Coating Maintenance Routine

[spewking]

What is your maintenance routine between coating applications and full details?

So I did a full detail on a new car (wash, iron x, clay, polish, CQUK 3.0) about 1 year ago and the coating is holding up nicely. Using reload about once a quarter after washing.

What maintenance plan do you recommend before the next full detail and coating application? Specifically, my question is about the use of iron x once every 6-12 months. Do you recommend such? Will it hurt the coating?

Assuming yes, the routine would be wash, iron x, rinse thoroughly, reload. Then 3 months later, wash and reload. Then 6 months later, wash, iron x, rinse thoroughly, reload. Is this the idea?

Any other coating maintenance suggestions welcomed.

[joleyred]

I use ironx regularly and have no reduction in coating performance. The only suggestion I might have in your routine would be to wash after your ironx treatment instead of just rinse.

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[SWETM]

I would ad Carpro TarX to a chemical decon wash. The steps depends on the amount of contaminants and if you have a PW or not. It's also a benefit if you have a car blowdryer or leafblower.

With PW and a blowdrier of some kind.

A prewash either foam or a spray degreaser which is alkaline based or citrus based. Rinse clean it with useing the water pressure from the PW to clean with every part of the paint. And blow of the remaining water and not needed to be completly dry just the most of the water off.
Next apply the TarX and let it dwell and then clean rinsing it off and blowdry.
Apply IronX and let it dwell and then clean rinsing it off.
Wash with Reset and dry.
Apply Reload and done.

Without PW and or blowdrier to get the max cleaning ability from the chemicals.
Prewash or rinse off loose dirt and wash with Reset and dry.
Apply TarX and let it dwell and lightly aggitate it with a mf towel if you have a lot of contaminants that gets desolved with TarX. Rinse it thoroughly off and dry.
Do the same with IronX. Use a mf towel to aggitate with that you can degrade to wheel cleaning or toss it. It can be hard to get iron particals off the mf towel and if used on the paint afterwards you could be marring it with the towel used to aggitate the IronX. Rinse it thoroughly off.
Wash with Reset and dry.
Apply Reload and done.

Chemicals is much better at desolve when it is applyied on a dry paint and not get diluted and it's cling much better too. Coatings are very chemical resistant. What will happens is that the Reload that is left will be desolved by the TarX. And if the coating is failed in some parts it will show when you have used TarX. So the Reload would be the protection you had on the failed coating parts if you would get this results. If the coating is not failed you will see the cararictics of the state your coating is when you remove the Reload. TarX is very good at revive the coatings water behavior if the coating is still there. It desolve road film and tar and tree sap and most of the oil based grime you could have. Sure the IronX will do a little cleaning but it's most for the industrial fallout and iron particals and not so good at cleaning up other contaminants you may have. Different chemicals desolves different kind of dirt and contaminants.

[Desertnate]

I keep things very simple and my maintenance routine for a coating isn't much different than what I did with sealants.

Washing - I wash the vehicles every 1~2 weeks as weather/time/life permits. With coatings I look for shampoos which have no glossing agents to clog the coating. Drying is still done with a WW MF towel, though with a coating there is far less drying to do because the water sheets right off.

Toppers/upkeep - After every wash, I do a wipe down to eliminate any stray water spots. On McKee's Paint Coating v1 I used Kenotek Show Room Shine, but I've now moved to using CarPro Ech2O on my CanCoat and CQuartz UK coated vehicles. About once a month I'll apply a layer of Cure to my CarCoat vehicles, but I'll drop this step completely once my supply of Cure runs out and simply use the Ech2O all the time.

In each case, the coating I've used has easily met/exceeded it's claimed durability in a fairly harsh mid-west climate. In fact on one vehicle with CQuartz UK 2.0, the car was only washed 3~4 times for the first year and the coating still looked/worked amazing after the first year. That's what I love about coatings. They protect my vehicles and keep them looking great for long periods of time with very little effort.