Transcript
So, now that you have your car ceramic coated, let’s talk about how to take care of the ceramic coating, how to maintain it. I’m going to show you two different ways. One is through the gentle wash process. The other is through maintenance products.
So, let’s start over here. The most important thing you can do to take care of a ceramic coated car is to wash often and to wash carefully. Now, how often do you need to wash? Well, it depends on how you store the car. If the car is outside all the time in a dirty environment, you’re going to need to wash more often than someone that parks their car in the garage and it doesn’t get that kind of dirt accumulation. So, you kind of have to make up your mind.
But what I would do is when you’re looking at your car, if you see a visible film of dirt, it’s probably time to wash it. And the longer that dirt—and that dirt isn’t just dirt, it’s industrial pollution, acid rain fallout, pollen, it’s all the stuff that gets on your car from the air—but also anytime you drive in the rain, all the dirty water, the oily water, what we call traffic film, that washes up on your car. If you let all this stuff sit on there too long, it starts to make a bond and the paint now won’t wash off. So that’s why you want to wash often to remove this type of contamination before it can actually bond to the clear coat because that’s what causes clear coat clogging. So, and I’ll talk about clogging towards the end of this video.
Washing Carefully: Core Principles
So let’s talk about how to wash your car carefully. First, if you go to the Dr. Beasley’s YouTube channel, we’ve got a couple of different videos on how to wash cars carefully using the multiple towel method. And there’s also a video up there on how to wash a black car to avoid swirls and scratches. They cover a lot of the same techniques, but if you watch them both, I guarantee you you’ll know more about washing a car than you ever have and probably more than—more than most detailers.
Okay, so let’s talk about the different ways you can wash a car. There is the two bucket method. Now, the two bucket method is where you have one bucket—like, for example, here’s a bucket. I’d have my rinse water in there. In this bucket, I’d have my soapy water. And you always want to use a pH-balanced car wash soap. Okay? So, something that’s going to clean well, but be gentle to the finish.
Two Bucket Method (With Grit Guard/Washboard)
And the way the two bucket method works though is you add your soap to one bucket and you’re going to take your wash mitt. You’re going to grab some soapy water. You’re going to come over here and wash a panel. And here’s how I teach people and how I practice washing ceramic coated cars. You don’t start here. You start out in the middle. And because it’s ceramic coated, dirt’s not going to really want to stick. So, you don’t got to scrub it. You just need to make a few passes. So, you just make a few passes back and forth, maybe hit the other side and then rinse and do that to each panel.
But you don’t want to go in circles and you don’t want to scrub or push hard because that could scratch the coating. Okay. So then you take that mitt and you would rinse it off in your clean water bucket. And all my buckets have these things called—this is called a grit guard insert and this is a washboard. And the way this works is when it’s in your bucket—so you’ve just washed the panel. So say you’ve got some loose dirt on the mitt. While this is in your bucket, you rub this against the washboard. That agitates the dirt so it falls down and gets trapped underneath these vanes on the bottom of your bucket. And then you would take that mitt, now that you’ve rinsed it and got most of the dirt off, gather some more soapy solution and go wash another panel. So that’s kind of a basic two bucket method wash or wash system.
Multiple Wash Mitt (Towel) Method
Now, the system I prefer and I show anybody that I’ve worked on their car for is called the multiple wash mitt method. Now, the multiple wash mitt method is just like it sounds. Instead of using one wash mitt for the entire car, even if you’re rinsing the dirt off, you still risk possibly scratching the coating because you didn’t get all the dirt off. So, how about this instead?
Buy a set of towels—maybe eight to ten—micro wash mitts. Buy a collection of these. You know, it depends on how big your vehicle is. If you got a big four-door truck, you might want twelve of these things. But the idea being is—and I love these color-coded ones we sell at Dr. Beasley’s—but you would take and you would wash one panel with one side of this color-coded, okay? All wash mitt. Then all the dirt that was on there theoretically is on here.
