I'm SO confused - PPL & Ceramic Coating

[partyelf]

Hi all,

I've been lurking on here for a few days. Googled everthing I can get my hands on and know just enough to be dangerous! That said, I'm getting conflicting info and it's hard to know what is accurate/right/true.

So here goes...

I live in a burb outside of Philly. I have a preowned 2016 Lexus RX350. Not a Mazerati, Lambo, Bimer, etc. But this is my baby and I love it. Upgraded from my 2010 RX. It needs some paint correction for sure. I've decided that I want a front end wrap and a ceramic coating. So many options. So are crazy expensive. I know there may be better quality options, but that seems to be each detailers personal opinion on what coating is best. I just can't spend over $2000. I've researched a bunch of places with good to great reviews; none bad. All but one guy are telling me this a 2 - 3 day process. Even the guys who DON'T do wraps... they say the coating process takes 2-3 days.

I have two guys I've narrowed it down two (mainly due to price... and yeah I know that shouldn't be my main decisioin point but it has to be) and here is where I am super confused....

One guy quoted a 3 stage paint correction, CQuartzUK coating (all exterior 2 coats, including wheels, and 1 coat of glass product on glass) and an interior detail plus a 'free' ion cleaning (car smells a tad like smoke) for $850.00 says he puts two people on the job and can have it back in a day and a half. "Won't comment on what other people do" when I questioned that 'everyone else' says it takes 2-3 days. He only doing the ceramic - doesn't offer the service of wraps. No interior option, because he says he doesn't offer those products and doesn't believe in them. Doesn't matter to me - don't want to spend more unless it's a wrap. No mention, YET, of any maintenance visits, etc. I can't seem to find where CQuartz demands that as part of the warranty process unless I missed something.

Second guy is providing a two step paint correction, Suntek PPL wrap on partial front end for $795. Then Ceramic Pro 5 yr, with 1 '9H' layer and 1 topcoat 'light', all exterior glass, plastic, rubber trim, wheels, brake calipers for $995 and because I'm doing both a $45 interior detail. He is giving me a 10% discount so around $1650 for all. Says wrapping the front end will boost that part of the warranty to 10 years. Interior was an extra $385 - not doing it. Required yearly check in, which is no charge IF ceramic is in good shape. $165 if it needs a boost. Says it will take 2 -3 days.

Both said they would use my factory brand touch up paint for any exisiting nicks - at my request before wrap and/or ceramic.

So the big question is the first guy only changed to a day and a half when he had to ionize the car due to smoke. Otherwise he said it's be done in one day. Everything I've read said the prep is the key and (to paraphrase) must take more time. Is that true? Or is the second guy only taking that long because he is adding the wrap in?

Obviously, I'd like to spend less money. I know, I know... you get what you pay for. The way I see it - something is better than nothing. I can have another guy do OptiCoat for $1400 (no wheels; that's another $300!), but couldn't afford the wrap. I think having both (even if Ceramic Pro is not all it's hyped up to be) is still better than no coating at all - right? This same guy has Paint Guard for $895.00 He says his products do NOT need to be reapplied and they are a "true ceramic". You see why I'm confused.

I've also read that a ceramic is a ceramic and they are all good - some have more pluses that others. Geez - what to believe?

Next problem - how the heck do you use two different places... one to get the wrap done first, not have damage in the travel process, get it to the guy whose going to do the ceramic? Then I'm paying two people to paint correct, each doing their own part? Seems to me like a bad idea - no? What is one is better than the other and now the car is mismatched as far as level of correction?

Finally - what's with the whole 'must stay out of contact with water for 3 days'?!? What if starts pouring as I'm driving home? Maybe most of your customers must have multiple cars... but this is my primary vehicle. I need it for work. Don't know that I can find 6 days to be without. I really want to do this, but the logistics seem overwhelming. Do I really have to rent a car to have this stuff done? Yikes!


Sorry so long. I'm detailed and I like to understand but this is getting hard to wrap my head around what is my better choice between the options noted above.

Any and all feedback is welcomed, but please don't tell me to spend more - I simply can't. My budget is $1600 max not just now - ever. I do not want to spend more than that on this car for these types of improvements so doing it later is not an option. $1600 all in - period.

Thougths?

[DBAILEY]

Coatings are not the all the same. Look at the postings by Budgetplan1 on here and Autopia forum. He has probably tried more coatings than anyone and he uses them on the fleet of work vans/trucks at his employment. So he gets to form an opinion on the coatings after several months of real world use, not just right after it was applied. Of the 2 listed I would go for the CQuartz or the OptiCoat. Whenever I see people using Ceramic Pro coatings in postings they don't seem to stick with that brand and you see them using something else a few months later. You never see anyone praising their coatings.

