u/808_GhostRider

Hi everyone! Appreciate anyone’s take on what’s going on here if you’ve worked with this coating before.

Had a black toyota tundra come in for the works (Ceramic Coating). Washed, chemical decon, mechanical decon, 2-step paint correction, and customer wanted this particular coating. I’ve done several of these before and never came across this problem before…

Problem: CSL went on great, easypeasy like it normally does. Started the exo v4 coat 2.5hrs after finishing the first panel of CSL. Everything went great and looked great except for the (c?) pillar (the painted metal pillar on the side rear of the cab. At first I thought it was just a massive highspot (because that’s what it looked like at first), so I did the go-to fix and added on more exo v4, level, then buff. It got worse, much much worse. It started to discolor and become this milky/hazy color. What in the world happened?

Having customer come back and I’m going to compound it all off and try again. i’m just worried this is some odd chemical reaction that I’m not picking up on. I’m 99% certain it’s not a high-spot issue as the correcting step I took minutes later made it worse, then the added color change tells me somethings wrong.

Fwiw: All done in a Controlled environment well within spec of environmental paramters

Hi everyone!

I screwed up ROYALY and used up the pre-wash and shampoo I use at the start of prepping vehicles for ceramic coatings. I have an install in 14hrs…

My local auto parts shop has:

Griots Car Wash
Griots Brilliant finish snow
They have Meguiar’s too fwiw

Anyone use these? For context: I normally use KochChemie Gentle Snow Foam with some green star in there to start decontaminating the vehicle.

My only other option is to sleep a few hours, and drive an hour to my detail supply store before the job. Really trying not to do this as for those who do ceramic coatings know just how much energy is expended and how much focus is needed for optimal results.

Any advice or ways out of this product jam would be greatly appreciated. Context: Hawaii has very very limited detail supplies and amazon takes minimum 2-3 days.

Hi everyone! Very much appreciate the help in advance.

I recently had several low budget horrible condition car customers. I don’t mind tailoring a detail to fit someone’s budget, I’m all about access to quality car care, but I can’t seem to manage expectation well enough.

For example, I recently did a light colored Nissan with paint that felt more like sand paper (exaggerating a bit), etched in bird poo, etched in minerals from untreated water spots baking in the sun, lots of pollen deposits. I pointed all of this out to them and agreed that I’d just be doing a simple exterior wash to meet their budget. I mentioned what needed to be done to really make the car look right but it just wasn’t in the budget. So, I did the wheels with p&S break-buster and my three brushes, a prewash with Adams Stripwash, rinsed, hit it with some Iron Remover (HOLY I wish I took a picture) foamed it back up with Gyeon Foam and gave it a thorough contact wash. Rinsed. Dried. Used cerium oxide to remove the bird poo etching on the windshield with the bonus of also removing the water spotting, sealed up the windshield with Gyeon quick view. I felt like we did this guy a solid considering what he was paying. It absolutely looked far better than when it came in but the customer was kind of disappointed their car didn’t look like the few other ceramic coating pickups we had that day. I had to explain again the difference in our process and what people pay for a ceramic coating. I wouldn’t say the customer left upset, just disappointed.

How do y’all deal with this? Should I have just hit it with other chemical decontamination products? My thinking was if I have to clay I would almost certainly have to polish due to the condition of the paint and that’s just not worth it when you’re charging ~3x a drive thru car wash. I wouldn’t say we do this normally. Majority are ceramic coating new/newish cars and their continued maintenance. Just something about these guys made me want to help.

Hi everyone. I’ve been doing a lot of Syncro & CSL+Evo installs and thought I’d share some of my findings now that some of them are ~1 yr old.

Installation: We all know it’s all about the prep you do. That aside, lets just assume I very thorough prep. I found that Gtechniq is slightly easier to apply than Syncro. Most of the Gtechniq product is leveled and removed during the leveling wipe. The buff is really just insurance. Great for a two towel method, however I think this effects some other areas down the road. Gyeon Syncro isn’t that much harder to apply. Levels easy and buffs off easy, I just find myself catching high spots where I wasn’t catching any with Gtechniq.

Looks: I gotta give this one to Gyeon Syncro by a smidge. The gloss (unmetered) seemed much better than Gtechniq.

Performance first 6 months: Both phenomenal considering these are commercially available ceramic coatings. I really don’t have anything bad to say about either.

Performance around 1 yr: Pre decontamination wash, the cars with Gyeon Syncro “performed” better than Gtechniq. Talking hydrofobics. After the decontamination wash, both coatings were back to being close in terms of gloss and performance but I will say I think Gyeon Syncro has the edge. Syncro is performing the way it did a couple weeks after installing it. While Gtechniq is still beading well, but the waters not just falling off like it did when I installed it.

Overall: I think these two coatings are neck and neck. Cost wise they’re pretty much the same. Application is easier with Gtechniq but Gyeon has the edge when it comes to performance and durability. Which I wonder if it has to do with how easy Gtechniq came off vs Gyeon but who knows.

Just my two cents. Hopefully this helps someone out there