What’s it made of?
Ceramic coating is also called glass coating, hydrophobic coating, nano coating, and graphene coating. It’s made of three main ingredients. Solvent, additives and resin. The resin is silica, titanium dioxide, or a proprietary mixture. This mixture creates the hardening factor. It makes the protective barrier on your vehicle’s clear coat. At Unlimited Detailing, we use eco-friendly auto detailing products only. The products are low and zero volatile organic compounds (VOC) nano coatings. This includes the products we use inside your car. Published research by the National Center for Biotechnology Information studied how exposure to VOC vapors has harmful health effects. This post focuses on exterior coating. You can rest easy knowing our products are safe for you to be around. If you want to dive deeper in what product we use, check out this post by IGL.
What are the benefits of a Glass coating?
A coating strengthens and protects your top coat. Your car’s paint isn’t protected when you buy it. The delicate top layer of your car is prone to scratches, spots, swirls, and more. Coatings add great durability to your car paint. We have three nano coatings for you to choose from. Each of our coating has a 3 year, 4 year, or 5 year warranty.
The surface hardness from the dcoating provides scratch resistance. You get an added layer of protection. It guards against bird droppings, tree sap, road grit, salt, tar, acid rain, micro-marring, and rust.
What are drawbacks of getting nano coating?
Cost
Cost is one drawback that prohibits customers from getting their cars coated. We manage this by offering a promotion once or twice a year. Professional grade nano coating is highly concentrated. The do-it-yourself nano coating is mostly diluted. So it sacrifices, the integrity of the protection, durability, and gloss factor in the coating.
Not Permanent
Impermanence is another drawback. Coatings aren’t permanent. If you’re looking for something (more) permanent, we recommend getting paint protection film. Our paint protection film lasts 10 years. Coatings are ideal for customers with the time to keep and properly wash their vehicle. So with proper maintenance your ceramic coating can last years.
Proper Care
Ceramic coatings do require proper maintenance washes. You don’t want to drive your car through a car wash with brushes. It will ruin your ceramic coating for that fact it will ruin uncoated vehicles as well. Having said that, you don’t need to wash your car every day. We recommend bringing your car to Unlimited Detailing for maintenance washes. That way we can inspect the ceramic coating. You want to wait a minimum of 7 day after you get ceramic coating to wash your vehicle. Suffice it to say, you have to just be mindful that ceramic coated cars need regular washes.
Curing Time
You have to let your car stay with us for 24-72 hours so that the ceramic coating can cure. The ceramic coating bonds to your vehicle’s paint and it needs time to do this. We are flexible and do our best to work with you. Our climate-controlled shop ensures that your ceramic coating bonds properly. It also allows the coating to cure effectively to your vehicle’s paint.
Professional Quality or DIY it?
Prepping Your Car
We want to touch base on professional quality ceramic coating versus DIY ceramic coatings. As we mentioned earlier, DIY ceramic coatings are highly diluted. One of the unappreciated parts of getting a ceramic coating professional or DIY applied is the prep work. Prepping your vehicle for ceramic coating takes time. The duration depends on the size of your vehicle. This process can take 4-8 hours.
We use a two bucket wash system and followed by our paint correction. To ensure your vehicles major to minor defects are removed before applying the coating. We have a controlled indoor setting where the pollen and atmospheric debris isn’t messing up our prep work. We have ventilators and purifiers in our shop. When you DIY, you need to be aware. Airborne particles can stick to and bond with your ceramic coating. Here’s a reddit thread about prepping your car to see what others are saying about it.
Even Application
Proper lighting is critical when applying ceramic coating. Apply DIY coatings evenly. Unlimited Detailing does it evenly all over your car. You don’t want to miss spots on your car. Also, do not let the coating sit too long before leveling it. This can cause what we call “high spots”. We keep your vehicle in a controlled environment. This ensures the ceramic coating can have the proper temperature for curing.
Experience
Lastly, we do car coating jobs all day long. So we know what we’re doing with confidence. We have training too. DIY is a good experience to learn. However, you just won’t get the same longevity, durability, and professional quality as a professional detail shop application. The products alone can’t compare. Therefore the outcomes will be different. We spend about 8 hours working on your car before it cures. Prepping takes anywhere from 4-8 hours. Then applying the coating. Here’s a good article by Car and Driver. They tested four DIY ceramic coatings. It gives you an overview on what you need to DIY.
Book your next ceramic coating with us. Fill out the contact form.