Then what you would do is you would flip this over to the other side, the clean side, and you would wash the other side of this panel. And at that point, this wash mitt is done. Put it in a clean bucket so it doesn’t get on the ground and get dirty. You would rinse that section. Then you would grab a fresh mitt to go to the next panel.
Why Multiple Mitts Prevent Scratches
And you keep doing that. You keep switching to a clean mitt each time you wash a different panel. And you completely eliminate the risk of putting scratches in via cross-contamination. Cross-contamination would mean I remove dirt off this panel; now I’m pushing against this panel. So, it’s the simplest thing I’ve ever tried to explain, but the multiple wash mitt method is the safest way to wash a car.
Now, besides the two bucket method—and by the way, if you do the multiple wash mitt method, you don’t really need the two bucket method. You just need one bucket for your soapy solution because you don’t need to rinse that mitt to re-enter the soapy solution because you’re putting it in a bucket and saving it for washing later. So, that’s the one bucket method.
Foam Cannon vs. Foam Gun
Now, besides that, you can use what’s called a foam cannon or a foam gun. And we have a brand new video up on our YouTube showing you how to use a pressure washer to safely wash a car. And let me just share the difference. A foam cannon attaches to a pressure washer. A foam gun attaches to a garden hose.
The pressure washer is going to create much thicker foam that’s going to dwell and last longer on the surface. But both are great approaches because they lay down a lot of suds, and the suds are lubrication. So as you’re pushing the wash mitt over the surface, it’s lubricated to help avoid any accidental marring of the paint.
Pre-Rinse, Foam, Contact Wash
And that’s how I would safely wash a ceramic coated car. I would choose the multiple wash mitt method using a foam gun. And then as part of the process, the first thing you always want to do for a ceramic coated car is you really want to wet that car down and blast off any loose dirt, any pollen, anything that’s accumulated that can be rinsed off so you don’t have to push it over the coating as you’re washing it—doing a contact wash.
And usually if you do a good job with the initial pre-rinse, you can remove at least 50% of all the loose dirt that’s on the car and just totally avoid having to push that into the paint as you wash the car. So do a pre-rinse.
Let the Soap Do the Work
Now, if you’re going to use a foam gun, the next best thing after that would be go ahead and foam the whole car. Let that dwell. Okay? And what’s going to happen is the cleaning agents inside—assuming you’re using a quality car wash soap—the cleaning agents are going to go to work softening and loosening any dirt that did not blast off through the initial pre-rinse.
Kind of the same idea: if you got dirty hands and you wash them in water, it gets it kind of clean, but if you wash them with soap, you get them more clean. So, you’re going to let the cleaning agents do their work, dissolve what’s called traffic film, dust, and pollen. And then you’re going to blast that off.
Refoam, Contact Wash, Rinse
So, by the time you’ve done a pre-rinse and a foam wash without even touching the paint, you should have a fairly clean car, especially when it’s ceramic coated because nothing really wants to stick to it. But at that point, then you want to go ahead and refoam the car and that’s when you start doing your contact wash and then of course rinse and dry.
Drying: Towels vs. Blower
Now, when it comes to drying, I think it’s important to use quality drying towels. You know, leather chamois have kind of gone by the wayside. There’s artificial chamois out there, but really for a ceramic coated car, something like this—this is a microfiber drying towel—and it just absorbs a ton of water and it’s very soft and gentle to the finish. So, that’s one way to do it.
But one thing I just want to point out before I talk about the leaf blower is anytime you’re touching the paint, whether it’s a wash mitt, a drying towel, or a wiping towel, you always want to inspect these things. And I always like to have a pair of tweezers around. But you want to look in here because the last thing you want to do is have a flawless, scratch-free car—there’s a stick embedded here somewhere and you don’t know about it—and then you wash the car with that. You’re going to put scratches in.
