Polishing a ceramic coated car can be daunting for many owners, but it is possible without completely removing the coating. This episode delves into the nuances of polishing techniques, the importance of selecting the right products, and the balance between maintaining the coating and achieving a flawless finish. The host shares insights from 16 years of detailing experience, discusses the development of a new polish designed for easy application without residue, and offers practical workflows for correcting and recoding. Listeners will gain confidence in caring for their ceramic coatings.
Can you actually polish a ceramic coated car, or does that completely remove the coating? In this episode, I break down the truth about polishing coated paint and why any abrasion — no matter how light — can affect or remove your ceramic coating, regardless of brand.
I'll also explain how this challenge led me to develop Picture Perfect Polish, a polish that finishes clean enough to apply a ceramic coating right over it without waiting hours or doing extra prep. That means if you ever need to correct a coated panel, fix a scratch, or spot-polish your paint, you can handle it fast and recoat immediately with The Gloss Boss or Tough As Shell.
By the end, you'll know exactly how to safely polish, correct, and re-coat your ceramic coated vehicle without turning it into a weekend-long project.
"So can you actually polish a ceramic coated car or are you completely removing the coating when you do that?"
Ceramic coating is a special liquid that you put on a car's paint to protect it. It helps keep the car shiny and safe from dirt and scratches.
Ceramic coating is a liquid polymer applied to the exterior of a vehicle, which chemically bonds with the factory paint. It provides a protective layer that enhances the car's shine and protects against environmental contaminants.
"...can I take it through a tunnel car wash? I say, well, yeah, sure, you could do whatever you want. Just know that all those brushes..."
A tunnel car wash is a place where you drive your car through a long tunnel that washes it automatically. It uses brushes and water to clean the outside of your car.
A tunnel car wash is an automated car washing system where vehicles are driven through a series of cleaning stations. These stations typically use brushes and high-pressure water jets to clean the car's exterior.
"...and you start getting spider webbing marks in your coating."
Spider webbing marks are tiny scratches that look like spider webs on a car's paint. They can happen if you wash the car the wrong way or use rough materials.
Spider webbing marks are fine scratches that appear on a car's paint, often caused by improper washing techniques or using abrasive materials. These marks can detract from the car's appearance and may require polishing to remove.
"...if you have a coated car and you do get a scratch or need to touch up a panel..."
A coated car has a special layer on its paint that keeps it safe from scratches and dirt.
A coated car refers to a vehicle that has a protective layer applied to its paint, often a ceramic or polymer coating, which helps protect against scratches and environmental damage.
"...maybe you get a car accident or something and your bumper gets repainted, right?"
The bumper is the part of the car at the front and back that helps protect it in case of a crash.
The bumper is a protective component located at the front and rear of a vehicle, designed to absorb impact during collisions and protect the car's body and occupants.
Gloss Boss is a product that makes your car's paint super shiny after you clean it.
Gloss Boss is likely a brand name or product designed to provide a high-gloss finish to a vehicle's paint after polishing, enhancing its shine and protection.
"If I needed to, I would maybe clay spots that I knew were already rough, maybe not. I would dry the car, inspect it, and then hit the area with the Picture Perfect Polish..."
Clay spots are rough areas on a car's paint that can be cleaned with a special clay bar. This helps make the paint smooth again.
Clay spots refer to areas on a car's surface that have roughness due to contaminants like tree sap or industrial fallout. Using a clay bar can help remove these contaminants, leaving the paint smooth and clean.
"...hit the area with the Picture Perfect Polish and the Cut and Finish Pad, the Burgundy Pad. That's my favorite combo..."
The Cut and Finish Pad is a special pad used with polish to help make a car's paint look better. It helps remove scratches and gives a nice finish.
The Cut and Finish Pad is a type of polishing pad used in conjunction with polish to remove imperfections and enhance the finish of a vehicle's paint. Different pads serve various purposes, with this one designed for cutting and finishing work.
"...the Cut and Finish Pad, the Burgundy Pad. That's my favorite combo, that is the combo"
The Burgundy Pad is a type of polishing pad that helps make a car's paint shiny. It's used with polish to fix scratches and improve the finish.
