You know, ceramic coatings have become all the rage. They are the best way to take care of anything that you care about. But the question becomes, how do you take care of a ceramic coating? Whether you installed it yourself or you paid someone to do it for you, that’s the topic of this video. How to take care of a ceramic coated car.
Here’s why ceramic coatings are superior to conventional car waxes or synthetic paint sealants. First of all, they make a semi-permanent bond to the paint. That means they’re not going to wear off from normal washing. The way a wax and a sealant washes off is just the act of taking a wash mitt and rubbing over the paint— that micro-abrades and it removes any car wax like a carnauba car wax or a synthetic paint sealant. It just doesn’t last that long. Maybe 6 months, maybe a year. Depends on how you wash your car.
Ceramic coatings, though, because they make a semi-permanent bond, for the most part, they really don’t wear off—at least not from washing. So, that’s one reason ceramic coatings are superior to waxes and sealants.
Protection, Gloss, and Self-Cleaning
Another reason why is because they offer better protection. And there are two reasons. The ceramic itself creates a sacrificial barrier that resists oxidation, swirls, scratches, and water spots better than waxes and sealants. And because they make that semi-permanent bond to the paint, they last longer. That means they protect longer. Okay? So, you get a whole mix of little things right there in the beginning.
Now, besides the longevity, the protection, you get insane gloss and shine. You basically have what looks like a glassy finish when you use a quality ceramic coating. And then the other thing about it is because it creates a hydrophobic surface, it’ll self-clean anytime you get a hard rain. So, all the dust and pollen that’s accumulated over the week—you get a hard rain, it just flushes right off the car.
My wife and I will come home sometimes and I’ll notice my wife’s car is parked outside. And I’ll say, “Why did you park outside, honey?” and she’ll say, “Well, I saw the weather forecast. There’s going to be a hard rain tonight, so I thought I’d just let Mother Nature wash my car.” And uh, so that’s what she does.
And then the other thing is when you go to actually wash it and dry it, because the surface tends to be harder from the coating, it’s safer to wash. Dirt wants to release easier, so you’re not grinding in the paint, and everything rinses off faster, and of course it dries faster whether you’re using a drying towel or compressed air. So, those are the reasons why ceramic coatings are superior to waxes and sealants, and that’s why we love them so much to take care of our cars.
Two Ways to Care for a Coated Car
So, the two primary ways you’re going to take care of a ceramic coated car is by washing it and maintaining it. Okay, so I’m going to cover that in detail next, but that’s the two things you need to be aware of.
The next is how long to wait before you even do anything to your freshly ceramic coated car. Whether you ceramic coated it yourself or you had a detailer do it for you, you want to wait for a while before you start doing things to it. You want it to fully set up. And I’ll cover that next, too. And if you can’t remember all this stuff, in the description below, you can download a PDF checklist that’ll cover everything I’m covering in this video.
How Long to Wait After Coating
So, let’s talk about how to wash the car. You say you just got your car coated. You picked it up on a Friday. You shouldn’t be washing this car for at least a week. You really don’t want to get it wet. You don’t want to drive in the rain. You don’t want to park it outside. So, that means some planning should have taken place. You know, maybe if you only have one car, maybe you share with a buddy—you do a, uh, you know, you share a ride with a buddy. You take an Uber, you take a Lyft, but you do whatever it takes to leave that car in your garage so that coating can completely set up and harden the way it should before you start touching it or getting it wet.
So, you want to wait at least one week before you even wash the car or get it wet. So, plan accordingly. And another reason you want to do this is because as that coating continues to cure and harden, it’s actually going to get glossier and shinier, and being fully set up, it’s going to last longer. So, it’s worth the wait to allow that coating to do, as I like to say, its magic voodoo magic there on the surface and get fully cured and hardened.
First Wash: Go Contactless If You Can
Now that you’ve waited a week, you know, if you don’t need to wash it, don’t wash it. But if you do need to wash it or there’s some kind of contamination on there, let’s talk about the way to wash a car. We have a recent video we made that covers a lot of these topics if you want to actually see it in action. But here’s what you want to do.
