Recently I was in a conversation with a customer about protecting their new vehicle. This person had bought this used car with 30,00o miles on it and said that she was already happy with the way the paint looked. She said she was not interested in having the car polished before the coating application.
As a technician I am not opposed to this at all. I’m usually trying to give the customer what they are asking for- however in this case there are issues with that. When I go to prepare the paint surface I need to know that I am going to have a proper bond with that surface and the coating I am applying to it. Oftentimes there will be wax residues, or sealant on these recently purchased used cars that will most definitely compromise the integrity of that bond . They don’t just wash off or come off with an alcohol wipe down. Sure I could skip the step of machine polishing the car but I wouldn’t be able to stand by the quality of that job someone is surely paying a good amount of money for. There is simply no way to know what is on that car, so the only way is to make it fool-proof. I give the car a proper decontamination treatment and machine polish, followed by another surface cleaning before moving into the stage of applying a ceramic coating.
Diamond Fox Detail is a vision of perfection, patience, and outstanding results. Not “okay”, or “really good”. Simply THE best. This is why people travel from other cities to have their vehicles beautified and protected by me. Especially with higher-end cars that get traded-in often, it’s very possible the car has a coating on it which is near the end of its life and needs to be fully removed.
Temperature and cure times
All ceramic coatings have different cure times and application processes one important part of the coating application process is being aware of the temperature and humidity inside the shop. Typically when humidity is high you’re not going to have a very long flash time before it is time to start leveling the coating. unless you have a very controlled environment sometimes your technician needs to work very quickly to avoid problems with leveling the coating.When the coating begins flashing on the car it is time to start leveling the coating and if you are slow to do that you can run into issues like not being able to level the coating in time and leaving high spots behind. These are the very ugly rainbow looking things you might see on videos where people are posting about how they had a very terrible ceramic coating service job done. Typically with higher humidity you have to work more quickly. On the other hand if it is cold and dry you might be waiting a while for the coding to reach its flash time. you never want to be leveling a coating before it starts flashing because that would really compromise the bond the coding has with the paint surface. A certified coding specialist is going to be watching a clock or stopwatch while doing this work to ensure the leveling process does not begin too soon or too late depending on these temperatures and humidity levels.
Some coatings allow you to do multiple panels at a time and others flash so quickly that you really only have time to do a panel or two at a time. During this process proper lighting is extremely important and different temperatures of light. The person applying this coding needs to be able to see how the coating is flashing from different angles and also needs to be able
to see if there are missed areas where the coding has not been fully leveled. Not fully leveling a coating also leads to high spots that you may end up seeing in different lighting.
Having the proper leveling towels is also one of the most important things in this process. Some towels will not fully grab all of the coating well enough to level it which can lead to pushing the coding around while it is being leveled. Usually when I am leveling a coating I will have multiple towels for the wet level and then dry level. The first level should always be followed up with a dry towel to ensure all of the coating is fully leveled on the paint.The applicator pads and amount of coating on the pad is an important subject as well. Some pads you will need to use more or less product than others.
Now you can really start to understand how many variables supplies, and focus go into doing this type of job. On most of the cars I am doing I am using brand new leveling towels which cost about $30 on their own.That does not include the applicator pads or the cost of the product being applied. Some people feel that these jobs cost too much money and attempt to do them on their own only to find that it is way more complicated than they originally thought and are having problems trying to apply a coating properly. That or they have already done it and messed something up pretty badly and need it fixed. One of the most important things to consider is that a certified paint correction expert and ceramic coating installer knows how to fix issues if they have any complications during the application process. Once in a while a coating will flash too fast and will not be able to be leveled by hand, forcing me to polish off the coating and redo the panel. Occasionally I will come out in the morning and do quality control and realize that there is a high Spot somewhere that needs to be fixed before delivering to the customer. Even though oftentimes I can have a brand new car done in one long day the second morning is always dedicated to quality control. Sometimes we can overlook things after looking at them for so long and realize that there’s something we missed
the night before.
