SECRETS They Don't Want You To Know: The Si02 Myth
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Term
pH neutral
pH neutral means the product won't harm your car's paint. It's like saying the cleaner is safe to use without causing damage.
Term
foam cannon
A foam cannon is a tool that sprays thick soap foam on your car to help clean it better. It makes washing easier and safer for the paint.
Term
SiO2
SiO2 is a chemical used in car coatings that helps protect the paint and make it shiny. It's like a shield for your car's surface.
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Today we're going to be diving into one of the most confusing
topics in the detailing space and one that has
really confused the detailing space more than anything.
And that is, as you probably know by the title, SIO2.
So I had a question get brought up to me from one of my
private label customers that is looking at taking
the gloss boss as a private label. And so they currently have another
pro grade, quote unquote pro grade coding, and they were asking
their chemist some questions and then they really liked the
performance and the application of the gloss boss. I'll just use that.
But so they were looking at private labeling it, but there was some
differences that they were getting from the questions they were asking me,
that I was asking the chemist about the formula in regards to SIO2 content.
And so they were getting some different percentages and some different,
just different information from their chemist and they were asking me for clarification,
but I'm not a chemist. I'm the middleman, right? And so I had to go back to my chemist
and ask for clarification and through that developed this pretty extensive conversation
around SIO2 and more specifically SIO2 content levels in water based
ceramics versus solvent based wipe on ceramics and kind of the difference between that.
And so I thought this would be a very interesting conversation and kind of
allowed for some really good topics to come up. And as I try to navigate kind of having a brand
and also putting out content out there, I thought, you know,
I'm only really good with doing content about stuff that's just right in front of me.
I'm not really good about making up stuff just for content's sake.
And so I know that this has been a hot button topic in detailing and products for a long time,
but I also think it helped me kind of get down to a core truth that I really believe in.
And I tried to kind of weave it through with like my cheap versus expensive videos
and showcasing that and product reviews, but I never really, I always just kind of
tended to bash a brand, which was never my intention. I just get very frustrated when
there's like crappy products out there that people are spending their harder and money on.
And these brands are either intentionally or intentionally putting out kind of crappy formulas.
Anyway, so that always came through on those videos. But what I'm starting to kind of transition
into is, can we ask better questions to the brands? And if we are a more informed consumer
that is asking better questions, we will be able to easily spot kind of the bad actors in the group.
And so that's kind of what this episode is about. And that's what I explain and try to
you know, tell my customer is, hey, can you just ask your chemist these three questions?
And then actually, if your chemist gives good answers, I can verify against what my chemist
is saying to make sure they're telling me the truth. You can verify your chemist to see if
he's telling the truth. And maybe us two guys in the middle can just learn something from this.
And so this episode is really just like, maybe we could all learn something from this.
And so I like to verify my sources. And I was telling my customer, hey, instead of like me
trying to tell you why my coding is way better, and just riddling off a bunch of facts, why don't
we just ask both our chemists better questions? And we can come back and meet in the middle,
because maybe there's something my chemist doesn't know that yours does or vice versa, right? So
today's episode, yes, is like, you know, secrets they don't want you to know about SIO2.
And it's really not me calling anyone out or saying someone's lying. But really, my kind of
goal is simple. It's like to try to give the right information so that you can ask better
questions and then make smarter decisions when it comes to choosing products. And honestly,
I've been on both sides of this. I've been the sales rep. I've worked with the chemist.
I talked with the blenders. I worked with people like Turtle Wax, who had chemists on staff and
blending houses on a big, big scale, and love a lot of the Turtle Wax products that aren't SIO2
at all and don't contain SIO2. And I've spent a lot of time behind the curtain. And that is
the space that I actually love operating in is behind the curtain. Having my own brand is just
a evolution of being behind the curtain and being frustrated. And so having my own brand
now is just my expression of doing things the way that I thought they should be done
when I saw what goes on behind the curtain, right? And so I've been on both sides and everywhere in
between. And so I said, you know, the goal is not to say, oh, this person's lying or that person's
lying or whatever, because I've seen how the message that kind of leaves the lab, if you want
to call it, can totally get twisted by the time it hits the label. Because marketing gets involved
and people's ideas get involved. And so it can really get twisted. So it's really not even,
and this is how I feel with my private label customer, it's not that he's lying to me or
that he's even being lied to. It's just there's a disconnect between a sales rep and an actual
chemist. And also, look, brands want to sell more product. I mean, we're all in this to make a profit.
