When you choose to have a ceramic coating applied to your car, it is the most cost-effective way to protect the paint of your vehicle throughout its life, however, it also carries the largest cost upfront.
Ceramic coating your vehicle certainly isn’t cheap and getting the most out of the money you invest into your car’s protection will cause many fewer headaches in the long run. So, how does one go about ensuring their ceramic coating is taken care of? How do you protect something that’s purpose is to protect?
The largest benefit provided by ceramic coatings, other than being the toughest and most durable form of protection for your vehicle, is that it makes for much easier cleaning and maintenance.
We want to go over some of the ways to keep your ceramic coating clean and looking its best for as long as possible. Ceramic coatings provide a hydrophobic finish allowing for easier washing and drying, these methods are easy enough that they can be done by basically anyone without any trouble.
Wash your car regularly
Once your car is ceramic coated, that does not mean that it repels everything off the surface like a force field. While ceramic coatings do prevent dirt, mud, debris, etc., from penetrating the surface and sticking to the paint itself, some of that buildup can sit on the top layer of the ceramic coating while it waits to be cleaned off.
Cleaning regularly will prevent things like water spots from forming, keeping your car looking as good as new all the time. The recommended cleaning schedule is once every two weeks.
While you won’t have to worry about spending hours washing, drying, and waxing anymore, taking a half-hour to properly wash the car once every two weeks will go a long way.
Avoid Washing In Direct Sunlight
As we have mentioned in previous blog posts, water spots on the finish of your ceramic coating are a no-go. Instead of washing in an open area like a driveway, wash your car in a garage or a shaded area out of the direct sunlight.
If no such option is available, the time of day can also make a big difference. Washing in the morning or evening before the sun is at its tallest point and shadows are at their tallest can help prevent a spotty finish if you have hard water.
Use Touchless Car Washes
For people who don’t have time to spend washing their car by hand at their homes, car washes provide a service that can perform an adequate job of cleaning our cars that can hold us over until we have time to clean them ourselves.
There are car washes all over the place that vary in what kind of service they provide. The car wash that provides the best service by far, is the touchless car wash. Touchless car washes provide the safest option for your car for a variety of reasons.
Touchless car washes can clean your vehicle without having to ever have any piece of machinery touch your car. Some car washes have mechanical arms that have brushes that come into contact with your vehicle.
These brushes are washing hundreds of cars every single day without having a way to clean them. The brushes can trap dirt and debris in them and can result in scratches being left in the paint of other cars that come through them.
Use Separate Buckets For Your Tires
Tires are subject to much more contamination than any other surface of your vehicle.
Minimizing the opportunity for things like tar, dirt, mud, and paint to stick into your cloth and transfer to other parts of the vehicle is another vital step towards making sure your coating stays clean.
At Keystone Detail, we would be happy to provide full cleaning services to your vehicle, give us a call, or stop by to see how we can be of assistance to you!
