First Experience With Ceramic Paint Coating - AWESOME Results

[KoryMiller340]

I wanted to do a short write up on my first experience with the Adams Ceramic Paint Coating kit.  My wife purchased the Ceramic Paint Coating kit for me for Christmas, and since we were living in Pennsylvania at the time, I decided I would wait until the spring to test it out.  As luck would have it, we have recently relocated to Florida, so even though it is still spring, I was able to get out and test it this past weekend.  Much like some of my other posts on here, I will let you know up front that I've used Adams products for well over 10 years now, and my cars in the opinion of most people (family, friends, co-workers, etc.) are never "dirty" in their opinion to begin with.  That being said, I was able to do a full detail on my 2016 Dodge Dart this weekend (I've got some other cars I want to use this stuff on, but figured I'd test it on the dart first.)

 

Car Info

 

Year:  2016

Make:  Dodge

Model:  Dart

Sub Model:  SXT Rallye, 2.0 liter 6 speed

 

Adams Products Used:

Adams Strip Wash

Adams Total Interior Detailer (dash, door panels, console, etc.)

Adams Leather Conditioner (dash, steering wheel, door panels, leather boot around shifter)

Adams Invisible Under Carriage Spray

Adams Tire Shine 

Adams VRT (rear diffuser, splash guards, engine compartment)

Adams In and Out Spray (grille, engine compartment, cowl area by windshield wipers)

Adams Visco Clay Bar

Adams Swirl Killer 15 MM

Adams Orange 5.5 inch foam pad

Adams Microfiber 5.5 inch cutting pad

Adams Brilliant Glaze

Adams Detail Spray

Adams Ceramic Paint Coating Kit (Ceramic Prep, Ceramic Coating, Ceramic Boost)

Adams Glass Cleaner

Adams Glass Sealant

Adams Tire and Rubber Cleaner

Adams Wheel Brush

Adams Wheel Woolie

Adams Tire Brush

Adams Wheel Cleaner
Adams All Purpose Cleaner

Adams Metal Polish #1

Adams Metal Polish #2

Adams Paint Correcting Polish (Orange)

Quite a few microfiber towels and applicator pads

 

 

Process:

Just a quick run through of the steps in the order I performed them.

 

Thursday (4/19)

 

• Cleaned interior with Adams Total Interior Detailer, Adams Leather Conditioner, a vacuum, and Brilliant Glaze on the inside of all of the glass.  I also applied detail spray to the touch screen and sun-visor mirrors, as well as the gauge cluster.
• Pulled the floor mats out and sprayed them with All Purpose cleaner, scrubbed them with a tire brush and hosed them off
• Sprayed a wheel and brake caliper / brake rotor with Adams Wheel cleaner, while that was soaking, sprayed all purpose cleaner on the tire and wheel well.  Scrubbed tire and wheel well with Adams Tire brush, and then after the wheel cleaner started turning from blue to purple I scrubbed the wheel with the Adams wheel brush, then hosed the wheel well, tire, and wheel in that order.  (I did one wheel, wheel well, and tire at a time)
• Washed car using two bucket wash method and Adams Strip wash, following the directions, I DID NOT use detail spray or any other drying agent to dry the car off, I just wiped it down with one of the drying towels.
• Moved car into garage

 

Friday (4/20)

 

• Jacked up the car and sprayed Adams Invisible under carriage spray into the wheel wells, and sprayed Adams Tire shine onto a black hex grip applicator pad and worked it into the tires.  After approximately 20 - 30 minutes, I wiped any areas in the wheel wells with a utility towel to avoid any streaks in the under carriage spray.
• Treated all trim / rubber seals (weather stripping) with VRT.
• Treated engine compartment with VRT and In & Out Spray (engine compartment wasn't very dirty to begin with so rinsing with All purpose cleaner was not necessary)
• Sprayed grill and cowl area with In & Out spray.
• I cleaned the exhaust tip with Adams Metal Polish #1 and #2.
• Took a clay bar all painted areas on the car, and the windshield.  (The car really did not need to be clayed but figured I would take all necessary steps since the coating was going to be applied).  
• Applied Adams Glass Sealant to the windshield.
• Ran the Swirl Killer over the entire car using the Orange foam pad and the microfiber cutting pad as well as some of the Orange correcting polish.  Again the car really did not need a thorough polishing, there was one area on the trunk lid that had a few minor scratches from some snow removal this past winter, I did not feel the need to use the white polish / pad to polish the car.

 

Saturday (4/21)

 

• Starting with the roof I applied the Adams Ceramic Coating Prep.  Once I finished the roof, I gave it a few minutes to finish drying, and then it only made sense to me to prep one area, and then apply the coating instead of prepping the entire car and giving it a chance to get dusty / dirty since I was doing this with the garage door up all day.  Anyways, after applying the prep and giving it a chance to dry, I applied the Ceramic Coating.  I watched the video a few times on the website and applied it to 1/4 of the roof (the section from the middle of the roof to the to the back glass to the sunroof.  I then did an "L - Shaped" section of the roof from beside the sunroof to the front of the sunroof (between the front edge of the sunroof and the windshield).  I then moved on to the tops of the doors, the trunk lid, and so on.  Again, I would prep whatever area I was working on, wait a few minutes, and then apply the coating, this method seemed to work well for me, until I finished the entire car (roughly 6 hours stopping for lunch / water / going to the bathroom)

 

Sunday (4/22)

 

• Around 6 PM (roughly 26 hours later) I pulled the car out of the garage to look it over and then I applied the ceramic boost, again starting with the top of the car and working my way down.  I did not see any spots that required re-application.  
• I applied Brilliant glaze to the outside glass
• I applied tire shine one last time
• I took the floor mats and sprayed them with Tire and Rubber cleaner, scrubbed them with the Adams Tire Brush and then hosed them off and set them aside to air dry.