So brands feel like they could stretch the truth a little bit. And I'll go over some of where that
stretching the truth can come in a little bit. And then, but once one brand stretches the truth
a little bit, another competing brand sees it and stretches the truth a little bit or adds a
little bit of confusion, as we've talked about before. And so things can spiral very quickly.
And as the internet matures and the internet becomes bigger and information becomes abundant,
my job is, I think, as a brand owner too, to educate. But my passion in this space, even going
way back to the cheap versus expensive days, is to help you as the consumer to make a better,
more informed decision based upon the goals that you have. And in fact, that's one thing I told my
private label customers, like, hey, you said that, in fact, let me pull up the exact tech.
And this is what I said to him. I said, hey, you said that you're trying to understand the chemistry
so that you can make the best product out there. Can you just let me know
your top three characteristics for what would accomplish this goal of being the best product
out there? Because that can look very different for a lot of different people, right? And so,
the same is true when it comes to this is like, I just want to put out information and the right
information so that you can make the best informed decision possible for what your goals are when
it comes to detailing, right? So let's start with what SiO2 actually is. And SiO2, this is where
it starts to get squirrely immediately. SiO2 is just a fancy chemical name for silica. Basically,
glass or sand. And obviously, no one is just scooping sand into a bottle and calling it a
ceramic coating. That's not what's happening. But SiO2 is what gives ceramic coatings their
strength, their slickness, their durability once they cure. It's kind of the main ingredient,
I guess you could call it, right? But here's where, not only the name, but here's where it
starts to get a little squirrely is that we have water-based coatings and solvent-based coatings,
right? And I talked about in a previous episode how a lot of the ceramic sprays that first came
out were solvent-based. And I actually had the first water-based one. I sold it as a private label
because I didn't have my own brand, right? Because again, this gets into my whole thesis
of my own brand is I saw things behind the curtain that I didn't like and thought they
could be different and brands weren't willing to do it. And so I created my own brand so that I could
birth these ideas. And actually, water-based spray ceramic coatings was my first private label
idea and project. And so we do have water-based coatings that actually add SIO2 type ingredients,
silanes, xyloxanes, and they can stay stable in the formula. Sometimes they don't stay stable
in the formula and that's where we get separation. That's where we could really see separation
when they start adding graphing into these formulas and they don't stay suspended in the
formula. It's very crazy. It's also very interesting when you think about it. You are mixing a bunch
of ingredients together, but you need those ingredients to stay together or else you get
things like clogged sprayers. You get product separation and you see it settling at the bottom
of the bottle or you see it settling at the top ring of the bottle. I see that a lot with the
McGuire's Ultimate Ceramic Spray Coating. It's starting to settle. You get little flakes in the
bottle because that formula is not stable. So all those ingredients that the blending house mixed
together came apart. And so it's not a stable formula. In a solvent coating, like a pro grade
white bond coating, something that flashes when you apply them, you cannot pour, according to my
chemist, you cannot pour SiO2 in that bottle because it doesn't dissolve. It doesn't stay
suspended together. It won't bond properly as a formula. I think oil and water, right? So it would
literally harden into a rock in the bottle if you had a high percentage of SiO2 in that solvent
formula. So I'm not going to say the exact percentage that my private label customer said
because I'm not sure if they use it in their marketing. But with SEMA right around the corner,
why this is important is I think that an angle that we're going to see a lot of brands start to
take as they try to differentiate their coatings is they're going to start talking about solid
percentages or SiO2 percentages. And they're going to equate that a higher solids percentage
or a higher SiO2 percentage automatically means that their product is more superior
to someone else's product, which is not necessarily true. And so that's what I'm trying to clear up
in this. So if you see a high SiO2 percentage claimed in a solvent-based wipe-on coating,
it's not necessarily true because you cannot, and I verified this via AI and the internet,
you cannot put SiO2 into a solvent-based coating because it doesn't blend together.