It does take quite a bit of time to coat a car. It can be close to a 5 hour process from beginning to end, so that's nearly a day just for the LSP where a sealant would take less than an hour.

Most coatings can get wet after 24 hour cure time, but you are not supposed to wash it with soap/detergent for about 7 days.

If you are only getting the front end wrapped then just let that guy correct those panels. Pay the other guy to correct the rest of the car and apply the coating. Let him worry about re-cleaning the car.

[Thomkirby]

This is one person's opinion to the decision you must make. First, decide which is most important to you and then base your decision on the big picture. A 3-step correction is very aggressive on a typical paint of a Lexus. Not seeing your paint it is inappropriate for me to say no to that but to get the best out of PPF and any ceramic coating the base must be in the best condition. Once the ceramic coat goes down all imperfections are magnified. I have PPF on my Lexus to protect from rock chips and road trash, did the same on my truck. But that perfect job was gone in less than two months and no, I am not going to pay to replace the two cuts put in by trash hitting the hood. It protected the paint, that was it primary job. Ceramic coats are very labor intensive to prep and then extra care is needed to keep them great. They are not more resistant to rock chips and any chips are there for the long time. It is a pain to remove coatings early in their life, has no impact to the brand (IMHO). Once cured in that 24-hour period then then next few days avoid washing or getting soaked in a rainstorm. Do not be alarmed, just make sure you take it home and promptly dry it off (use sister product for lubrication in the drying process). If you were closer to Wernersville Pa, I would suggest getting a quote from Brian at ApexAutoDetail. I have applied ceramic coatings to car with Mike Phillips's coaching and did use the same for my vehicle wheels. I have kits ready to apply over my PPF and my truck trim. Going with a coating is great and the wash process gets easier but then you will need to decide for yourself the benefits and cost.

I just saw this review by Mike and it is a great review of taking care of your coated cars!
Review: Wolfgang Uber SiO2 Coating Wash

[fightnews]

Reading reviews and forums makes decisions harder and more confusing. 99.99% of the time u are reading people's opinions.

I'd go with the guy that does the wrap. People get bad reviews about their businesses taken down you know. You cant even go by that.

I also doubt anyone is doing a full 3 step correction. That would be compound, medium polish, finishing polish. I dont think anyone does that. Is the middle step even necessary? All I ever here is people doing compound polish even on their own cars. I could be wrong but I dont think to many detailers even consider that beneficial anymore?

[fightnews]

Coatings are not the all the same. Look at the postings by Budgetplan1 on here and Autopia forum. He has probably tried more coatings than anyone and he uses them on the fleet of work vans/trucks at his employment. So he gets to form an opinion on the coatings after several months of real world use, not just right after it was applied. Of the 2 listed I would go for the CQuartz or the OptiCoat. Whenever I see people using Ceramic Pro coatings in postings they don't seem to stick with that brand and you see them using something else a few months later. You never see anyone praising their coatings.

It does take quite a bit of time to coat a car. It can be close to a 5 hour process from beginning to end, so that's nearly a day just for the LSP where a sealant would take less than an hour.

Most coatings can get wet after 24 hour cure time, but you are not supposed to wash it with soap/detergent for about 7 days.

If you are only getting the front end wrapped then just let that guy correct those panels. Pay the other guy to correct the rest of the car and apply the coating. Let him worry about re-cleaning the car.

You need to be trained to install ceramic pro and it has a lifetime warranty. Anybody can do Cquarts that's why you read about it more on detailing forums.

[swexlin]

Where Are you located? I'm in West Chester. PM me if you like

[Calendyr]

The process can vary a lot from one installer to the next. So for him to say he cannot comment on what other do is right on point.

The actual installation of the ceramic coating doesn't take that long. The absolute minimum that needs to be done is a detailed wash of the vehicule which takes about 2 man hour to do. Then a decontamination of the paint that varies depending on what is actually needed but let's say one man hour as an absolute minimum to do a iron particle chemical decon and a paint degreasing to remove any wax or road film on the paint. Then the coating itself takes about 1 hour per layer of coating. The number of layers needed depends on the product used. I myself use a 1 layer product (Gtechnic Crystal Serum Light). For Cquartz I believe it is a 2 layer process. Could be more if he uses a hydrophobic topper.

