Ceramic coating is like a special clear shield you put on your car's paint to keep it shiny and protect it from dirt and scratches. It helps your car look nice for a long time and makes washing it easier.
The Toyota Land Cruiser is a big SUV that can drive on rough roads and lasts a long time. Many people use it every day or for trips where the roads are tough.
Clear coat is a clear layer on your car's paint that keeps it shiny and safe from things like bird poop or sun damage. If it gets damaged, the paint underneath can get ruined.
Wax is like a shiny coat you put on your car to make it look nice and protect the paint a little bit. But it doesn't last long, especially if your car is outside a lot.
Liquid sealants are special liquids you put on your car's paint to protect it and keep it shiny longer than wax. But some brands don't work very well if your car is outside a lot.
Private labeling means selling products made by someone else but using your own brand name on them. Detailers do this to sell coatings with their own label.
High level detailing means doing a very thorough and special cleaning and protecting of a car, not just washing it. It can make the car look like new and protect it better.
An IPA wipe means cleaning your car with a special alcohol to make sure it's very clean before putting on a protective layer. This helps the protection stick better.
Ceramic sprays are sprays you can use on top of the ceramic coating to keep your car looking shiny and protected. They help keep the coating working well.
Gloss Boss is a company that makes special coatings to protect and shine your car's paint. Their products are made to be easy to use.
LIVE
I got this comment on a YouTube video the other day
and I thought it was a very good topic
to kind of bring up and talk about
and I actually have personal experience
with this exact thing that got brought up.
And so the comment says,
I still cannot embrace the small bottle type,
talking about the wipe-on, multi-year ceramic coating
product for the daily driver with no garage.
And honestly, I completely get where this person's coming
from because for a lot of people,
I think a multi-year or the most year wipe-on ceramic coating
may not make sense for them,
but I did run a little test myself
and I wanted to share my experience
because I happen to have a daily driver
that is not garage, unfortunately,
and actually haven't had a garage car for a long time
and ran an experiment on my Land Cruiser
when I first bought it of like, you know what?
I don't want to be high on my own supply.
Let me not ceramic coat this thing and see how I like it
because I'll just maintain it with kind of ceramic sprays,
right?
And a lot of people don't want a multi-year coating
because one, it could be expensive
if you have someone doing it for you.
There could be some prep work involved
that if you don't have someone doing for you,
you may not know how to do it yourself.
The fear of messing it up is a big one.
That's why you pick a product that you can't mess up
like the Gloss Boss.
And maybe you just think the car lives outside,
it gets used daily, like this is completely unnecessary
to invest either a lot of money into it
or a lot of time into doing it myself.
So, you know, I think this person may be thinking
like the car lives outside, it gets driven every day,
maybe you're not totally obsessed with it
or even if you are obsessed with it,
maybe you're like me and you, you know,
I live in a coastal town.
So like I wash my car, it sits outside,
sits out overnight, I wake up in the morning
and it's covered in dew and it's wet
and it looks like it got rained on
and I'm just like, ugh, I get that.
Why did I even wash it?
Like why do I even spend the time to do that?
Kind of feels like overkill sometimes, right?
So, I think though, and I'm gonna make a case
for with my own experience,
a case for actually doing it yourself
and putting on a wipe on ceramic coating
because I think, and I have experienced
that there's really some key points
that make your life easier.
And I think the thing I realized
with not ceramic coating a car
and then ceramic coating a car, here's some key points.
When you have the ceramic coating
it makes it way easier to wash.
You get way less dirt sticking to the surface.
That dew in the morning actually helps clean the car
sometimes when it's not super, super dirty, right?
The UV protection, the underlying kind of assurance.
I look at a ceramic coating, there's like extra insurance
against stuff like bird poops.
I mean, bird poops alone are worth the investment
to not have to repaint your car.
There's so many customers that I dealt with
that had bird poop on their car
and they let the bird poop sit there for either a couple of
days or sometimes even a couple hours
and that bird poop etched through their clear coat
and they essentially the only way to get it perfect
is to get it repainted.
And honestly, the paint stays nicer longer.
So I think that there's like, obviously
if you're watching a detailing video, there is,
and maybe you've got a new car,
you're researching paint protection.
There's really three layers of protection
that I think about.
