Has anybody ever tried ceramic coating the exterior finish?

[an3ony]

I'd like any feedback on this stuff, has anybody used it? My fear is if I try it, it'll roach out the finish. But my hope is that i'm not forever driving around a grimy black car.


http://www.amazon.com/Migliore-Strat...1&sr=8-1-spell

[nadaclue]

Most of those are based on polysilazane polymers, and yes they work. To call them "ceramic" is a stretch though, technically you need to heat polysilazane up to ~1500F to turn it into a ceramic. It's silicon-nitrogen-silicon groups repeating.

The tricky part is that polysilazanes come in organic and inorganic. The Japanese sort of invented this market, almost every car purchased in Japan gets this done as a dealer add on. However they use the inorganic polysilazanes since they were the first invented and it's an old, trusty methodology. But the organic polysilazanes have a much more hydrophobic affect and will get better water sheeting.

I tried to find a Safety Data Sheet for the Migliore product but didn't come up with anything. Though I only looked on their website and didn't dig too hard.

As far as film thickness goes, the inorganics typically build up to around 1 micron and tend to max out at 3 microns at best. The organics will go higher, but I can't remember what sort of build you get when wiping these on, I want to say 10 microns or so. To give you an idea, most automotive paint is applied around 25-50 microns per layer (excluding things like e-coat).

The key is to get your current paint thoroughly cleaned and corrected prior to putting this on. This is a protectant/sealant, not really for correcting paint issues.

Source: I make paint for a living and talked to a polysilazane supplier earlier this week

[SmartBastard]

They do work but this things are highly dependent on the application, so make sure you find a good reliable shop. And I'm not just talking application of the product itself, but also about the quality of the paint correction prior done.