apply is a sacrificial barrier coating that is wearing off), is an unknown because there's no way for any of us to shrink ourselves down to the sub-atom level to take a look for ourselves to see what's going on with the surface. Most of us don't have the type of electronic microscopes to do the same. That leaves us with hoping and assuming. I know everyone whats more than that.
So what you can do is after washing the car or wiping it clean with something is take the product you like and/or want to use and apply it and hope and assume it's doing what it's supposed to do.
A: It can't hurt assuming everything touching the paint is soft and clean.
B: It will probably help as in it will probably "work" and that means your paint has a refreshed sacrificial barrier coating of protection.
The big picture is actively maintaining your car's finish ensures it stays clean and beautiful and holds up over the mechanical service life of the car and I think that's what most people want... that is the paint to last as long as the car until they sell it, wreck it or trade it in.
Most modern/new cars go 100,000 miles, 200,000 miles and more and it used to be in the old days a paint job would last a few years but cars in the old days only lasted a few years mechanically before the drivetrain needed to be rebuild. Not so with new Hondas, Toyotas, Fords etc.
So the challenge is to get the paint to last as long and LOOK GOOD as long as the mechanical drivetrain of a car will last instead of turning into something that looks like this....
So back to the big picture....
Just the act of "touching" your cars paint on a regular basis with some type of protection using soft applicators to apply and soft towels to remove has a polishing or cleaning effect besides the protecting effect and it is this regular maintenance that will ensure your car's paint has the best chance to last as long as the drive train and look good for this period of time. (thats two things).
I'm not a chemist and have never tried to play that part on a discussion forum since I started posting how-to information on the Internet back in
1994, that' over 20 years ago. Probably not as long as some but probably longer than most. vBulletin, that's the
software were interacting on wasn't released commercially until 2002.
Point being I don't know how well any spray wax or WOWO sealant is going to bond to anything for sure. I "like" to think that if the paint is clean then after applying the product that at a minimum I've left something behind on the surface that's going to help.
So both the act of rubbing something over the paint, (the cleaner/polishing effect), and the application to the surface of the actual product, (protection ingredients in the product), are both to some level beneficial to both preserve the longevity of the paint as well as maintain the appearance of the paint because doing nothing certainly doesn't preserve and protect.
That's my first comment. Here's my second comment and it's not so much directed at you lineman but to everyone that will read this into the future and this could be decades....
If the car you drive is a daily driver. That is you are driving this car back and forth to work and other life activities. And thus besides when the paint is exposed to the world when you're driving if the car is parked outside for any amount of time be it in your driveway or in the parking lot at a store or 5 days a week in the parking lot at work... then the paint gets dirty.
I document and explain in detail how this happens in this article....
Road Film - If you drive your car in the rain your car has road film
If if you live in a geographical location where it doesn't rain or doesn't rain much, there's still dirt and pollution in the air. Put it this way, leaving a car outside in a dry environment the paint doesn't get cleaner with time so what's the opposite of cleaner?
Point being is this...
For must of us the paint on our car gets a dirt stain embedded and bonded to the surface. The only way to slow this down is to wash your car weekly if it's a daily driver exposed to the outdoors. I stated this in an article here,
Confessions of Car Detailers on Edmunds.com
Here's a quote from the above article, I'm so glad I worded this carefully.... note the portion that I highlighted in red text.
Mike Phillips said:
1. You don't need a detailer every time your car needs washing: You should wash your car once a week if you're driving it daily, and wax it once a month or so, according to Mike Phillips, director of training and author for car-care Web site Autogeek.net and the author of The Complete Guide to a Show Car Shine.
If your car is a daily driver and you regularly apply a non-cleaning wax or sealant to the paint then the potential exists to seal in the dirt or road grime that deposits on the paint onto the paint.
My article here shows what I mean with some powerful pictures.... and this is a garage kept beauty queen not a daily driver. If a garage kept beauty queen gets dirty paint how much more so a daily driver?
Here's why you need to polish paint...
So just keep that in mind when taking care of your car's finish. Spray waxes, spray sealants are great products, I use them myself. But I also know that once in a while I need to clean the paint to remove all the dirt, road grime, oxidation, water spots, swirls and scratches and any other type of surface impurities build up over time.
So follow this sage advice...
"Find something you like and use it often"
In your example one of the spray on products you listed.
But keep in mind, if your car is a daily driver exposed to the dirty world we live in, periodically take a Saturday to do a light polishing as this will remove any build-up of contaminants on the paint as well as remove any light or shallow swirls and scratches that also build up over time and get you down to a fresh, clean base.
Then apply you're favorite LSP and after that you're back to your maintenance products. (spray waxes/spray sealants).
There's now perfect cure for daily drivers and no such thing as an invisible force field. The best thing available for the longest lasting protection would be one of the new hi-tech paint coatings on the market today but even with a paint coating, if the car is a daily driver you're still going to have to clean the coating.
Just no perfect solution...
no pun intended....
Hope that helps...
