How do I prep a C Quartz UK coated car (6 months old) for a touch up with C Quartz lite?

[abqhudson]

How do I prep a C Quartz UK coated car (6 months old) for a touch up with C Quartz lite?

or might this be a bad idea?

[The Guz]

Is the current cquartz coating holding up fine? If so then a decon wash and Elixir and you are set.

[Coatingsarecrack]

Subscribed. Wanna add a coat of Cancoat in spring. Will be about a year.


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[SWETM]

As Guz mentioned as long as the CQUK performance is still high. Let it be or use something like Elixir.

Since coatings are on for such of a long time. They will be dirty with contaminants that you don't wash off so easy. First useing a car soap that leaves nothing behind as in protection and glossenhancers and IMO go with Carpro Reset car soap and you don't need to be thinking about that anymore. Depending on the environment you live in and your maintance you usually benefits from doing a thorough decon wash every 6-12 months. Cause it's more possible that the coating is clogged with something than it's started to degrade until the the first 6-12 months. After a thorough decon wash and you notice it has degraded noticeble since you applyied. It's time to start to top it up to it's highest performance again. Until that's happens it's kind of boring to just wash and look how great it does LOL

Depending on the level of contaminants you have gotten and what kind of dirt you have on the coating. You can use chemical products that are safe to use on the coatings. Most that have consumer coatings also have products to do the decon wash with. I describe how I would be doing it with Carpro products. Then you can apply something like Carpro lite or Gyeon CanCoat or any topper that suits the coating that you have. Remember that this is what you have now when it comes to the water beading and sheeting and self cleaning ability on the paint which the coating alone has a very high performance with these properties.

If you have a lot of dirt or want to apply something long lasting. Start with a prewash and then a Reset wash. If not too dirty and still high performance from the coating you can skip the Reset wash to last instead as you just spraying on the decon products and let them dwell and PW clean rinsing it off.

First I start with a tar remover like Carpro TarX. This is for getting the tar spots and tree sap thoroughly desolved. But also it's very effective to desolve the road film that the washing don't get off. Apply on a dry paint so drying in between is best results from the decon steps and either blowdry or drying with mf towels. Spray it on the paint in sections that you can handle so it's not drying on the paint before you rinse it off. When it's been dwelling for a while you gently aggitate with a plusher mf towel. This excells the decon products a lot and then rinse it off very thoroughly prefered with a PW but can be done with the hose too if you aggitate them. This also takes off tar spots that usually gets on the iron particals if you have them and that's why I start with a tar remover.

Second step after drying is the iron remover with Carpro IronX. Like with the tar remover you work in sections that are not so big so it dries on the paint. When you get to it's time to rinse it off you aggitate this or spread around the product more so it can be more effective to desolve the iron partical parts that makes it to be clinged to the paint. Use a couple of mf towels when you do this so you don't aggitate with one side of the towel the whole vehical and flip and fold it from time to time. Then a thoroughly PW clean rinsing it off and dry the paint again.

If you feel like the coatings water behavior has degraded. And if it's the first time you do the decon. Then you know that you have hard water to wash your vehical with and even if you don't have it. A water spot remover is great to have at home if you where to have sprinklers water on the paint you can fastly use the water spot remover to reduce or save from getting the water spots to etching your coating. When you wash your vehical it's always a little water that is able to dry on the paint. The minerals can be clogging your coatings water behavior when them has building up enough amount of them. Also if you have what's called acid rains on the paint the water spot remover can be desolving this too. So do a test panel like 50/50 on the hood and one vertical panel also. And when you rinse it off you see if you have had any mineral deposits that the Carpro Spotless has desolved. That's noticeble if you get a higher water behavior performance from where you have used the water spot remover on.

And finish with a Reset wash if you are done. If you going to be applying the Carpro Lite. I would do a wipe down with Carpro Eraser to get any left residue off with this and then apply the CQ Lite. The paint will be feeling like you have clayed it.

I did this with sealants and other spray on rinse off products I have used when it where time to refresh the LSP. Sometimes during the winter months here in Sweden it revived the beading and sheeting from it even so not needed to be refreshing it. After 2 1/2 years since last it where clayed and polished I decided to do a finishing polish step. Did the decon and did the claying. But the paint didn't have much of contaminants on it and the clay picked up almost nothing. Which where for me a sign that if you do decons when you need it. You get a very little of bonded contaminants that the clay picks up and also the polishing pads is clean from any dirt that you can see on some neglected paints that gets polished. And I'm not washing my car as often as I should be doing and it can be going 2 months between the washes both in the summer months but also during the winter months when I'm not able to be washing cause of the cold weather here in Sweden. And we do get a lot of tar spots here in Sweden especially during the winter months when many drives on studded winter tires here. So a harsh environment here. I was honestly very surprised to see how little the clay bar picked up. And I could actually skipped it and starting to polishing directly. But wanted to be on the safe side and clayed as you should do. Ceramic coatings is very chemical resistant and it's just very high alkaline based degreasers/APCs and the very strong solvents that painters uses to prep before they are painting that they can be degraded by. So doing a decon every 6months is not a problem at all when it comes to degrade the longevity from the coating. SiO2 sealants and some top coatings can be effected and degraded mostly by the TarX. And it's not recommended to use if you have Carpro Gliss as a top coating and Carpro Reload is also haveing a sort of oil based glossenhancers in them that TarX desolves. But CQUK and CQ Lite is not a problem to use TarX on or if you have it as a base coating. Can be a benefit to break down the toppers with TarX and start over to top up the coating or new protection layer. You mostly see when the toppers performance in the self cleaning ability from it and the ease of washing is degraded a lot. That's when your coating has degraded enough to be reapplyied. If it's in the beginning of the coatings first year you might have used to much of the toppers so it degrades the coating aid on the topper to get a great self cleaning ability from it. Do the next washes with Reset and don't ad anything else but maybe EcH2O as a drying aid if you do use those. Then you will be seeing the coatings performance to be revived again after 3-5 washes.

/ Tony