Instead, what you use are ceramic resins. So things like polysilizane,
xyloxanes, as you can see, I'm clearly not a chemist and I'm just a sales guy. But the ceramic
resins, they transform into a silica-like ceramic layer once they cure on the surface.
So that's, I think, I'll repeat it again because that's where I think the real magic is.
It is not a high percentage of SiO2 silica in the bottle that matters, but it's actually
the ceramic resins, polysilizane, whatever, that transform into a silica-like ceramic layer
once they're cured on the surface. So again, who cares what's in the bottle. We are going for
the result once the liquid comes out of the bottle. It's kind of, to make a more simpler example,
it's why, you know, when people were testing the Supersoper and they didn't watch the videos
or my videos and they didn't listen to anything I had to say about the Supersoper,
my goal with the Supersoper was to get pH neutral once it's hitting the surface of the vehicle,
diluted in a foam cannon, once it's actually hitting the surface of the vehicle. But I had
a ton of people testing the pH in the bottle. It's like, yeah, the pH is higher in the bottle,
but what you're not accounting for is it's being diluted multiple times and I'm going for the end
result on the surface of the car. The same is true with this and with coatings in SiO2. Who cares
how much SiO2 is in the bottle. Now you know you can't even get SiO2, right? It's not that there's
90% or 100% solids or 99% solids or 14% solids floating around in the bottle, right? What they're
trying to say is that there's, you know, that coating layer that's formed is 70%, 90%, 99%,
whatever, silica in composition. So again, they're not necessarily wrong. It's just,
it's not SiO2 in the bottle. It's ceramic resins that are SiO2 like and they form, they transform,
sometimes this is called like a matrix, right? They transform chemically into a silica like
ceramic layer. Okay, so here's a baking example because I like sweets. You know, my cake is 90%
flour after it's baked. It's like, yes, technically true, right? But that's not how it was in the
bowl when you mixed it, right? So this gets very confusing very fast. So when you, again, when you
see, call it XYZ percentage SiO2 being marketed, it's not that there's that much percentage
silica floating around in the bottle because again, if you put 80%, 70% SiO2 into a solvent
formula, it would begin to cure. So what they're really saying is that after curing,
the coating forms a layer that's about XYZ percentage silica in composition. Hello. So
here's where things get interesting is that we have a marketing problem. As you can see,
I'm not a chemist. I took extensive notes. That was incredibly difficult for me to try to explain
in layman's terms. And then when you try to take that information from a chemist, and then it goes
to the marketing and sales team, and they go, what do we do with that information? That's super
confusing. I don't even necessarily understand it. That's where things get real squirrely. And this
is where my experience again, as a sales rep as working behind the curtain as working as a consultant
for Turtle Wax for five years, I saw it gets very confusing. The chemist is very passionate about
ceramic resins and polyzylizane and and SiO2. The chemists are very, very passionate about their
work. It doesn't always translate. So the marketing team goes, crap, what do we do with that? What
does that mean? How do we explain that? How do we dumb that down? And because I've worked with a
few different blenders over the years, this is what I've learned. This is one of my biggest
takeaways is that there's often a huge disconnect between the chemist who actually make the stuff
and the reps who sell it and the people privately building it. So that's where things get real
squirrely. The further away you get from the chemist, the more inaccurate the claims get. And because
a lot of people don't have direct access to the chemist, they have direct access to their sales
rep, not the chemist. It's very difficult. Stuff gets lost in translation. Have you ever played the
fun game telephone where you whisper in people's ear and you go around in a circle and then the
last person tells what they think they heard and it's usually completely different than the first
person. It's exactly what goes on in the detailing space. Exactly. Chemists talk in terms of molecules,
curing, resin backbones, matrix, all these fancy words that I can barely even say. But the sales
reps or the marketing team, they talk in terms of buzzwords and marketing numbers. 65% SO2,
graphene, 10H hardness lasts for 25 years. And somewhere in between those two worlds,
a lot of truth gets lost. So again, I'm not saying anyone's lying because most of the time,
it's not even intentional. I will say some of the time, it's not intentional. Some of the time,
it's very intentional. And those people get sniffed out. We're seeing a lot of it right now.