So for me, 4-5 hours is a typical install time if the client doesn't want to polish the car, I would say about 40% of my installs are like that. New daily driver cars that have paint in decent condition and people not willing to pay to make the paint perfect. And that is their prerogative, I explain the difference and if they prefer to go that way, I am not gonna argue with them.

Now once you introduce polishing, then all bets are off. First, it allows to do a mecanical decontamination of the paint, which will add about an hour. Then each step of polishing can take between 2 and 5 hours to perform.

Regarding the 3 days with no water... I guess that depends on the product but I have never seen a product asking for 3 days. The way ceramic coating work is that they need to cure. The cure time is usually about a week (7 days). During the first few hours, the coating is vulnerable to water. If you have water drying on the coating it will almost certainly create water spots in the uncured coating any they will become part of the coating. For this reason, installers normally apply a paint sealant on top of the coating to protect the coating from water while it cures. For all the brands I have seen, this vulnerable period is about 12 to 24 hours. Afterward, during the first week, the coating is still vulnerable to chemicals, so you can't wash the car.

If the installer told you 3 days, it is very likelly him being over cautious because most people don't listen to what we tell them. I once installed a coating, explained everything in detail to the client about not exposing the car to water for 24 hours and not washing for a week. I left his house at 5 pm. That night he decided to drive up to the mountains where it was snowing. When he got there he decided to wash the car to remove the snow and dirt... still, when I did his maintenance detail this spring, the coating was still somewhat ok. It lost it's ability to repel water but the protection was still there. Once decontaminated it came back to life. So don't be scared about all these precautions. They are there to ensure the coating can have the best possible chance to bind correctly to the paint and not get damaged while in a vulnerable state, but some water on it should not do much if the install was done correctly.

As for PPF vs coating... for me that is like asking, should I get a sports car or a hummer? Both are great for their own reasons. PPFs will provide the best possible protection against damage like stone chips and scratches. Coatings make cleaning the car super easy and make the car look freshly waxed everytime you clean it. The ability to protect against damage is overhyped by manufacturers. It does help prevent love marks and light swirls but it won't protect agaist heavy damage like scratches and rock chips. Usually, a combination of both is best. Protect the vulnerable area of the car with a PPF and coat the entire car including the PPF.

As for installation steps, the PPF should always be installed first. If you coat first, the PPF installer will have to remove the coating on spot he needs to install the PPF. And you want the coating on the PPF to get the ease of maintenance on the PPF as well.


Personally, I would not get a 3 step correction to instal Cquartz over. If you were installing a 5 or 7 year coating, then it would make more sense, but for a 2 year coating, unless the paint is trashed, a one step polishing is probably good enough. Really depends on both the current condition of the paint and the result you want.

[BudgetPlan1]

Currently living with coated cars and, more recently, had one fully wrapped in PPF and then coated. Too soon to make any judgments on life with PPF'd car, so far so good, but like anything, there are compromises with each.

Things I've found with coatings, although my opinion only and YMMV.
1. Will not protect from chips and will *barely* protect from scratches; very, very light towel marring is the best it can do. Even the most awesome "Diamond Infused 10h coating" is softer than your fingernail.

2. While it can be a PIA to fix a scratch or chip by polishing out scratch or touching up chip and then re-coating, it's kinda a PIA cuz most coatings don't blend well and ya usually gotta re-do the panel.

3. You want paint to be as nice as you find acceptable for the long term due to the somewhat PIA process of going back and re-doing for better quality prep...which I have done before. The whole notion of "locking the defects in for the long term" is somewhat inaccurate as the only thing 'locking them in' is your own motivation, the cost of more product and your time. The degree to which one has to go through the process of 1 step forward, 2 steps back is solely dependent on the coating and it's difficulty/ease of removal....nothing is forever when dealing with coatings, just how much you can/are willing to deal with.

4. Longevity as determined by mfg's claims will vary widely based on your maintenance habits, vehicle usage patterns and climate. Have 2 cars coated with the same combo of products, maintained the same.

- Car 1 is winter driver only, coated in October 2016 (17k miles currently) and the coating will likely last another year or two. Local, short drives only although it did sit outside 24/7 from October 2016 thru April 2019 in a heavily wooded lot. Combo was rated at a suggested 24-36 months, which it will easily surpass.

