Ceramic coating in Bankstown

A coating is transparent and it cures over whatever is underneath it. Apply one to swirled paint and you have sealed those swirls in for the life of the coating, which on a good product is years. It is the most common and most expensive mistake in this industry, and it is why a cheap coating quote is usually cheap for a specific reason.

So the sequence does not change. Assess the paint and take depth readings. Decontaminate chemically for iron and tar, then clay. Correct. Panel-wipe every surface to strip polishing oils. Only then coat.

The panel wipe is easy to skip and expensive to have skipped. Polishing leaves oils on the surface, and a coating applied over them bonds to the oil, not the paint. That is the usual explanation when a coating fails in months while the same product on the next car goes for years.

The coating is the headline and the smallest part of the labour. The preparation underneath is what you are paying for, and it is what decides whether the coating lasts.

A car with no garage takes the worst of everything: bird droppings, tree sap, sprinklers, sun all day and the dew every morning. That is the car a coating does the most for, because it turns each of those into a wash instead of a polish.

The coating resists the acids in bird droppings and gives you time to get them off before they etch. It sheds water so dew and sprinkler spots dry off without leaving mineral rings. And it takes the UV that would otherwise be oxidising the clear coat.

It is not armour. A dropping left for a week in January will still mark a coated car. The difference is that a coated car gives you days, and an uncoated one gives you hours.

The paint gets the attention, but the other surfaces can be coated too and each one is a different product. Wheel coating is rated for brake heat and makes brake dust rinse off rather than bake on. Glass coating sheds rain at speed so the wipers do less. Interior coating protects leather and fabric from spills and UV.

Each is $245 on its own, and the full package at $1,595 bundles exterior, interior, glass and wheels with nano ceramic tint on the two front windows. With every window tinted it is $1,695.

The wheel coating is the one people come back and thank us for, because it removes the worst chore of washing a car.

A used car is the one to be careful with. Coating over a panel that has been resprayed badly, or over a previous coating that is failing, locks in the problem.

So before anything is booked we read the paint depth on every panel. A panel far thicker than its neighbours has been resprayed. One far thinner has been corrected hard before. Both change what can safely be done, and both are worth knowing about the car you just paid for.

Once that is known the job is the same as any other: decontaminate, correct, coat. It is often a bigger correction than a new car needs, because the previous owner’s washing is in the clear coat.

People sometimes ask for a coating to stop stone chips, and it will not. A coating is microns thick and it handles chemical attack: UV, bird droppings, fallout, water spotting. A stone hits it exactly as it would hit bare paint.

Stone chips on the front bar and bonnet edge are a job for paint protection film, a thick clear urethane, and that is a different product from a different trade. If chips are the thing keeping you awake, say so, because a coating is the wrong answer to that question.

For everything else that ages paint, the coating is the right one, and a corrected, coated car is what most people in Bankstown are actually after when they ask for protection.