But the real problem is, is that it's just the people doing the selling aren't the people doing
the blending. And when you've got that disconnect, you get a product that may or may not perform well.
But then again, the marketing story, you know, doesn't always match the chemistry,
which is again, that disconnect was actually my motivator to starting my own brand. And that's
why I've always taken the approach of like, I'm not the chemist, I don't want to be, I'm not even
smart enough to say these words. Okay, this is extremely difficult for me to try to communicate.
But one thing I do hold to is that the truth always wins in the end. And I do want to operate out
of honesty. So because the truth doesn't always need hype, when a coding is good, it's just good,
right? It's like, this customer wants to take the gloss boss as a private label for their own brand.
Why? Because it just works. It's just good, right? When it's built on solid chemistry, you don't have
to inflate the numbers. You don't have to invent new buzzwords every year. You don't need to create
a new version of it, right? It's just solid. Because if you start with solid chemistry,
you never have to really make any massive improvements because it's just solid. I saw this
developing the polish. It's like, well, why doesn't anyone do this? And it's like, well,
because they don't want to buy the more expensive solvent that doesn't smell. Oh, because they don't
want to buy the more expensive abrasives. They don't want to invest the 20 or $30,000 that it took
to invest in abrasives just for the abrasive. They don't want to do that. They'll just take
the off the shelf. They don't want to do the special things that I've done with the abrasives
to make a product actually work well, right? And again, the polish is just the latest example of
what my whole antithesis and thesis is for my brand. I just do the things that people aren't
willing to do. And I'm just so happy that I have an outlet to do that, right? And so SiO2 is just
another talking point that allows me to try to explain that. So here is, again, I took a lot
of notes, but my simplified breakdown of what's really going on in a solvent-based wipe-on coating.
Got a resin system. That's kind of the backbone, the foundation. It's usually something like
polyzyzane, xyloxane. They're liquid. And that chemistry reacts when it's exposed to air or
humidity. Now you can verify this very easily that it's a resin system and not SiO2 because these
companies talk about how their product may react differently in different temperatures or humidity.
That's not SiO2 reacting. That's the resin system. As they cure, instead of SiO2,
they form an SiOSI network. I have no idea. That's the matrix. But that is the same molecular
structure as silica or glass. That's what gives it the hardness, the hydrophobic layer, the longevity.
It's not SiO2. It's SiOSI. Good luck with that. Technically, yes, after it cures,
your coating has a silica-like ceramic layer, but there's no solid SiO2 floating in the bottle
before that happens. It's just another mechanism to get to the same result.
Again, this is where a lot of marketing confusion comes in because saying 60, 70, 80, 90% SiO2
sounds way more impressive than we use high-quality polyzyzane resins that cure into a glass-like
layer. I think we can all understand this. That's why I'm not trying to call anyone out. I'm just
saying 75% SiO2 is a lot easier to understand, a lot more simple. Then someone hears that,
a competing brand hears that, and goes, well, if they have 75%, the only thing that's better than
75% is 80%. We have 80% SiO2. Then the next brand goes, well, if it's totally anything better than
80, it's 90. We have 90%. Then the next brand that says the only thing better than that is 99%.
And so I think we're going to see that, and I'm trying to get ahead of that. But just like
with the picture-perfect polish, the quality of the abrasives, the quality of the solvents,
the quality of the oils in that product really make it a different product. It's just not a
sexy thing to talk about, and it's very hard to turn that into marketing terms that people
understand. So with the polish, it's like, yeah, it doesn't dust, cuts and finishes great, doesn't
have fillers. You can ceramic coat right over it, right? But it's very, very difficult to translate
that, to take information in, and then to regurgitate it as something that actually makes sense.