Inspecting Tools to Avoid Marring
So that’s why I always like to have a bucket, a clean empty bucket, that I can throw my dirty stuff into to keep it clean before it goes to the washer and the dryer. But inspect everything with your eyes and tactilely with your sense of touch. And that’s probably some of the most important advice I could share with anybody to keep a scratch-free ceramic coated finish.
Now, besides a drying towel, this is another popular option to get the water off your car. This is actually one of the best leaf blowers on the market, the EGO brand. Very, very, very, very strong. What I like about this—I know a lot of guys don’t like the long nozzle—but I like it because it gives me reach. A lot of people put the stubby on there; now they got no reach.
Using a Leaf Blower Effectively
But like this, you can just blow the car off and it’s really good at blowing all the water out of the emblems, the gaskets around the headlights, the door handles, the side mirrors, anything like that. So, normally what I would do is I would start—because once you have a ceramic coated car, the water wants to escape, so it’s going to blow off easy. I would start by getting the majority of the water off the car. Then I would come back and use my drying towel to do a final wipe.
And there’s two reasons for that. One is a lot of times when you blow water off with a leaf blower, you still have these tiny little water marks everywhere. So, by finishing out with something clean and soft like this, you can remove all those water marks to leave a pristine finish. You can also use a drying aid—like we have a product called Paint Hero. You can either mist a little onto the towel, mist a little on the paint. It adds some lubrication. It helps everything to just glide and slip off faster, safer, and easier. It’s a drying aid called Paint Hero.
Wash Methods Recap
Okay, so that’s how I would wash and dry a car, using a careful wash approach. There’s the multiple mitt wash method. There’s a single wash mitt method where you’re using the two bucket method or a foam gun or a foam cannon and then dry with a towel or a blower. So those how I’d wash the car.
Maintenance Between Washes: Spray Detailer
Now once you got the car clean, then we can talk about how to maintain that coating using some maintenance products. In the Dr. Beasley’s line, we have the Final Finish, which is just a spray detailer. Now, this wouldn’t be so much to use after a car wash, but say maybe only a few days have gone by. You look at your car, there’s some light dust. You could mist a little Final Finish onto that ceramic coated finish, spread it out with the towel, come back and carefully wipe it off and get that.
And you could do that in between a normal wash so you can keep the dust from accumulating, hopefully not bonding to the paint. Okay, so that’s how you can keep your car clean in between a normal wash—just using a spray detailer. Because spray detailer, the way they work is they offer a little bit of cleaning but a lot of lubricity so you don’t scratch the finish. That’s why they work how they work. Okay.
Restoring Hydrophobics: Bead Hero & AdvanceCoat: Gloss
Then how to actually maintain that coating is you want to use something that’s going to restore the gloss, restore the hydrophobic surface, the slickness and the shine. In the Dr. Beasley’s line, we have a product called Bead Hero and AdvanceCoat: Gloss. This one here creates a hydrophobic surface. It is an actual—it’s a real spray-on coating.
And because it’s a real spray-on coating, I want to share a very important technique. Never spray towards the car. The reason why is because a lot of times these sprayers will atomize that product into tiny little mist or droplets. And if you were to, say, start working up here, come down here, but you got some mist back up here and you didn’t come and wipe it off, it will harden just like the coating will harden and you’ll have to polish it off.
Two Towel Method (Best Practice for Spray Coatings)
So, the technique I always like to show for maintaining a finish using a product like Bead Hero—then using a clean, folded, inspected towel—go ahead and just dampen one side. So, I’m spraying away from the car and I’m actually dampening this with the actual product. And then, this is called the two towel method. And this is actually the best way to apply any brand of spray-on coating.
So, you’re going to take this dampened side and you’re going to go ahead and start applying the spray-on coating. Okay? And as long as that towel is clean and uncontaminated—like I show inspecting with a pair of tweezers—you can rub in straight lines or circles, it don’t matter. You’re not going to be putting scratches in. If you are putting scratches in, that means it’s contaminated. Quit using that towel.
