Hot to apply Ceramic coating?

[RaydiantDetail]

fastfed --
Thanks for your reply..

I don`t know how it is possible to paint correct, polish, do anything to an entire vehicle, with 2 pads..

If you are paint correcting, the pads pick up all the dirt, a little clear coat, etc., from the paint, and even if you wipe them down between passes, eventually, the pad gets too soaked with dirt stuck in the foam pores, and needs to be changed out with a new one.. I use a Rotary and always end up using at least 6 - 5-1/4" pads to paint correct any normal size vehicle..

For any Random Orbital like your Porter Cable, you need pad rotation to get the best results from whatever pad you use with whatever product..
5-1/4" pads on a 5" backing plate are much more rotation efficient for that machine than 6" products..

Good luck with your project !
Dan F

Yup, this. Less pads also means you will start getting worse results with your cutting/ polishing as the pad gets saturated and loaded with product and residue. At minimum you want 5-6 cutting pads and 4 polishing pads. If you are talking about the blue LC pads, I think those are a finishing pad with no mechanical cut but you would get the cut from the abrasives in m205 which may be enough. As Rasky mentioned do small test spots of your entire system (cutting compound with cutting pad and polish with polishing/ finished pad) first to see what the results look like. If you are happy with the results then use that system around the entire car.

I am going to agree the ebay coatings are definitely hit or miss. They are not horrible for the price though as you mentioned but I bought one for fun and ended up using it on wheels since it was so cheap.

You will want to do 2 coats of the coating to make sure even coverage and yes even if you are putting on reload 24 hours after you can still put on 2 coats of the coating. This is dependent on manufacturer. Some want you to put on the 2nd coat 1 to 2 hours after the first coat but your coatings should come with some instruction or as mentioned do some trials on something other than the car. Worst case you will have to compound/ polish that area if it doesn`t out.

Also coating maintenance is going to be key to ensuring your coating will behave as its supposed to. Whether its a $10 coating or a $500 coating.

[pdqgp]

Second coat on ceramic? I can see that but when do you add the second coat? how long after? Remember I`m also adding reload to it 24 hours after.

depends on the coating. follow instructions on the product you use.

[RaskyR1]

Rasky. YoUr back !

Awesome.

Missed me did ya?

Been super busy lately.

[fastfed]

So finished, most of it at least. After using the 105 I wasn`t seeing a lot of marring or haze it came out really well, still I went down to the 205 and the car just looked beautiful. After that I had so much dust I washed it again using a little dawn only. Then I did a full IPA wipe down and waiting a few minutes. The application for the ceramic is very odd, it seemed to want to flash/dry almost right away, I did a few test spots , one waiting 30 seconds to buff the other 2-3 minutes and regardless I was able to knock down the product streak free so i wasn`t worried that much about dry times.

What is shocking, is how sticky the stuff is, or how its the complete opposite of a normal sealant or wax, instead of it being nice and smooth, butter like when coming off, it was if there was super glue under there. Needless to say the car looks brand new again, I took some ````ty pictures real quick of the closeups on the hood, reflection bling only lol

Tomorrow after 24 hours I`ll add the reload which I hope will give it some slickness.

Thanks all!

[fastfed]

my camera skills are ... well, they`re terrible.

but the car looks brand spankin new, actually I wouldn`t be surprised if its better then new.









now I need to see if I can fix those horrible rims. It`s my parents weekend toy, convertible so they aren`t that anal about it, but it`s dipped chrome rims and one spray with my pressure washer most of the chrome came right off