Ceramic Coating

When I got the Mazda, I played around with a synthetic wax called Zaino. It turned out to be very labor intensive and kind of complex, but it did give very nice results when I did it. One of the neat aspects was there was a wax and you added a couple of drops of hardener to it right before applying it, which seemed like a pretty neat idea. Eventually the paint went bad anyway. The car sat out in the sun for 12 years straight, so not that surprising, and during the drought washing your car was banned, which didn’t help me keep up the Zaino coating. Jeb says it isn’t just sunlight, but dirt that digs into and destroys the paint and I wonder if parking near a MARTA station allowed it to pick up rail dust, fine steel particles, though I don’t know how far those travel.

So hoping to keep the Ford Escape for 10 years, I would like to protect its paint. I turned down a $600 paint protection package offered by the dealer which involves applying a coating that has to be reapplied every year anyway. In the past 12 years, synthetic waxes have gotten more advanced, easier to apply and maybe lasting a little longer. And there are still some who use real wax, carnuba wax, sometimes in conjunction with other coatings. Right now the rage is ceramic coating, in particular silicon dioxide (SiO2, which is quartz). It is scary to rub quartz on your car, but they also talk about nanoparticles, so the quartz is too fine to do anything I guess. Most products also have titanium dioxide. The ceramic coatings are supposed to last longer than synthetic waxes (now called sealants, since they aren’t wax), though you can use both. The detailers want really glossy results that bead water great, but what I really want is just good protection for the paint. The detailers use some expensive products by small companies and can save some money by buying in bulk, but one spray bottle of ceramic coating might be $40 and would maybe treat your car twice. That’s not horrible if it works, but it is expensive if it doesn’t, or if it is something I have a hard time applying correctly without a foam cannon, pressure washer, or electric buffer that most detailers already have. You can also get more consumer-oriented products at auto shops and even Walmart. Most products get some great reviews and some awful reviews, so it is hard to know what really works best. Ceramic coatings can last up to a year, but hardly anyone has evidence of them still beading water after more than four months, certainly not without regular washing, possible touchups, and keeping the car in a garage. While applying something once a year would be great, I could live with six months and washing every month or two in between.

In the end, I decided against trying a ceramic coating and instead using a synthetic sealant which would still offer a few months of protection and might be more forgiving on application by a careless lazy person. One product with some really good reviews that is also available at Walmart is Turtle Wax ICE Seal n Shine. On Amazon some people complained that they didn’t receive the “improved formula” when they bought it, but Walmart’s pictures online showed they had the improved formula and in stock at my local store. It is easy to use too: working on one panel at a time (a door, a corner panel, maybe the hood is big enough to count as two panels), you just spray it on and then wipe it off. You don’t even have to wait for it to dry to a haze or anything. You do kind of wipe it to spread it around really well, then turn the cloth over or use a separate one to buff it, so actually it is about the same, but maybe faster unless you spray on too much and have to fight streaks. They recommend using a clay bar first and then using wax to get the best results before applying the coating. It is a brand new car so I am hoping I don’t need to use the clay bar, but will try to gauge that when I wash the car first. With some of the ceramic coatings it seems like it is better not to wax beforehand so it will adhere to the clear coat a little better. With the sealants, it doesn’t seem to matter since you are just layering different types of protection and gloss. So maybe you want to seal in the gloss of the wax to preserve it, or maybe you want to put wax over the sealant for the best gloss.

So I went to Walmart to get the sealant and they didn’t have the improved formula. Or maybe they’ve stopped labeling it as improved formula, who knows? But they did have a line of Turtle Wax Hybrid Ceramic Sprays, which I had not researched. I tried to do some quick research and it seemed like it was similar to the Seal n Shine and people generally liked it. It was a little more expensive at $15 instead of $10, but application seemed to go the same way: wash and dry the car, shake the bottle, spray on and spread around with a cloth, then wipe with a dry cloth. Same work, maybe better results? While I was there I picked up some Meguire’s car wash, which doesn’t include wax, which might be better than my turtle wax wash which has wax. And I got a 30-pack of microfiber wash cloths since I don’t have very many of those.

I got home and threw the microfiber wash cloths and some of my beat up towels into the wash and read more about the Turtle Wax ceramic spray. Some people were really excited about it and a few people said there were better products out there, but didn’t say what. One review on Amazon said it wore off after 4 weeks, but then he tried it on a different car and it lasted 10 weeks.

Once the wash was done, of course I wanted to try it out. It seemed like a good day, no rain on radar, but overcast and not too hot. I don’t guess I always had two buckets, but online they say only wash your car with two buckets: one for soapy water and one to rinse the dirt off the rag. So I had gotten a second bucket when I was cleaning up the Mazda recently. I was worried there might be wax on the Escape, but after rinsing it off, I really doubt it. And the second bucket got pretty dirty, so it needed a wash (I’ve had the car for a little over 3 weeks). One problem is it is higher and I can’t cover all of the roof without a step stool. And it’s just bigger in general than the Mazda, though it is still just a compact SUV, based (at one time anyway) on the Ford Focus chassis, a similar size car to the Mazda 3. I maybe should have used clay bar on the hood because I did feel a few points, but was able to wash them off. I did see some kind of little stain or something in a certain light on one part.

I dried it off with the towels, which aren’t microfiber but are at least 100% cotton. Then finished drying with some of the microfiber cloths. You apply the spray one panel at a time use only 1 or 2 squirts at most, spreading it thin for best results. It seems like I read somewhere to moisten the application rag with distilled water, so I did that. A couple of squirts and I started to get raindrops. I checked radar again and there was nothing but light scattered stuff and none near me. I kept going, but only finished the two sides of the hood before I gave up and went inside. A half hour later the car was all wet, but the rain was over, so I dried it (some people use a leaf blower to blow dry the car) and the rag still probably picked up moisture from crevices in the car, but it went pretty well. I used a lot of rags, so it is good I bought so many. I wasn’t real thorough in covering everything. There is a lot of plastic trim and you can use this stuff on that as well as the glass, but I didn’t want to go crazy the first go around. Not sure if the damp rag approach will work or not. It is supposed to cure for 12 hours and harden, but other than being new and clean, it isn’t that impressive yet. It amazes me that something that goes on so incredibly thin can have any effect at all.