For the most part, because on a coating any dirt that’s on there is not going to be really bonded, it’s going to flush off easy. So a lot of times you can just rinse the coating off with a strong water hose sprayer. I did that this last week to a car I coated one week ago. It was over in a restoration shop getting some more work done and it got a light coating of dust. I needed to uh, fix the hood on the car. Somebody needed to get the car clean first, and I didn’t really want to touch it with a wash mitt because it just got coated. I took it outside. I put it on the jet spray and it blew all the dust off the car. So, there’s a real-world story that happened just last week. I was able to clean the car without even touching it. And that’s how effective coatings are at keeping your car clean.
Foam Tools for a Safer Wash
But let’s say you do have to wash it. Then let’s talk about the safest ways to wash your car. So, one of the safest ways is to use a foam gun or a foam cannon. And here’s a foam cannon. And this hooks to a pressure washer. A foam gun would just hook to your car wash hose. Use this to wash the car and do what’s called a contactless wash.
And the way you do this is first you’d hose the car off to remove any loose dirt. Once you’ve done that, you spray the car down with your foam gun. Let that foam dwell, but don’t let it dry. And then you’d blast that off. And the reason this works is because first, like I just said, most of the dirt, the pollen, the dust that’s on the car is not going to want to stick. You can blast it off with that initial pre-rinse.
Using a quality car wash in your foam gun—the whole idea behind the car wash is there’s cleaning agents in there, there’s chemistry in there that is going to help dissolve and loosen any dirt that didn’t rinse off. So, the foam—the benefit to the foam—is it dwells on the surface. Unlike suds from a bucket, they just kind of slide right off. Foam offers dwell time. So, you foam the car, you let the foam dwell. What’s inside the foam are the cleaning agents. They loosen any dirt that the pre-rinse didn’t remove. And now you rinse the car again. And as you rinse that foam off, it takes the majority of all that dirt, pollen, and dust off the car. So, you’re able to clean the car without touching it.
Drying Without Marring
And then after that, you can dry it. And to dry it, you know, the touchless way would be to use something like this, a leaf blower, and just blast all that water off the car. Or come back with something very soft, very clean, always inspected—this is a microfiber drying towel. And just make sure it’s clean. And then you can just gently use the least invasive method to pull all that water off the car.
So that’s a very safe way to do the initial wash on a freshly ceramic coated car—and all the washes. It’s contactless wash: pre-rinse, foam, rinse, and dry.
If You Must Touch: Safe Contact Wash Tips
And if your car becomes dirty enough that you really feel you need to actually do a contact wash—you’re going to have to move something, some sort of wash media over the paint—here’s some tips from my own experience washing black cars.
First of all, I really like these—they call this a microfiber chenille wash mitt. And the reason I like this is less about how it washes the car and more about how it comes clean when I put it in the washing machine. You see, the way we scratch our car is the way we touch it. We touch it with a wash mitt, a drying towel, and a microfiber wiping towel—three ways we touch our car. And slowly over time, your wash mitts, your drying towels, and your wiping towels, they get contaminated. So that’s why I like this, because after I wash the car, and there’s obviously going to be dirt on here, when I put it in the washing machine, it comes clean. So it keeps it uncontaminated. That’s why I like these.
Two-Bucket Method and Technique
But another tip that you can use is the two-bucket method. Okay? So the two-bucket method is where you have a bucket with your wash soap solution and you have a bucket with just clean water. And for that I always like to get these little contraptions. These are pretty cool. This is the Grit Guard insert. This is the Grit Guard Washboard. And the way this works is you would dip your wash mitt into your soapy water bucket first.
And then watch this, because this is important technique. Anytime you’re washing a flawless-finished car, don’t be like those people that sit there and scrub the paint and wash in circles. You don’t need to. If you’ve got a ceramic coated car, if any dirt did not blast off with foam or with high-pressure water or just a garden hose, it’s not going to take a lot to get it to budge, to get it to loosen up. So start in the middle like this and just make a pass down the middle and start working your way outward. Okay, that’s all it’s going to take to loosen that dirt. So now you can blast it off. And that’s the least invasive way to do a contact wash.
But don’t be the guy that’s doing this—rubbing in circles over and over again. You don’t need to make a lot of passes to a single section of paint to loosen dirt. It’s going to loosen quickly and easily. So that is the least invasive way to do a contact wash. Thinking about it, being careful. You know, clear coats are scratch sensitive, so you need to be thinking about what you’re doing with your hands and your tools.
