why teflon paint protectants suck

[Brother Methias]

after buying my nearly perfect 03` m5 with 6 months of wear on it i allowed the dealer to apply a 300$ teflon paint protectant titled "armor shield" a week later with the hope it would be resistant to alot of daily driving hazards for over a year and be easy to maintain.



Unfortunately, i soon learned that while the beast looked great with the dealer glaze job there were alot of hidden swirls and scratches over the underlying clear coat. After the protectant job which likely involved removing the glaze and some amount of paint cleaning, the protectant was applied which in bright sunlight or at night allows all the swirls and scratches to be clearly seen.



The solution? likely removing the **** and starting all over. Not so fast, cowboy- a call to the manufacture of the protectant reveals it is applied with a "heated buffer" which "permanently" bonds to the clear coat and can allegedly only be removed by "stripping" the paint (holy ****).



The lesson to be learned?



1. dealers suck and are stupid and want your money, listen

instead to the college educated people on this board.



2. dealers don`t know dog squat (edit DK)



3. any permanent paint shield should be left for your boat



4. if you want it perfect, buy it new



(not too bitter)

[jimmybuffit]

I think there is hope. For you and the car, not the dealer or the `bathtub` chemist.



The `heated buffer` thing sounds like a scam... heating a buffer would be like freezing an ice cube.



I suggest proper application of Automotive International`s A-B-C System to neutralize the paint.

Odds are quite good that it will remove the snake oil.



Good Luck!



Jim

[medic]

yeah, it sounds like marketing hype...imagine if you got a scratch or ding on a pannel and needed to touch the area up...they actually expect you to strip the who pannel to do that?



I`m pretty sure teflon needs to be heated when they apply it to a pot, but if they had to do something like that on an entire car, the dealer would have charged you well over $300. I think you paid for a very bad detail with polymer wax.

[gnahc79]

The amount of heat required to properly apply a teflon coating on top of the clearcoat would probably melt the clearcoat and paint first :eek:



Even if they could do it, $300 is way too low.