Leveling and Buffing After Application
Now, after you spread that out, save this dampened side for the rest of the panels. But come back with your dry towel and then just give it a light buff to remove any excess. You’re also leveling any coating you put down. And when you’re done, you should have a super high-gloss finish that’s going to hold up and protect the coating that’s on there. So it’ll last. We say this is a 5-year coating. If you take care of it correctly, it will be a 5-year coating.
Now, this side is already dampened. This is the side I use. So, what I would do is I would continue spraying away from the car, add some more product, then I would move on to the next panel.
Why Dampen the Towel First
And the reason I want to kind of share this with you is because it’s important to understand how this works. If I take and spray anybody’s coating—our coating, anybody’s coating—onto the paint and I come down with the dry towel and I try to spread it, the dry towel is going to try to pull it off; it’s going to try to do what it’s supposed to do: remove the coating. If I dampen this towel first with the product, apply, now I come down, because it’s all wet, it’s dampened, it’s wet, it isn’t trying to remove the coating as I spread it out. That’s what this towel is for. Come back and remove the coating.
So, there’s actually a science behind dampening one side of a towel and using it to treat the entire car and coming back with the second or third or fourth dry towel to do the final buff. And the reason behind dampening just one side is kind of—it’s kind of just ’cause the way my brain thinks is, you know, most of these things aren’t cheap. This isn’t super expensive, but I don’t want to keep folding and dampening and putting all my spray coating into the towel. I just want to dampen this side, apply it, and dry off with the clean dry towel.
“Two Towel Method” for Ongoing Maintenance
And that’s how you would use the two towel method to maintain your ceramic coating using a product like Bead Hero. And just real quickly, Bead Hero is going to create a hydrophobic surface. And the way the owner of the company likes to explain this is it gives the water legs—you know, legs—so it runs off the car. And that’s how that helps to keep it clean just in case there’s any dirt or dust; you get caught in a rain; you’re washing the car; everything’s going to want to leave the car without even doing a contact wash because of the hydrophobic surface.
Anyway, so that’s one of the ways you can take care of it with a product like Bead Hero or with our AdvanceCoat: Gloss. They’re both just a little bit different. You can get more information about those on our website.
Tactile Checks: Is Your Coating Still There?
Besides that, the other thing I would just say to take care of a clear coated car is besides washing often and maintaining is, after you’re done washing the car—so you’ve washed the car and you’re drying it. So how can you tell when your clear coat is gone or needs—or your clear coat—your ceramic coating is gone, it needs to be replaced?
Well, after you’re done drying the car, if you take your clean hand with no ring or watch on, the paint should still feel slippery—kind of slick and slippery, very smooth. If it starts to feel kind of tacky or grabby, that’s probably a sign that some of the coating or all the coating’s worn off; it’s time to redo the whole process. But you should get years out of the initial application.
Visual Checks: Beading and Sheeting
The other way is when you’re rinsing the car and you physically look at it and you see the water start to lay flat, not really run off at all. That’s another sign that the coating is either worn off or perhaps the coating has become clogged. So, let’s talk about clogging. What does it mean if the ceramic coating on your car has become clogged?
What “Clogging” Means (Traffic Film)
So the term clogged means there’s some kind of film on there that instead of now the coating being open and present to the atmosphere, the environment, this film is on there and the film usually is what’s called traffic film. Okay? So let me explain traffic film.
If you ever look at a parking space in a parking lot and you look in the middle of the parking space where you park your car, you’ll see where all the cars that are dripping oil have dripped transmission fluid, motor oil, power steering fluid, radiator fluid—oils. Well, if you look down a road on a straight road on a dry day, the center of the road is darker. The same cars that leak fluids in a parking lot leak it on the road. Then the next time it rains, that oily gunk mixes with the rain water and the cars in front of you splash it onto your car; every time you drive your car in the rain, you’re getting traffic film on the car.