- Car 2 is daily driver, 80 hard, freeway miles a day year round. Coated in July 2017 (40k miles since then) the coating is fading, especially on lower door, rockers and I re-did it last week, medium polish/compound and then fine polish and re-coat. Same suggested 24-36 month durability but the heavy freeway use in NE Ohio is very hard on vehicles finish. Additionally, the chips, scratches and other defects instilled by daily use meant by 24 months, had to re-do to meet my standards of appearance. Been living with a few minor defects for the past year...stuff happens.

Have never had water spotting issues with either except for stupidly parking under a sweating, overhead copper water line which dripped on the hood and then something came up which meant the car sat out in 90+ full sunlight for 48 hours without me getting a chance to remove water drops which etched the surface. Thing is, did it etch the coating or the paint/clearcoat? All I know is when I polished the car last week prior to coating, the water spots which resisted every water-spot remover or silica-scale remover I tried, came off easily with the medium polish/compound on a light cutting pad, which is all it takes to remove most consumer coatings.

Ceramic coatings really aren't that hard to remove in *most* cases although there are always exceptions or oddball circumstances. Aside from 1 or 2 pro-only coatings, most will come off fine with medium compound and light cutting pad, some may require something heavier and some might come off with a polish along on a light cutting pad.

2017 was a busy Summer as our black Corvette (which did have etched waterspots from back in the sealant days and no amount of heavy compounding with a DA would completely remove) started with Wolfgang Uber (applied Spring 2016) and then got polished off and re-coated with another brand, which I then removed about 4 weeks later to go with another brand. My current daily driver was coated in June 2017 with a non-AG brand and then had that compounded/polished off and was recoated with another brand after only 4 weeks.


Things I *think* I'm gonna find with PPF:

1. Certainly more expensive and more time consuming than a coating, more so in the application phase. You can get away with somewhat less than perfect paint as PPF will cover a certain level of defects, light swirling. While many still do immaculate correction, it becomes a question of "If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?", i.e. if you have a bit of light marring under your PPF but can't see it no matter what you use to light it, try to magnify it, does it really matter?

2. The self healing abilities of some PPF brands will give you more flexibility we regards to light swirling, even when underneath a coating. I'm guessing that the thickness of PPF is greater than the somewhat thin layer of a coating so a bit more protection.

3. If I do find something, defect-wise or hitting a brick on the freeway, absolutely no way I can fix myself; will have to go to a pro and that ain't gonna be cheap if wanting a quality job. And it's gonna be a PIA.

4. PPF, no matter the claims of mfg, does have a very slight difference in look as opposed to a coating. If you have a show car with black paint that you want an absolute, crystal clear, 1000% level of clarity and reflection, PPF *may* diminish that just a touch.

As mentioned, my experience with PPF is only about 1500 miles in so these are things that I 'think'...only time will prove to be the true arbiter of the coating v PPF decision FOR ME....everyone is different in needs/expectations and I'm still to early in the experience to provide any definitive answers.

I sent you a PM with links to my notes and thoughts on a variety of coatings as well as the thinking and results of having our new car done in PPF.

PPF, Coatings...I still think we're a ways away from the perfect, all-around solution to everyone's needs, hence my opinion that while there is no universal BEST anything, if you look hard enough that you can find something that you can call 'BEST For You'. Like a wise man says around here, "Find Something You Like And Use It Often".

[Calendyr]

Reading reviews and forums makes decisions harder and more confusing. 99.99% of the time u are reading people's opinions.

I'd go with the guy that does the wrap. People get bad reviews about their businesses taken down you know. You cant even go by that.

I also doubt anyone is doing a full 3 step correction. That would be compound, medium polish, finishing polish. I dont think anyone does that. Is the middle step even necessary? All I ever here is people doing compound polish even on their own cars. I could be wrong but I dont think to many detailers even consider that beneficial anymore?

I agree with you. Unless it's a show car and you need the paint to be absolutelly flawless, compounds finish so well now that only a finishing polish is required. So if they do 3 steps, they probably do Compound, finishing polish. then paint jewelling with super fine polish and finishing pad. The untrained eye if very unlikelly to see the different IMO.

[partyelf]

Thanks for sending those along. I did find your coating reviews fascinating. I would N E V E R be interested in applying this stuff myself, but I deeply appreciate your findings.

FYI: I am aware of the significant difference of a PPL and a coating. Different purposes for each for sure. Would love to be able to afford Kamakaze, but they guy who quoted me on that was $1350 with paint correction. I wouldn't be able to afford the wrap at that rate. I might just go with both guys who quoted me but have the one do the wrap and drive it to the other guy afterwards to be coated. I'll check back in to update.

Thank you again!