The Burgundy Pad is a specific type of polishing pad, often used for cutting and finishing. Its color typically indicates its level of abrasiveness, making it suitable for different polishing tasks.
Select text to request an explanation
So can you actually polish a ceramic coated car
or are you completely removing the coating when you do that?
And this is a question that comes up all the time,
especially from people who have recently coated their car
and they're just totally afraid to touch it, right?
They're really paralyzed by it.
It's a big investment, either time or money investment
and they don't wanna mess it up clearly.
So the short answer I guess to this is yes.
You can polish a ceramic coated car,
but the reality is is anytime you introduce
any abrasion at all, you are either removing
or at best weakening the coated areas.
That's exactly why I tell my customers
who get their car ceramic coated when they also ask,
can I take it through a tunnel car wash?
I say, well, yeah, sure, you could do whatever you want.
Just know that all those brushes
and the heavy pH of those chemicals
are at best weakening the coating.
So don't expect to get the full life out of the coating
if you're gonna maintain it that way.
That's why I talk about having these types of conversations
before you even ceramic coated car at all.
But here's the thing too, when it comes to polishing,
I'll try to stay on topic
because that is the topic for this episode.
If you choose the right polish
and the right recoding strategy,
and that's what I wanna talk about today,
it's gonna save you a ton of frustration.
Obviously it's not ideal to polish a ceramic coating,
but things happen, you scratch your car,
you come up against a yellow parking pole,
you, someone hits you, whatever.
There's a million different things.
You go through the tunnel car wash
and your car starts looking bad.
You don't have the right car wash techniques
and you start getting spider webbing marks in your coating.
There's a bunch of different things that can happen
to make the car start to look unsightly.
And so again, that's where I think the right
kind of polish and recode strategy
can really save you a ton of time.
And actually, this is a perfect excuse for this,
that's one thing that I was considering
when I was actually developing the picture-perfect polish
and the reason why I did develop it the way that I did
is I had this in mind if we need to fix this ceramic coated
to a car because these are issues
that happen in the real world.
These are the issues that come through my shop.
Granted, I'm not detailing too many cars anymore
because the product brand has really taken just overwhelming.
It's overwhelming and it's completely taken over my life.
And so, but again, 16 years of detailing, I've learned a lot.
So I guess we should talk about two.
One thing that gets confusing is like polishing
versus compounding.
And so I use the term just polishing as a universal term
when I was working with Tom,
that was really one thing we talked about, like a polish.
It's just a better term for it.
But just know that when I talk about polishing,
I'm talking about compounding or polishing either one.
So we're talking about mechanical abrasion,
leveling the surface, whether the surface is the coating
or the clear coat, even if it's minor,
even if it's a light polish,
even if it's a heavy compound.
I'm just gonna refer to it as polishing
because that's the most simplest way to talk about it.
It gets very confusing when you start talking about compound
and all of what's the difference.
We can have that discussion, but not today, right?
So a ceramic coating is something
that is sitting on top of the clear coat.
So it bonds, it hardens,
but it's still a layer on top of the clear coat.
So when you introduce any abrasion,
you start removing that layer, or at least thinning that layer.
So it's not too dissimilar from waxes and sealants
and all that, it's a sacrificial layer
protecting your clear coat underneath that layer, right?
But anything, any type of abrasion
can take this down a notch, right?
It can slightly remove it.
And this kind of goes into my whole ethos of my whole brand,
everything from the super-super
to not have to touch the car as much.
It all comes back to not wearing down
the protection on your car,
being able to touch your car often to clean it,
to clean your car often to make sure you have a clean car
without running the risk of damaging anything.
And then when you do damage it,
which is what we're talking today,
you can polish it and recode it, no problem.
So no matter what brand of coating you're using too,
I think this goes without saying, but I will say it anyway.
No matter what brand of coating you're using,
whether it's a pro-only coating, spray-coating,
Tuva Shell, whatever, abrasion is abrasion, okay?
So if you've got a scratch, water spots,
which I've been talking about,
towel-marring, a light polish, a heavy compound,
it doesn't matter.
So you are removing the coating in that area, right?
