Do you use a topper on your coating?
- Thread starter Cadfael
- Start date
dwaleke
Member
You have to ask yourself what is the topper getting you that the coating is not?
I use a topper on one of my cars that has 3D`s ceramic coating on it. The topper adds a little gloss, a lot of slickness, and enhances the self cleaning properties. Maybe it will extend the life of the coating but 3D Bead It Up is not very durable itself (1-2mo).
If the base coating could do all of what the topper does then there would be no need for the topper. As time goes on there will be less and less need for toppers as coating tech gets better.
I use a topper on one of my cars that has 3D`s ceramic coating on it. The topper adds a little gloss, a lot of slickness, and enhances the self cleaning properties. Maybe it will extend the life of the coating but 3D Bead It Up is not very durable itself (1-2mo).
If the base coating could do all of what the topper does then there would be no need for the topper. As time goes on there will be less and less need for toppers as coating tech gets better.
BudgetPlan1
Active member
What fun is washing a car if ya can`t rub a little sumthin` on it afterwards?
The Guz
Mike
This won`t last long. If you are like a majority on here, you will not be able to avoid touching the paint.
I mentioned this before but what makes you think Lite is not a full coating? It is more of a full coating then anything.
PearTree
New member
This is autopia, of course we use toppers! I’m so ingrained to washing a car then using a drying aid I still do with a coating even though it’s really not necessary.
The Guz
Mike
Don`t focus on multi-year. That is the ridiculous claim at the moment just as hardness and SiO2 content.
Please elaborate. What do you see as the difference between UK and Lite for example?
The Guz
Mike
Multi year is the next outlandish claim. First it was the percentage of SiO2 in a coating then hardness and now multi year.
Many of coatings users can attest to this but durability varies based on too many factors. Environment, maintenance, garage kept, daily driven, etc. Real world use is much different when Mother Nature is the tester.
These multi year claims are lab claims. I’m not picking on Adams but they recently had a Facebook live visit to their B&B blender which is a great video of behind the scenes. But they have a scrubbing machine where they take dawn at some dilution, water and set the machine for a certain amount strokes. These strokes are mimicking the wash process.
So they assume a variable of X amount strokes equals 1 year. They measure the contact angle until it’s flat and they base their formula on the amount of strokes it took to get their. Thus their 7 year claim on their coating. Various other companies do the same kind of thing.
Companies like Gyeon and CarPro are more conservative in their claims. Take CanCoat as an example. A claim of up to 6 month but when properly maintained it can exceed that and achieve 12-15 months. Same came be wait for CQ Lite.
Cquartz UK has a claim of 2 years or more. And yea it can go longer than 2 years with proper car.
When Cquartz SiC came out the first thing that came outtake first thing out of people’s mouths is how long does it last. Same for P&S Legend where the folks at P&S states depending on variables it has the potential to last up to 5 years.
This all stems from youtubers pushing out content.
You joined a forum where you have access to many members who can share their experiences and educate.
So my advice is pick an established brand and go with it. If you don’t like it try another and repeat until you find something you like.
Stokdgs
dansautodetailing.com
Coating Tech Was better...
When the first Coating came out (Optimum Opti-Guard), it did not need a "topper".The word "topper" had not even been invented..
Optimum was field tested for several years.
Not some chemical mumbo-jumbo that said "according to our formula,blah,blah,blah, this coating will last for a zillion years"...
There were a few other coatings out at the same time, and they were great too, but seemed to not have the durability of this one.
Now, this does not imply that Optimum products were some kind of magic that made everyone who used the big syringe of it became a coating master, etc..
It had, and still has Everything to do with the Prep before the Application... And it still does today, regardless of what you use..
Not so serious prep = not so serious results and durability for any product..
My personal Field Testing - years of rain and snow in the Pacific Northwest, and several 4,000 mile trips through rain sleet, snow, hail, dust, and extreme heat, over several years..
The only thing that I personally found out that really helped my coatings at all, was the use of the new, invented, Car Pro Reset Soap for washing a coated vehicle, again, years ago..