 

 

Lessons Learned / Helpful tips

 

First of all, I will say that I was a little bit intimidated by trying to take this on, normally I have a second set of eyes to at least look things over with me when I detail a car (wax, polish, etc.) but with my wife and I still being in the middle of moving, she was not here.  The other problem was that the lighting in our current garage is less than ideal, literally one LED light bulb, hence the reason for doing this with the garage door up, not to mention the heat / humidity of Florida, however, it wasn't that bad this weekend.  

 

I agree with the video that the more time you spend on the prep work, the better the results.  At times I felt like I was moving pretty slowly when it came to claying the car, or polishing the car, but just kept telling myself that the prep work was key.  I'm also not very good at visualizing things sometimes, so when the video for the ceramic coating referred to doing a 2 ft. X 2 ft. section I grabbed the tape measure and would often hold it up to the body panel and measure just to give myself some sort of reference in my head to say (okay, I can do this section of the door, or this section of the hood, etc.)  I would definitely recommend not trying to push it and do anything larger than 2 feet by 2 feet, as the coating starts to "rainbow" within 30 seconds and is noticeably more difficult to remove (not impossible, just takes a little more elbow grease).  I also laid out some additional Single, Double, and Triple soft microfiber towels ahead of time for help in applying the coating prep, and kept a bottle of Brilliant glaze handy (although I did not need to use it) to help with wiping off the coating (at the recommendation of the back of the bottle).  I'd also say be incredibly thorough in wiping off the coating, I made pass after pass after pass it seemed with the single soft towel working from a few different angles to make sure that I got all of the coating wiped off after it had "rainbowed", this definitely added to the time I spent, but I feel it was well worth it.  

 

All in all, I feel the car came out well, unfortunately, it is hard to tell exactly how much of the coating you have used because the bottle is dark, so you have to go by weight / feel, but I would guess that I used somewhere between 1/4 to 1/2 (definitely feels like less than 1/2) of the bottle to do my dart.

 

What questions do you have?  Let me know your thoughts, and enjoy the pics!  Hopefully this will help with anyone who is on the fence about trying this.  I have not had it out in the rain or anything yet to see how the water beads up or falls off of the car, or the longevity, but if this stuff works even half as well as advertised I will be very happy! 

 

Thanks for reading!!

 

P.S.  Sorry I don't have any before pics, I was so pumped to try this stuff out that I didn't take the time to take them :(

 

-Kory

 

[shane@detailedreflections]

Nice work!

[01GreyStangGT]

Impressive work! 

[Liralen]

Looks great!

[mc2hill]

Excellent write-up Kory!  Lots of tips and other useful info here.

[Nickfire20]

Very nice write up,  car looks great.  

 

How did you overcome the emblems?

 

And lastly you can use the Leather Conditioner on all interior hard surfaces, it has a higher spf in it than the ID does.

 

 

???

[KoryMiller340]

@Nickfire20 Thank you for the compliments!  Also, to be honest, I was just incredibly careful around the emblems, the red applicator pad for the ceramic coating is small, and multi-sided, so on two of the ends, they are a little shorter, I used those in any tight spots such as around emblems, around the mirrors, etc.  I'm sure I got a little bit of coating on the emblems, I don't know if it is totally avoidable, but I was cautious and made sure to thoroughly wipe over each section that I applied the coating to several times just to make sure.  

 

Thanks for the tip on the leather conditioner, I'll definitely have to give that a shot!!!

[kstateskier]

Would you guys say there is enough in the kit to do two large trucks?  

[shane@detailedreflections]

5 hours ago, kstateskier said:

Would you guys say there is enough in the kit to do two large trucks?  

 

Two large trucks may be stretching it a bit. 

[falcaineer]

Well done, @KoryMiller340!

[Hamilton Detail]

On 5/16/2018 at 10:40 AM, kstateskier said:

Would you guys say there is enough in the kit to do two large trucks?  

 

I was able to do a 2014 GMC Sierra double cab, 2015 GMC Acadia, and a 2018 GMC Terrain all from the same bottle of ceramic paint coating.  

[galaxy]

On 5/16/2018 at 10:40 AM, kstateskier said:

Would you guys say there is enough in the kit to do two large trucks?  

I vote yes.  I did a Ford Focus ST,  a crew cab F150, and a couple of small projects with some left over in the bottle.  Not enough to provide confidence to start on another car, but leftovers for sure.  Thus I safely could have done two trucks on a new bottle.  And I'm the worlds worst for using too much product of anything.