How to Prepare Your Car for a Ceramic Coating- (CLAY BAR DETAILING)
Maintaining your trucks and cars paint in outstanding condition will take time and money, but it makes a huge difference in the overall quality and presence of your car or truck. Several products have hit the market in the last few decades that claim to keep the paint of your car in good condition, and some are claiming to be the best.
I'd say for the past several years or so, ceramic coating has become one of the more essential technologies in all of this. We will go over ceramic coatings and when they're worth the cost. It's not a secret that ceramic coatings have increased in popularity over the last ten years, and they guarantee to offer among the best paint protection you could apply to the car.
There are plenty of places throughout the country that promote it, from car social media content creators to local detailing suppliers, and everywhere in between. Almost everyone swears by this stuff. Many people are put off with the price tag once they first see it. Let's start with understanding what ceramic coating actually is. A ceramic coating is also called a nano coating and has the main component silicon dioxide, or in many instances, silicon carbide.
It is available in a liquid form, allowing it to be applied to a vehicle and adhere to the vehicle's finish.
Once it's hardened, the Silicon dioxide properties and other properties of the coating form an extra protective shell, I guess you could call it, that repels the water and provide some protection from the sun's UV rays and all that good stuff. For the longest time, wax dominated the automotive detailing and paint protection industries. From using animal fats in the late 1800s and early 1900s to spruce up those old horse carriages, the industry experimented with plant-based alternatives that quickly became more widely accepted. Throughout the 1900s different waxes were used to detail vehicles and bring that nice glamorous shine that their owners sought after.
If you wanted to keep your paint looking good, repel water and add just that good little bit of layer of protection, adding a good layer of wax was your solution.
ADSO (Auto Detail Supplies Outlet) stores carry 360 Products (developed with nano-ceramic technology), which helps protect painted surfaces. Due to this, everything changed. But like, why?
How did this new product change the game? How did car wax differ from ceramic coatings and why did it cost so much? Ceramic coatings offer much longer lifespan than wax coatings. A good wax will last anywhere between like three or six weeks, before you're gonna have to do a re-application. A ceramic coating will, on the other hand, typically last for about two to five years, depending on the quality and application.
A ceramic coating also protects your paint from UV rays and natural things.
In general, it works excellently, and I don't have to sit here and tell you, you've seen mud fall off cars and then they can rinse it out with a hose. In the end, though, from time to time people just like to over-hype things. It is quite common for those who promote ceramic coating to stretch the truth just a tad. Meaning that there are some common myths about the product and about ceramic coating out there.
It does not eliminate or prevent water spots. I'm sorry, it's the truth, although it does help. Using a ceramic coating that has hydrophobic characteristics, water and moisture droplets may flow off the surface much more easily, which is why water spots are less likely to appear. But if you let those drops or spots dry on the surface, you're gonna get the water spots, that's just how it goes. Ceramic coatings don't protect your car from rocks chips and scratches.
Even though it may protect against light scratches here and there, I wouldn't really rely on it too much. Always combine it with some common sense. If something like that happens, maybe you should invest in some protective film or Clear Bra. Finally, it's not costly as you might think.
The ceramic coating was initially quite costly, ranging from $1500 to $2000 An expert detailer can now professionally ceramic coat your vehicle for right around $700.
In many cases, when you get a quote for having your car coated, you'll need the paint of the car corrected first(paint correction). That's where a lot website of the extra cost comes from. Then you can do it yourself, learn the process, maybe mess it up once or twice.
Every new thing costs a bit at first, and over time, it'll eventually come down. That's just how it goes. Getting your car ceramic coated however involves paying someone to apply the coating. You and your car need to think it's worth it.
I would recommend protecting those paint jobs if your vehicle is really nice. Invest a couple hundred dollars in getting your car ceramic coated. The coating process is not restricted to just your car. It is extremely popular to have ceramic coatings on your wheels. It's so popular that we've started offering Whip Our Wheel And Tire packages as an add-on when you're checking out, we can literally ceramic coat them for you before they head out the door and honestly it makes cleaning them so much easier.
But that's not all either, we've seen people get things like their seats and other interior parts ceramic coated, a bunch of things that they just don't wanna have to worry about scrubbing down to really get all the dirt off, it just makes the whole process so much easier.
So, if that is something that you find valuable, then by all means, go for it. There has been a lot of progress in ceramic coating technology, and a lot of people here have had their vehicles coated because they swear by the results. You've got to think about it from all sides, and it's gotta be worth it for you to be protecting your car or part of your car with it.
In the event that your car is your second biggest purchase, you may want to consider something like a coating to help maintain its value. If you've had ceramic coating applied to your car, or wheels, or seats, please let us know how you liked it.