When my personal coated vehicles started acting differently to water in a negative way, I found Reset, and after a few washes with it, the coating characteristics, came back.. This is what Car Pro Reset is designed to do.. I still only use Reset to wash my coated vehicles..
Dan F
Coatings=crack
Active member
I add a topper because.... why not. I also mainly use PA Cosmic (soon High gloss) because I see a visual difference when I had CqUk3 on my car. Also believe it helped extend the wuality of performance longer.
What I mean is I topped my CqUk3 and my friends mustang coated a month later wasn’t topped. At over a year both were going well but mine had better water behavior. Both mustang ford paint, garage kept but mine saw more miles. Better proof for me than any you tube video...
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
What I mean is I topped my CqUk3 and my friends mustang coated a month later wasn’t topped. At over a year both were going well but mine had better water behavior. Both mustang ford paint, garage kept but mine saw more miles. Better proof for me than any you tube video...
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
dwaleke
Member
Coating Tech Was better...
When the first Coating came out (Optimum Opti-Guard), it did not need a "topper".The word "topper" had not even been invented..
Optimum was field tested for several years.
Not some chemical mumbo-jumbo that said "according to our formula,blah,blah,blah, this coating will last for a zillion years"...
There were a few other coatings out at the same time, and they were great too, but seemed to not have the durability of this one.
Now, this does not imply that Optimum products were some kind of magic that made everyone who used the big syringe of it became a coating master, etc..
It had, and still has Everything to do with the Prep before the Application... And it still does today, regardless of what you use..
Not so serious prep = not so serious results and durability for any product..
My personal Field Testing - years of rain and snow in the Pacific Northwest, and several 4,000 mile trips through rain sleet, snow, hail, dust, and extreme heat, over several years..
Dan F
I had a car with opticoat pro on it. While I agree it was one of the most durable coatings I have experienced it could have benefitted from a topper that added additional gloss and slickness.
I mean they now offer a product that does just that for all of their latest coating tech called Hyper-seal.
William_Wallace
New member
Coating Tech Was better...
When the first Coating came out (Optimum Opti-Guard), it did not need a "topper".The word "topper" had not even been invented..
Optimum was field tested for several years.
Not some chemical mumbo-jumbo that said "according to our formula,blah,blah,blah, this coating will last for a zillion years"...
There were a few other coatings out at the same time, and they were great too, but seemed to not have the durability of this one.
Now, this does not imply that Optimum products were some kind of magic that made everyone who used the big syringe of it became a coating master, etc..
It had, and still has Everything to do with the Prep before the Application... And it still does today, regardless of what you use..
Not so serious prep = not so serious results and durability for any product..
My personal Field Testing - years of rain and snow in the Pacific Northwest, and several 4,000 mile trips through rain sleet, snow, hail, dust, and extreme heat, over several years..
The only thing that I personally found out that really helped my coatings at all, was the use of the new, invented, Car Pro Reset Soap for washing a coated vehicle, again, years ago..
When my personal coated vehicles started acting differently to water in a negative way, I found Reset, and after a few washes with it, the coating characteristics, came back.. This is what Car Pro Reset is designed to do.. I still only use Reset to wash my coated vehicles..
Dan F
Nice write up.
William_Wallace
New member
I always top coatings it’s actually hard to not top them. I like when a topper changes the look of the paint either ups the gloss or darkens the paint or fills swirls. So many good ones and they all perform closely and help the beading. Plus all of these spray toppers your around the whole car in 10 minutes.
I always rant against opti products because they have such a good opportunity to release something better than gloss coat and cater to much to the professional installer side. If opti released a better coating somewhere between gloss coat and there pro line I would love to try it.
or top only part of the car and see if you can see a difference.
I always rant against opti products because they have such a good opportunity to release something better than gloss coat and cater to much to the professional installer side. If opti released a better coating somewhere between gloss coat and there pro line I would love to try it.
or top only part of the car and see if you can see a difference.
roscopervis
New member
Not any more. Now I don’t use anything other than a very light drying aid (like dilute Last Touch or similar). Instead, I just make sure that the coating’s surface is clean and contaminant free and let the coating do the work it was designed to do. It’s a sacrificial layer, let it do its job. You then know how long it actually lasts, and when it actually starts to fail instead of being confused by what is the topper and what is the coating.
