BudgetPlan1
Active member
This van was originally coated w/ Gtechniq CSL in January of 2017; after coating it was topped with Gtechniq C2V3. The self cleaning aspects of that combo were pretty poor, every time it rained it left (easily removed with wash) water spotting. It started keeping itself cleaner of its own accord about 2-3 months in, likely when the C2V3 wore off. I liked the richness of the underlying CSL but water behavior of that alone is not that visually entertaining so in October 2017 or thereabouts, gave it a decon wash and went over the whole thing with Gyeon CanCoat which turned out to be a very nice combo. It’s been somewhat maintained with 3 or 4 touchless tunnel washes (soap/rinse only) each Summer. It’s back to being CSL-ish as the CanCoat has obviously worn off long ago. Rinseless washed the hood this morning, wiped down with IGL Pre-Clean and did half with SPS Graphene Detailer and the other half with Kamikaze Overcoat. Van will sit inside overnight and then be released into the Cleveland Winter tomorrow. Will be interesting to watch going forward, will see the truck each day to monitor.
This truck had the hood coated in January of 2019 with Kamikaze Zipang + Miyabi + Zipang and is still doing very well as far as staying clean w/ little to no maintenance. Guy who drives this truck doesn’t go thru touchless washes so the surface has had no real maintenance since application. It still maintains a nice ‘3ft away clean’ look despite not having any maintenance done, which is ‘good enough’ for what I want out of a coating in a fleet environment. This truck will be released into the wild this evening, about 10hrs after application. I’ll also see this truck every day going forward and it will mostly see a 60 mile commute each day, freeway. Rinseless washed the hood this morning, wiped down with IGL Pre-Clean and applied the SPS Graphene Detailer.
After the surface was clean, applied the Graphene Detailer by spraying on surface, spreading/leveling with a 300gsm Eagle Edgeless, followed by final buff with Eagle Edgeless 350gsm. Was stupid easy to use, no streaking even though I purposely ‘over-used’ the product. Left a very nice, smooth (all things considered) surface…nice stuff to use for sure.
When I get a chance sometime soon (hopefully, although I do occasionally gotta do work-related stuff at work) I’ll pull a non-coated truck outta the line, decon, prep, polish the hood and then apply the Graphene Detailer to the naked paint and see how that goes. We just got 4 new vehicles, one of which I’ll be coating in SPS Graphene coating so will use this on top of that as well.
Edit: Worth noting that things usually look better in pictures. Panels are nice, glossy and relatively smooth but not quite as good as they appear, fair amount of scratches and such but still looking good and shiny to 80% of the world.