And the first layer being wax,
which is basically talk about a waste of time.
If you have a daily driver that sits outside
and you're just waxing it,
that is a complete waste of money and time.
Natural wax is just bake off in the sun.
You're virtually getting no paint protection
at all with a wax.
Yeah, you're gonna get some gloss,
but I would even group in a liquid sealant
into this category of like,
I know people are obsessed with colonite
or used to be obsessed with colonite.
When I ran a torture test on colonite,
it's virtually useless.
It is, sure, if you're getting,
if you have a show car or a weekend car
and you like to wax it, fine,
but like for a daily driver that sits out,
it's virtually, you're getting virtually no paint protection,
right?
Then you have the level two
because I grouped in sealants with the waxes.
You have this spray-on ceramic,
something like Tuffa Shell.
They're very, very fast to apply.
They're relatively inexpensive.
They're easy.
They're great for daily drivers.
And I think this is where most people will fall into it.
This is where most, for all the reasons
that I just stated, like they're relatively inexpensive.
They offer hydrophobic, Tuffa Shell gives you a glow
like a wax, but gives you the protection
like a ceramic spray.
So I think this is where for most people
or even your entry into ceramics,
this is a great place to start.
And then we have kind of the big boys
to wipe on ceramic coatings, longer protection,
but if you use the gloss boss, it's impossible to mess up.
Still very easy.
And it's way more durable, not more difficult,
way more durable than the sprays.
There is some more prep involved in that,
but the prep is not excessive.
And you can kind of prep to the level that you want.
So I think, here's the thing.
I think most people think my car sits outside.
I wanna invest as least amount of time into it as possible
because it's just gonna get ruined.
It's just gonna get dirty tomorrow.
The gardener's coming tomorrow anyway.
She's gonna blow the grass all over it.
But I think the reality is, is that most,
or cars that sit outside need more protection
because they're exposed to more of the element.
So, and I know this person said he just doesn't get it,
it doesn't see it, but I think,
and one thing I personally do for my own cars is like,
hey, this car sitting outside is exposed to everything.
Everything 365 days a year, it needs more.
There's gonna be more UV damage, more bird poops,
more tree sap, more pollution, more water spots,
more grass from the neighbor's gardener
that is blowing stuff everywhere, right?
And so I think you should opt for more protection
if you have a daily driver that sits outside
because you're exposed to more of that.
I will agree with him, ceramics are incredible, right?
Whether it's spray ceramic or wipe on, it's incredible.
But let me tell you my story and my experience with these.
So in 2020, I got a brand new Toyota Land Cruiser
and at the time I was selling a lot of ceramic spray,
private labeling, I had a ton of experience
installing wipe on ceramic coatings.
I was selling private label wipe on ceramic coatings
and I just began to think of like,
what if wipe on ceramic coatings aren't as good
as I thought they were?
Sure, for the detailing professional,
they love wipe on ceramic coatings
because it opened up a huge market
to actually make money in detailing.
I remember, as an aside, when I interviewed Jason Rose,
when he was with McGuire's for the podcast a long time ago,
his kind of highlight of his detailing career
or a pinnacle of his detailing career at one point
was getting $1,000 to detail a car,
which back in the day, to just detail a car
without a ceramic coating and get that price to $1,000
is insane, right?
It's high, high level detailing.
Now, guys won't even do a ceramic coating
for less than $1,000, right?
It becomes the norm.
And so, for the first time, ceramic coatings
really opened that door for a much higher ticket
and detailers took full advantage of it, right?
Really, we're able to become legitimate business owners
because of that.
And so, but I always like to keep myself in check.
It's the reason why I still continue to test,
you know, other people's products
and why I even continue to put out YouTube videos
and get feedback from you guys on what's working,
what is the culture saying,
what are the new hot products, how are they working,
what's the chemistry, do I need to get them reversed
to see what people are doing, right?
Because I want to stay on the bleeding edge
of what the industry is.
And so, for that reason and back in 2020,
I didn't have my own product line yet,
I was just doing private label,
but I was also doing consulting.
And so, at the time, I was finding out like,
oh my gosh, Turtle Wax Seal in China is like very robust,
very stout, like this is a great product.