Accumulator
Well-known member
I would, I have, *NEVER* topped a Coating as to me that defeats the whole idea. Which, again *just for me* is that with the Coating I can just wash for ages without having to do anything else. If I were willing to anything more than that I`d just use FK1000P annually or so and spritz on some FK425 as a Drying Aid.
Note that now that Coatings are supposedly not lasting multiple years the way my old Optimum ones did, I`ve basically quit paying any attention to `em, so it`s not like I`m claiming to be a Coating Authority....
Note that now that Coatings are supposedly not lasting multiple years the way my old Optimum ones did, I`ve basically quit paying any attention to `em, so it`s not like I`m claiming to be a Coating Authority....
roscopervis
New member
Further to my above response, the attached photo is the best visual representation of why I have moved away from toppers and continually putting things on coatings.
I recently had a couple of weeks off from work so I popped down my buddy’s detailing unit to have a chat and got roped in to helping out for a week. I’m a sucker. Anyway, one of the cars I worked on was the one in the photo. It was looked after, in the sense that the owner liked to frequently use topper products on it when he did his own washes, and to help mask the swirls, always knowing he would be bringing in for a full correction and coating. He complained that over time though, the water behaviour and gloss just never got to the levels they were at when he first used the products and he thought they might have got weaker in the bottle over time.
I’m sure you’ve all come across this kind of ‘film’ on the paint of cars. This was after the strong wash and I was removing the tar from the vehicle. It is essentially layers and layers of QD’s/spray sealants on the paint. They are now so durable that by using them every wash, they never really wear off. Add to this, the car picks up bits of contamination from sap, hard water, bugs etc and this then gets trapped within the next layer of topper. Of course, each of these layers are sub micron thick, but once the contamination has been added and preserved, if it is not removed and gets topped and topped there gets to a point where you might be using the most hydrophobic product known to man, but if it’s added on top of this base (which is invisible until I sprayed tar remover on the car) it merely becomes average. The coating is more than clogged, and it’s clogged by more than contamination.
I’m seeing more and more of it, and it convinces me that the best thing to do is to keep the coating surface as functionally effective as possible by keeping it as clean as possible and leave it do what it was designed to do. Otherwise, you are essentially treating the coating like the clear coat and using toppers like we used to use waxes and sealants not that long ago.
I recently had a couple of weeks off from work so I popped down my buddy’s detailing unit to have a chat and got roped in to helping out for a week. I’m a sucker. Anyway, one of the cars I worked on was the one in the photo. It was looked after, in the sense that the owner liked to frequently use topper products on it when he did his own washes, and to help mask the swirls, always knowing he would be bringing in for a full correction and coating. He complained that over time though, the water behaviour and gloss just never got to the levels they were at when he first used the products and he thought they might have got weaker in the bottle over time.
I’m sure you’ve all come across this kind of ‘film’ on the paint of cars. This was after the strong wash and I was removing the tar from the vehicle. It is essentially layers and layers of QD’s/spray sealants on the paint. They are now so durable that by using them every wash, they never really wear off. Add to this, the car picks up bits of contamination from sap, hard water, bugs etc and this then gets trapped within the next layer of topper. Of course, each of these layers are sub micron thick, but once the contamination has been added and preserved, if it is not removed and gets topped and topped there gets to a point where you might be using the most hydrophobic product known to man, but if it’s added on top of this base (which is invisible until I sprayed tar remover on the car) it merely becomes average. The coating is more than clogged, and it’s clogged by more than contamination.
I’m seeing more and more of it, and it convinces me that the best thing to do is to keep the coating surface as functionally effective as possible by keeping it as clean as possible and leave it do what it was designed to do. Otherwise, you are essentially treating the coating like the clear coat and using toppers like we used to use waxes and sealants not that long ago.
