Right. The hydrophobic properties of a good ceramic coating are much better than the hydrophobic properties of the hydrophobic impregnated PPF, especially long term.
“Require”? No.
Is it not true the hardness of ceramic protects soft paint? According to a detailer on a Lucid review video, it has soft paint.
Ceramic coating cures to a hardness to help reduce washing and drying marring, add chemical resistance, adds gloss, makes it easy to clean.
So what do you recommend for coating, in general and for DIY?
As a shop, it behooves me to recommend you see a professional to do paint correction prior to application. But you could probably pick up a bottle of Adams and it would look good. I am going to break a cardinal rule and post Tesla content here. This is a progression of professional wash videos on our process we follow.
Some do. I think Rivian does for example.
Personally I wouldn't want the car company to choose what PPF to use on the car from the factory, because the quality no doubt will be terrible. Car companies will find any way to save money so they'll upcharge you for the PPF but use the lowest quality to maximize profits. Not only that, the quality of the installation will suffer as they will most likely be templates, cut to allow for easy installation and the film edges would be very visible. A really good shop takes more than a few days to do PPF, and the edges of the film are often times wrapped and unnoticed. Gotta support those small independent shops too. It's really an art.
Thank you for your experienced input here. Regarding wax applications on top of a ceramic coat, while I never wax, I do sometimes spot clean the car with Meguiars spray wash and wax which has wax in it (I have SunTek PPF on the front/hood/mirrors and Adams Graphene spray self applied on the rest). Would this be messing up they hydrophobicity of the coating on my SunTek and Adams? I’ve noticed the SunTek losing hydrophobicity, I’ve had it since April. The Adams seems to be holding up better but I didn’t do the best job applying it and had some high spots I needed to lightly polish out. My issue I’ve noticed is that there seems to be an almost electrostatic effect from the Graphene where it seems to like to cling onto lint from microfiber cloths that shouldn’t be depositing much lint, and it’s a crazy pollen magnet, possibly just more noticeable because it’s a black car?
Here’s another question. I’ve decided to have a pro put ceramic on the whole car (OptiCoat), however I self applied the Adams Graphene spray myself from the doors to the trunk (which are not PPF, only the front of the car up to and including the mirrors is PPF). Is that going to cause a problem for applying and getting the maximum benefit of the OptiCoat (silicon carbide)? Like would it be better to polish out the Adams and paint correct then apply the new ceramic? The Adams spray lasts 9-12 months based on what I’ve read, it’s just not super even, doesn’t give that black mirror gloss I was hoping for. It does make it easier to clean, but hey, I wouldn’t expect a $35 self applied spray to be as good as a $1600 full car OptiCoat.
Disclose it and I would fully expect him to sand off the previous coat first. If he doesn't find a new installer.
Thanks! I did try to polish out a couple high spots from the graphene with a white pad (by hand, I don’t have a machine polisher) and it didn’t work, but did take care of a few other high spots. Lesson learned, leave it to the pros if it’s a high end car. I’m still gonna self apply the Graphene spray to the wife’s Subaru cuz that car is already dinged up, it’s just to make it easier to wash in the winter because my wife’s idea of washing a car is waiting until it rains
.
Oh and thanks for the clean garage microfiber towel recommendation. I ordered a pack. I have the chemical guys ones and they’re about done. They’re ok for spot cleaning out bird/bug splat, but not for detailing after a few washes, they seem to throw more lint each time I use them.