Choose a Pure, Free-Rinsing Soap
Now, it’s also important to use a free-rinsing, pure soap. So, what’s a free-rinsing, pure soap? A lot of soaps on the market add glossing agents. They add something as they wash. They’ll say like wash and wax. So, theoretically, it’s leaving a wax behind. Well, you don’t want a wash product like that. You want something that all it’s going to do is clean. So, it doesn’t put anything on top of your coating. It just lets the coating do its thing.
And uh, so you want a pure soap—doesn’t have any silica, graphene, carnauba wax, anything like that, silicones. And then free-rinsing. What that means is—have you ever washed your hands with a soap and it felt like it took a long time to get the slimy stuff off your hands? Well, that same kind of thing happens in some car wash soaps. It’s not free-rinsing. It tends to want to grab onto the surface. It’s like you rinse forever. You can never get it all the way off. There’s always a film there when you’re done drying the car.
So, a free-rinsing soap—what it does is it doesn’t cling. It just rinses off freely. So, that’s what’s called a free-rinsing soap. So, that’s another important tip.
Recap of the First Wash Steps
If you’ve got to wash the car, wait for at least one week. Then, when you do go to wash it, do a pre-rinse, foam it, rinse it again, dry it with compressed air, or use a clean microfiber drying towel. If you do have to do a contact wash, use a quality wash mitt, use a pure car wash that is free-rinsing and doesn’t leave anything behind.
Water Spots, Bird Droppings, and Bugs
So now after that first week, you know what—if something happens where you do get water spots or a bird dropping etching or bug splatter on your freshly ceramic coated car, okay, so here’s some tips and techniques. First of all, you want to try to clean the water spots off chemically. So for that, you want to use a dedicated water spot remover. Okay? And for a water spot remover, what you want to do for something like this on a ceramic coated car is you want to just mist some of this product down and let it do its thing. Let it chemically dissolve the—usually water spots are what they call a hard water spot. It’s minerals that were in the water. The water evaporates. It leaves the minerals behind.
So all you’re really trying to do is break the bond between the minerals and the paint so they’ll flush off without scratching. So a quality water spot remover first. Let it dwell. Then rinse it off. And if you have to, go back to the contact wash.
Now, if the water spots don’t come off, that can be a problem because potentially they may have etched into that coating. If that’s the case, really the only way to fix that is to machine polish and recoat. So, that’s why it’s so important to let that coating fully cure for the first week, because a fully cured ceramic coating resists water spot etching. Okay.
Old-School Soak for Bird Droppings
Now, if you get something like a bird dropping, this is a technique I shared probably 20 years ago. I don’t have a bird dropping, but if I did, here’s what I do. I take a microfiber towel. I get it wet with water. Say there’s a bird dropping right there. So, I’ve got a wet towel. I lay it down. And then I just grab a cup of water and I start loading that towel up with water.
Now, why would I do this? Well, here’s why. Bird droppings—look how much water that holds. Bird droppings after they dry, um, they’re very abrasive—you know, depends on what the bird was eating. And if you were to just take like a spray detailer and a microfiber towel and wipe it, chances are you would scratch the paint as you wipe that bird dropping off. So, what I’ve done here is I’ve put a wet towel down there. I’ve added water to it, and the water has soaked down there. And water is doing what it naturally does. Water is a natural solvent. It dissolves. It loosens. It breaks things up.
So, it’s going to sit there. I’m just going to let it sit there and dissolve and dissolve and loosen up. And then I can come back and very carefully just kind of make a wipe and pull that bird dropping right off without scratching anything. So, there’s a little technique to remove bird droppings.
You can use this same technique for stuck-on bugs. If you just have isolated bugs, if you have a whole front clip of your car covered with bugs, a lot of times what I’ll do for that is I’ll actually take a beach towel and I’ll tape it onto the hood and then I’ll get it wet. Now, what that does is the same idea. That wet towel holds the water against the bugs to soften and loosen them to make them easier to get off. But I needed a way to keep the towel from sliding off, too. So, that’s what the tape is for.