So think about it, in real dramatic terms,
if you're sanding clear film, you can smooth it out,
but the clear coat is gone in that spot, right?
So the problem, what usually happens
is people totally panic, right?
They get a scratch, so they polish it,
they get water spots on their windshield,
they polish their windshield,
and then they realize that the water's not beating anymore,
the coating's not acting how the coating should act.
So now they have to recode it,
but then they wonder if they need to strip the whole car
and start over, and that's a big, big question that gets asked.
Hey, I messed up on this one panel,
I had water spots on these, my two doors,
and I removed them, I polished them,
but now do I need to recode my whole car, right?
And then this becomes a hassle,
turns into this long, stressful, drawn out process.
You fix one thing, you remove the scratch,
you remove the water spots, whatever,
but now you have to redo the coating,
the cure times, find the shade, get it inside,
take it back to the shop,
when I think in reality it just shouldn't be that complicated,
but the detailing industry is known
for over-complicating things, right?
So again, that's the exact pain point,
or one of the pain points that I was thinking about
when developing the Picture Perfect Polish.
So as well as all the other attributes of the polish, right?
It cuts, great cut, finishes down beautifully,
but one of the most important things was
it didn't leave a residue or film
that interfered with coatings,
and this is something that everywhere
the IPA wipe came from is because
we have two things going on at once.
We have people that want and brands
that develop products with really long work times,
which I think is really important,
but in order to get those really long work times
in the polishes or compounds, whatever,
they add a lot of oil to the formula,
but then what happens is even as you're buffing,
all that oil gets left on the surface
so that oil will interfere with the coating, right?
And so the tricky part was how do we get a product
that still has a long work time
but isn't gonna leave any oils or residue behind
that interfere with the coatings, right?
These oils, sometimes they're fillers,
but the main thing is that they prevent
the coating from bonding properly,
so you have to correct the panel,
then you cannot immediately coat it.
It'll be really weird and really slippery
and it's really difficult to explain without seeing it,
but it fights bonding, the coating is trying to bond,
but it can't because it has these oils in the way,
and so that's why brands recommend an IPA wipe, right?
So you remove, you polish it, you remove the oils,
and then you have a bare surface.
The problem is that sometimes when you hit it with the IPA
or the alcohol wipe or the panel prep,
whatever you wanna call it,
you run the risk of marring the surface,
you run the risk of seeing the true results
of what the polish is or isn't doing correction-wise,
and so you could think that you corrected the panel
only to panel wipe it with an alcohol or a panel prep
or something and it reveals a bunch of scratches
that you may have put in with the panel prep.
See the problem?
So I, on the other hand,
and what makes the picture perfect polish different
is I wanted something pure.
A one-step, true correction, finishes ready for coating.
That was a monumental task.
For something so simple, which is true in life,
usually simple things are actually very difficult,
you can literally polish and coat
the same panel minutes later.
You don't need heavy prep, you don't need the IPA wipe.
You can if you want to, and if you want to
see what the true surface is and how it's,
after you get done polishing with the picture perfect polish
and then you hit it with the IPA wipe,
you're gonna have the same looking surface.
It is a true correction.
You don't need to worry, let the product gas out
or anything like that.
So where this translates into the real world
is if you have a coated car and you do get a scratch
or need to touch up a panel,
maybe you get a car accident or something
and your bumper gets repainted, right?
It's, what I don't want it to be
is a weekend long project, right?
You polish that spot with the picture perfect polish,
wipe it, remove the residue and reapply the gloss boss
or whatever coating you're using, right?
Tough a shell, whatever, and you're done.
It's not difficult, it's very, very simple.
It was incredibly difficult and a ton of R&D hours
went into getting the picture perfect polish down to that
so it could be that simple.
And that's exactly what I wanted, but,
so to give some real life examples of things I've done
and how I've handled this in real life situations,
if it's like a little spot repair,
one small spot like a bird poop or scratch,
I just polish that area, recode that spot, done, right?
If it's an entire door or hood,
maybe it's looking really scratched up,
you go to the car wash, water spots, something like that,
I may work the entire door, the entire hood,
I'm definitely not gonna do like half a hood like this.