So again, instead of calling anyone out, because that only looks bad on my brand, it's really not
my goal to call brands out, live and let live is like my kind of lifelong motto, like do your thing,
because I think the truth always prevails, and I think that we see, and being in this industry
for so long now, and seeing a lot of these brands come and go, I get to see that like the charlatans
of the industry come and go, and they actually are their own demise, and people start to recognize
that. And so I don't really need to call people out because that only looks bad on me. Just let
them do their own thing, right? So instead of calling brands out, I thought I would share a few
questions as a detailer, shop owner, brand owner, even a curious DIYer, informed DIYer, may ask to
separate the real chemistry from the marketing. And why this matters is that then you can know
if that brand is actually legitimate or not. If they're willing to come to the sea, come to the
table to answer these questions, because I would answer them for anyone reaching out to me, because
it's very simple. I just go to the chemist and say, hey, Walter, what does this mean? Just like I did
with this private label client. He said, hey, can you let me know these questions or the answers
these questions? And I said, sure. And that snowballed into this whole podcast episode, right?
So here's a few good questions and really one that you could ask. How is the SiO2 percentage
measured? Is it in the bottle or after it's cured? That could tell you a lot. If the coating is
solvent based, which you know, because it'll have a strong smell, how are they keeping the SiO2
suspended? If they can't explain that, it's a huge red flag because again, it's not SiO2 in a solvent
based coating. It's impossible. It's ceramic resins. But the sales reps don't know that because it's
very difficult to get that information out of the chemist. Then you could ask, what is the main
resin system? Is it silo, silozane, xyloxane, polysilozane? You could just ask that because here's the
thing. Real chemist will know immediately. I don't know. I don't know. The gloss boss? I didn't know.
I had to ask. I don't know. I had to ask, right? But it didn't take my chemist four, five days,
seven days, 10 days to get back to me. He got back to me in 35 seconds because real chemists will
know immediately and that's how you can start to spot charlatans from real people. If they don't
know, if you asked me and I didn't know, I don't know. I'll get back to you and I'll let you know
or I won't email you a response until I know, but I'm going to give you a real answer for
all my products. I could tell you why you don't need to IPA wipe after using the Picture Perfect
Polish. I could tell you exactly why from a chemistry standpoint and exactly why from a
real life standpoint because I'm a detailer and I actually use my own products, but I work directly
with the chemist. So if you want both standpoints, I'll give you both. Same with Tuft of Shell or
any of my products, right? If someone does say, this is maybe a simpler one to understand and
this is a question I asked my private label, customer task, his other chemist, if you have
60, 70, 80, 90, 99% solids and it's SiO2, how does it not harden or crystallize in the bottle?
And don't tell me that you have a dropper cap because that doesn't matter. Okay. That's a good
one to ask. If you want to get real technical, you could ask for a lab report. I don't know if
anyone's really going to even have this information or be willing to share this information realistically.
I don't think this is like a proper one to ask, but again, could be something that you could ask.
And these are questions that I would be asking if I was trying to source a coding.
If you're looking to put your name behind something outside of the marketing,
I think these could be good questions to ask. If you're looking for a private label coding,
these would be good questions to ask. This is what I told my customer to ask his chemist
because instead of me trying to pump up my coding and oh, my coding is so much better because
this, this and that and blah, blah, blah, blah, instead I took a different approach of like,
hey, I don't know, ask your chemist these questions and see what he comes back with.
And that's kind of like how we're going to combat these charlatans in the industry
that just sell garbage is by asking better questions and then getting them to stumble
because they don't have the actual information. So for me, this isn't about trying to sound
smarter. I'm sure half of you laughed through me trying to just say the word polyzylizane.
I'm not trying to sound smarter. I'm not trying to sound better. I'm trying to be honest
because I've been on the sales side. I know how tempting it is to just repeat the flashy claims.
It's easier to sell. It really is. It's just easier to sell and people buy it.
Everyone else is doing it, right? But I do hold the truth that in the long run,
honesty wins and honesty builds trust. And I'd rather have someone buy from me
because they believe in the way that I do business, not because I out marketed someone else,
right? Not because I had a better video than someone else, a flashier video.
Also, I don't have multiple personalities, the ability to do that. So who I am right now,
recording behind this microphone by myself in my shop is exactly who I am. If you were to come
by my products from me, I just don't have the ability to have multiple personalities. Now,
some people are very skilled in that in this industry and have multiple personalities.