But that’s another old-school technique—using a wet towel to hold the water against the paint so it’ll soften the bugs. And then of course you can also use a dedicated insect remover. And insect remover—the way these work is they have an enzyme in them that kind of dissolves the bug guts to make them easier to remove.
Least Aggressive First
So the big picture idea is anytime you’ve got some kind of contamination on a freshly ceramic coated car, you want to use the least aggressive method to remove it and you want to try to use a chemical means versus an abrasive means, because anytime you use an abrasive means—that means polish or compound—you’re going to have to replace the coating.
The Reality: Coatings Degrade Over Time
Let’s talk about the reality of a ceramic coating. And by that, here’s what I mean. We all would like to believe that once the coating’s put on, that finish will look and act exactly the same over time. It’ll—nothing will change. That’s a great idea. It just does not execute well over time.
The coating will degrade. The shine, the gloss will diminish. The protection at some point will diminish. So, there’s a way to maintain your coating, to protect the coating so it’ll maintain the gloss, the slick, the shine, the hydrophobicity—the hydrophobic surface. And that’s to use a maintenance product of some sort. I’m going to share two in just a few minutes, but let’s just talk about over time. What happens is you see a fall-off in water beading. You see a fall-off in the actual slickness—how slippery the paint feels. And you’ll also have a diminished resistance to chemical attack like water spot etchings, bug etchings from bug splatter, or bird droppings—the kind of etching they leave.
So over time, as the coating starts to wear, then also these things become less resistant.
“Clogging” and Traffic Film
So, um, another problem that happens is called—people talk about clogging. Okay. What does it mean if someone says, “The ceramic coating on my car is clogged”? Okay. So, what they mean is there’s some kind of film over the coating. And here’s what that film generally is. It’s either road grime or traffic film. They’re the same words for the same thing.
And in case you don’t know where road grime or traffic film comes from, if you ever look at a parking spot and you notice that there’s drippings, oil drippings in the center of the parking space—like at a store—well, the same cars that drip while they’re parked, they drip while they’re driving down the road. That’s why if you look on a straight road on a dry day, the center of the highway is always a little darker.
So what happens is cars drive up and down the road; they drip all kinds of oil fluids out. And then the next time it rains, the cars in front of you mix all that oil and dirt up into the water, spray it onto your car, and over time—and that means it doesn’t happen the first time, but if you drive every day in the rain like I do here in Florida—over time you get a film on the coating, and that’s called traffic film or road grime.
And so then the way you fix that, or the way people recommend to fix that, is you want to use a high-pH detergent to chemically dissolve the oily film so it’ll wash off the car, and that’ll expose the coating, and then that restores the water beading, the slickness, the gloss and the shine. So that’s how you fix a clogged coating. You wash it with a high-pH or a strong detergent wash. Okay.
Maintenance Products: Bead Hero vs. AdvancedCoat: Gloss
So as far as maintenance goes then, uh, anybody that sells a coating usually has some sort of maintenance product. Out in the Dr. Beasley’s line, I’m going to share two. One is called AdvancedCoat: Gloss and the other one’s called Bead Hero. Um, I’ll show Bead Hero—I think this is the Bead Hero first.
The difference between these—because people ask me all the time, what’s the difference between Bead Hero and AdvancedCoat: Gloss? Bead Hero is going to make the water bead up. Okay? It’s going to create surface tension so water wants to just flush off the car. AdvancedCoat: Gloss actually creates a hydrophilic surface so water sheets off the car—less water beading.
So, if you live in an area where it rains a lot and you’re worried about water beads turning into water spots or water spot etchings, you’d be much better off with a ceramic coating that’s hydrophilic and causes water to sheet off versus a coating that’s hydrophobic and causes water to bead up.
What’s in the Water Matters
Just because what people don’t think about nowadays is there’s so much pollution in our water. It doesn’t matter if it’s city water or well water. Different kinds of chemicals that are corrosive seep into the water. You wash the car and it dries and now you’ve got these etchings. It was from the chemicals, the corrosive chemicals that were in the water.