If it's really big scratch, I will do that whole panel,
whatever, like kind of seam to seam, edge to edge.
And again, it's just a polish and a recode, right?
If the whole car's contaminated
or has water spots over the whole entire car,
again, better off, you're in it for a full correction
and recode, it's basically starting from scratch.
But again, the same logic applies,
you are just polishing and coating.
So it doesn't, sometimes detailing is so over complicated
and sometimes we speak in absolutes,
like it has to be all or nothing,
you have to recode the whole entire panel or nothing,
but the reality is it doesn't have to be all or nothing,
the right polish, the right system
gives you the flexibility, right?
And that's what the Jimbo system is, it's just simple,
it's fast and it's effective.
So a lot of people ask me for a step-by-step,
so a real-world workflow, I guess,
of how I would practically handle this whole entire process.
If I had to correct and code a car today,
here's exactly how I do it and how I would do it.
I would wash it with the Super Soapers,
so I would pre-soak a completely dry car
with the Super Soapers using four ounces of soap
in my foam cannon.
I would use half the foam cannon on this dry car
to foam it completely, I would let that sit
for three to five minutes, I would rinse it,
and then I would completely,
I would use the second half of the foam cannon
to foam the car a second time,
and if the car was really dirty,
I may do a contact wash, but 90% of the time,
I'm not doing a contact wash after this.
That is going to completely clean the car for me.
If I needed to, I would maybe clay spots
that I knew were already rough, maybe not.
I would dry the car, inspect it,
and then hit the area with the Picture Perfect Polish
and the Cut and Finish Pad, the Burgundy Pad.
That's my favorite combo, that is the combo
that I notice works 99% of the time,
I don't even need the Finish Pad.
That's what I would do.
I would wipe that off with a clean microfiber towel,
the residue from the polish,
and then I would immediately recode it,
either a tough shell if it's spray coating
or the gloss boss for the wipe-on coating.
So again, this workflow, it's simple,
but it eliminates the need to overthink it.
It's quick, efficient, you know what you're getting,
proper bonding, and that is the key for anything.
So again, if you wanted to continue it out
for a whole panel and go scene to scene,
you totally can, but you definitely don't have to.
You can recode over an area that's coated,
so that's another option too,
like if you have a scratch in the middle of the door,
you could fix the scratch and then recode
the whole entire door.
You could do that as well if you wanted to,
but again, you can polish a ceramic coat of car,
but just know that polishing removes some
or all of the coating, so it's not a bad thing.
It just means you need to reapply,
and sometimes it's actually a better thing
to reapply a fresh layer of coating,
but again, this is why I built
the picture perfect polish the way I did,
so you can keep your car looking perfect
without dreading the maintenance.
Again, polishing is not my favorite part of detailing,
and so I looked to build something that didn't exist,
that fit my desire to not have to polish a car all day.
I wanna get a car done in a couple hours, right?
So I would love to hear though,
how you guys handle ceramic coated car corrections,
are you recoding the whole car?
Are you recommending that for customers?
Are you doing it?
Have you noticed changes in the hydrophobics
after correcting?
Have you been able to use a polish and not have to recode?
That would kinda be interesting too,
so if you wanna try the picture perfect polish
or the coating combo I talked about,
you can obviously grab them at jimbusdetailing.com
or on Amazon, as always, if you found this helpful,
hit subscribe, share this with someone
who's scared to touch their coated car.
And don't be scared to touch your coated car.
It's not magic sauce on your car, right?
It's very doable, it's easy to recode,
especially if you use something like the Gloss Boss.
It is definitely not something that you need
to be intimidated by, and it can be done.
So with that, thanks for listening,
thanks for watching, and I'll catch you guys
on the next one.
See ya.
Request an explanation for:
Request an Explanation
Heard something you'd like explained? We'll add it to this episode.
Sign in to request explanations for terms you heard.
Want to learn more?
Browse our glossary for plain-English explanations of automotive terms, jargon, and concepts.
See something that's not quite right? Our annotations are AI-generated and can sometimes miss the mark.
Click the flag icon on any annotation to suggest a correction.