And unfortunately, I've been privy to that, unfortunately, with turtowax and hearing sponsored
deals from other YouTubers and hearing how those YouTubers act behind the scenes and then seeing
the persona that they put on in front of the camera. Yeah, seen it, heard it, heard it all,
right? I don't talk about it because who's going to believe me and who's going to admit to that?
Who's going to admit to, yeah, I'm a real jerk behind the scenes, right? But this is my livelihood,
so I put on an act. I'm basically a YouTube actor, right? And so that's not really what my channel,
my brand, my podcast are about. I want to give you the truth behind the products,
the chemistry behind the products because I have this unprecedented access to a chemist who's willing
to literally share it all, right? And so I want to help you make sense of the hype and again,
letting you form your own opinion, that's what it's all about, right? So again, the next time you
see a high percentage, SiO2, 10H hardness, graphing infused, matrix, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,
don't roll your eyes, just ask better questions, right? Because the better you understand how
this stuff actually works, you're not at the mercy of marketing. And I think that's the real power
as a DIY or a detailer or a shop owner. So if you found this helpful, hit the like button,
subscribe, let me know in the comments below any other buzzwords or claims that you've seen that
quite don't make sense. I think we all have like our spidey senses and we all have these things that
are like, hmm, that doesn't really make sense. Like, why did you not have that product anymore,
but you released this one? Hmm, saw that with McGuire's and a whole host of other brands too.
Like, why did you discontinue that product? It was actually good. Oh, wait, now you have a new
version of essentially the same thing with a different label. Huh, all right. I think we all
have our spidey senses up for stuff like that. And I think if we just have better questions to ask
and I'm kind of putting it upon my shoulder to put out better information, not just marketing
claims, not just trying to outmarket people, but to out honest people. I don't know if that's a
claim, but if I can out honest people, one, I don't have a persona that I need to keep up. So that
makes producing content way easier for me and putting out factual information way easier,
because it's just the truth, right? So that's it. I don't know. If you want to see what real
chemistry looks like and real ceramic resins, I guess, you can check out all my products at
jimbosdetailing.com. Obviously, ceramic coatings made from true ceramic resins. There's no SiO2
in it at all. They're built for performance, not marketing like all my products. Again,
thanks for watching. As always, I appreciate it. I appreciate the support over at jimbosdetailing.com
and Amazon. I will link everything below in the description. Hope you guys enjoyed that one.
Hopefully it didn't add more confusion and it added some clarity. So with that, catch you guys on the
next one. See ya.
About this episode
Delving into the complexities of SiO2 in detailing products, this episode clarifies misconceptions about silica content in ceramic coatings. The host emphasizes the importance of understanding the chemistry behind these products rather than relying solely on marketing claims. By discussing the differences between water-based and solvent-based coatings, the episode encourages listeners to ask better questions when evaluating products. With insights from personal experiences and industry knowledge, the conversation aims to empower consumers to make informed decisions and spot misleading marketing tactics.
Original notes
There's a lot of talk in the detailing world about SiO2 content in ceramic coatings — but what does that actually mean?
In this episode, Jimbo breaks down the real story behind SiO2 and how it's used (and misunderstood) in the detailing industry. You'll learn what SiO2 really is, why it doesn't behave the way many people think it does in solvent-based coatings, and how marketing language often bends the truth.
This isn't about calling anyone out — it's about helping you see through the noise and ask better questions before buying or selling a product.
Jimbo shares his insider experience working with blenders, chemists, and sales reps, explaining where the disconnect happens and how to tell the difference between marketing buzzwords and real chemistry.
→ What you'll learn in this episode:
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What SiO2 actually is and how it forms during curing
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Why solvent-based coatings can't contain raw SiO2 the way some claim
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How sales and marketing language often twist technical details
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Smart questions to ask your supplier or chemist to get real answers
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Why honesty and transparency always win long term in this industry
→ Products built on real chemistry, not hype:
The Gloss Boss (Pro Wipe-On Ceramic Coating): https://jimbosdetailing.com/products/the-gloss-boss
Tough As Shell (Spray Ceramic Coating): https://jimbosdetailing.com/products/hard-as-shell-ceramic-spray
Jimbo's Detailing on Amazon: Amazon.com/JimbosDetailing
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