So that’s why when someone comes to me and says, “Hey Mike, I got water spots on my car,” they’re focused on the water spot. And what I say to them is, “Gee, makes you wonder, hm, what’s in the water?” Because coatings are pretty stout. So if rain is leaving an etching in the coating or sprinkler water is leaving a water spot etching, you know, it’s not the water doing it, it’s what’s in the water. So that’s just something to be aware of. That’s why we should all be good stewards of the earth.
How to Apply a Spray Ceramic (Bead Hero)
Anyway, this is the Dr. Beasley’s Bead Hero. This is a spray-on ceramic coating. Now, I want to caution you. This is really important. This is a true ceramic coating. There’s a lot of things out there that say ceramic coating that—they’re just a polymer or some other product. This is a true coating.
What I mean by that is if you were to spray this on and not wipe it off and you come back in about 3 or 4 days—because you know with all coating, real coating, it takes 2 or 3 days for it to completely harden up, cross-link, polymerize, magic voodoo—whatever it’s going to do—and fully set up before it’s durable and stabilized. Um, but if you were to spray this on there and then just walk away, wait about 3 days, come back, it will not wash off. You will have to polish it off.
So here’s what I’m trying to teach you. Never spray a product like Bead Hero onto the panel. Always spray away. Okay, because what happens is—you don’t see it, but this sprayer is going to atomize the liquid into tiny little drops and you’re not going to see them. You might see them on a black car, but you’re not going to see them on a white car or silver car, and then they harden, and next time you do the baggie test, you’re going to go, “Oh, my paint’s contaminated.” Yeah, it’s contaminated with coating you didn’t wipe off.
Mind the Wind, Use Two Towels
And it’s also important to think about this. Is it windy outside? Okay, if it’s windy outside, you might want to move the car inside if you’re working outside. Or if there’s any kind of breeze in the garage—even like some fans. I’ve got fans in here to keep the air circulating, and they will blow a mist that I sprayed in the air over to an adjacent panel. So, be conscious of wind—any wind or air currents.
But take and spray a clean microfiber towel folded four ways. And this works best using what I like to use—the two-towel method. And the way this works is obviously you’ve washed the car. It’s clean. You’re going to take—always shake any ceramic spray coating first. I like to clean the pipes. I’m going to mist some onto one side of this towel. And I’m going to continue using this side of the towel as I work around the car and work around my way around the car.
And the reason why is because I don’t want to waste my expensive coating into eight sides of a microfiber towel when all I really need to do is dampen one side and then use this side to keep spraying it on and keep applying the product, but use this as my drying towel. And there’s another reason for this, too. The first time you go to use a spray-on anything—even a spray detailer—you want to dampen the side that’s going to make contact with the paint. Otherwise, if you come down with a dry towel and you’ve got a liquid on there, the dryness isn’t going to want to spread it. It’s going to want to take it off. So, you’re better off to go ahead and dampen it. So, now when you go to spread it, it actually spreads it out instead of removing it. So, you’re not fighting yourself.
Okay. So, then I’m just going to kind of come down here, and the same way I wash the car, I’m just going to rub this back and forth in a straight line so I’m getting uniform coverage. And then once I get this half of the hood done, I switch out to my dry towel and come back and just lightly level that coating, buff off any excess, and I can actually physically feel that paint getting slipperier as I apply it.
And that’s how you would apply a spray-on ceramic coating—in the Dr. Beasley’s line, but I’m sure it applies to everybody else’s. And it’s this simple act of applying something to the coating to extend the life of the coating and to restore that gloss, shine, slickness, and either water-beading hydrophobicity or water-sheeting hydrophilic attributes to the surface area.
Keep It Looking and Working Its Best
And that’s how you would maintain the coating, maintain the look, maintain the protection, and be happy overall with your beautifully ceramic coated car. And again, whether you did it yourself or you paid someone to do it for you, it’s important to take care of the coating. It’s not going to just stay perfect all by itself.
Now, if you can’t remember everything that I’ve covered in this video, in the description below, you’ll find a downloadable PDF checklist. Feel free to download that and then you’ve got something to go by to make sure you don’t miss any products, tools, or steps. And if you like this video, hit the subscribe button, like it, and if you think somebody might benefit from this, why don’t you share it with them, too?
Thank you for watching, and always—good luck with taking care of your ceramic coated car. It’s not a lot of work for all the benefits you get out of it.