Decontaminating a Clogged Coating
And at some point, yes, it will bond to the coating. So now when you wash the car, you look at it and go, “Wow, look at that. My coating quit beading water. It doesn’t feel smooth. It’s not drying fast. It’s not as glossy.” Okay? So, you need a stronger detergent to get that oily traffic film off. There are some products on the market called TFRs—traffic film removers. But a good replacement for that would just be a good detergent wash.
Something simple like a dishwashing detergent would be a high-alkaline or a high-detergent wash. And a lot of times that’ll be more than enough to get that road film off—get you back to just having the coating on the surface, not the clogging or the road, the traffic film which is clogging—or it’s coating over the coating so you can’t really get to the coating. There’s a film there. Anyway, that’s how you get rid of clogging. And worst-case scenario, if you’ve really got some kind of really bad film on there, then you’d have to repolish and start the process over again.
Bugs & Water Spots: Targeted Solutions
And let’s also talk about water spots. So, I have two products back here, and you can find these in other brands, too. But this is our Dr. Beasley’s Insect Remover. And this is our Water Spot Remover. And these are common problems for daily drivers. You drive this car out and, you know, anywhere and you might get bugs on here. And if they’ve hardened and dried like cement, the way an insect remover works is there’s an enzyme in there. You spray a little on, kind of let it dwell, then carefully wipe it off. It helps to break up and emulsify the dried bug splatter so it’s easier and safer to wipe off. And you can do that just for the isolated areas before you wash the car.
Now, if you got water spots, and the water spots don’t wash off, you can try a water spot remover. Most water spot removers—what they’re meant to remove are what are called hard mineral spots or hard water. Anytime you hear something about, “I’ve got hard water”—what that means is there’s a lot of minerals dissolved in the water, whether it’s city water or well water, and then when the water dries, the water evaporates into the atmosphere. It leaves these minerals, these crusty particles behind.
When Repolishing Becomes Necessary
And the way a water spot remover works is it breaks the bond between the minerals and the paint so they’ll wipe off. But a lot of times when you got water spots, it’s actually going to leave a little mark in the paint—a water spot mark—that doesn’t wash off. It doesn’t wipe off. And practically the only way to remove that is to repolish and recoat the car.
And it kind of makes you wonder what’s in the water—what is in the water that is just so bad nowadays. But it is something you got to be knowledgeable about and in tune with your car to see where it’s at. And everybody has different water—like, in different states, different geographical areas. Some water probably has higher concentrations of pollution and contamination, while some water is fairly clean.
Optional: Filtration Helps (Sometimes)
And of course, you can always use a filter to filter out the hard minerals out of the water before you wash or rinse the car. But that doesn’t help if you get caught with a sprinkler on your car or if it rains because you can’t filter that kind of stuff out.
Anyway, that’s how I would take care of a ceramic coated car.
Handy Gear: Rolling Cart
Besides that, I always like to show people these simple but very functional carts. As you can see, it holds all my stuff. They actually have a hole in the top—you could put your bucket in so you don’t got to bend over every time you want to grab your mitt and wash your car. And then when you’re done, you can wheel around the car to hold all your stuff as you’re working on your car, whether you’re coating it or you’re washing it. And of course, it holds all your supplies and equipment in one place, so your garage is fairly orderly that way.
Closing Notes & Contact
Besides that, if you ever have any questions on ceramic coating a car or doing anything in the garage on a car, I always like to make myself available. My cell phone is 760-515-0444. And of course, this is the third part of a three-part video series you can find on the Dr. Beasley’s YouTube channel. I also have a dedicated blog article that covers the whole process. And the videos are embedded in the article so you don’t have to go to both places to see everything.
And, if you like this video, please like it and then subscribe. And of course, if you think this might help somebody, share it with a friend. Besides that, ceramic coatings are really the way to go. They last longer, they protect longer, they create incredible gloss and shine, and it makes the car faster to wash and dry moving forward. There’s only upsides to ceramic coatings. So, hope that helps you out.