And I had those thoughts of like,
my car's gonna live outside, it's gonna do road trips,
like maybe I don't need to do a full-blown ceramic coating
on this, maybe, let me see how it goes without it.
And so, I did, or I did not.
I did not opt to do a wipe-on ceramic coating
on a brand new car,
which is always the most ideal time to do it.
It's the less prep you have to do,
you don't have to polish out as many defects,
it really is the most ideal time to apply a ceramic coating.
But at the time too, I figured,
I like to test a lot of products,
and so, this would be a good way to test
a lot of products on my car as well.
And I can use my car as kind of a testing grounds, right?
And here's what I realized,
is that even though a wipe-on ceramic coating
does require a lot more time upfront,
you make all that time back on the back end.
Contamination builds up way quicker
when you're just using sprays only,
especially when I was just using like sealant shine
or ice spray wax, that's what I was predominantly using.
The Lasco ceramic spray I was using at the time.
And what I realized is that though that stuff is stout,
it's even more stout or stouter,
if I were to make a board.
I try to make about at least one word
every podcast or a video.
So, those ceramic sprays or spray waxes
are more stout when they're layered upon
a ceramic coating as a foundational layer.
So, that's why me personally,
I don't necessarily worry so much about
how long one layer of a wipe-on ceramic coating
could last because I maintenance my car,
I wash my car like crazy, I am always topping it up.
So, I look at a wipe-on ceramic coating
as a foundational layer to build
additional layers of protection on.
Some people may agree with that,
some people may not agree with that,
but I look at it as my base layer of protection
which is my ultimate form of insurance.
And so, what I noticed is when I didn't have that night,
like I said, my Land Cruiser was bought to do road trips
and be in all different kinds of elements
and also be a daily driver that also lived outside
that sealant shine, spray waxes, sealants,
they just couldn't live up to the abuse
even though they're really, really solid products
in and of themselves, they just can't live up to the abuse
that a wipe-on ceramic coating can.
And so, therefore, I spent more time washing the car,
I noticed contamination building up quicker,
so I needed to clay more often.
And then once I did a few rounds of that,
I was just getting tired of it,
my car was just dirtier, it would get dirtier quicker.
I think some of that had to do with sealant shine
was and is a little bit of a dust attractor.
But I just had to maintenance my car a lot more frequently
than if I would have just used and reserved those products
as like a topper and not as my main form of paint protection.
And so, I ultimately made it,
I think two or three years of doing this
before I realized, you know what, now I'm gonna invest the time,
I'm gonna completely polish the car and ceramic coat it.
And then once I did that, I used those products
as a maintenance product or a booster product,
and I was significantly more happy with it that way.
So, though it does seem like a lot more prep
and a lot more work, when you have a brand new car,
it polishes out easier, polishes out faster,
and is the most ideal time to do that.
So, while I do agree with, you know,
this commenters of like where he, you know,
he can't embrace it for the daily driver with no garage,
I get it, but I would also encourage you
that like to actually do it or test it
and maybe even do half your car
with a wipe on ceramic coating,
because I think a car that's not garage
and is a daily driver is a better candidate
for more robust paint protection,
because you are exposed to all the elements,
all the time, everywhere.
And so, having done it myself to make sure
I'm not high on my own supply,
when I got rid of the Land Cruiser recently
and got a truck, basically for the product brand,
because I'm hauling so much more stuff,
the very first thing I did was ceramic coat it,
because I will never, ever, ever,
ever not ceramic coat my own personal cars again,
especially with something like the Gloss Boss
that is so easy to do.
If your car doesn't need to be polished,
you could IPA wipe it and coat it
in literally two hours or less, maybe even an hour.
It can go on all the surfaces, plastic, glass, trim, paint.
I sell it in a 50 mil bottle,
so you can get two to three layers on a mid-sized car.
You can get tons and tons of product on the car.
And it is, most companies are selling a 30 mil bottle
for what I'm selling a 50 mil bottle for,
so you're almost getting double the amount of product.
If you do have a boat in the water,
a fishing boat, it's ideal for that.
RVs, ideal for that.
Tractors, ideal for that.
Any farming equipment, ideal for that.
And it's so easy to apply, you really can't mess it up.
And I assure you that you will be happy
that you applied a ceramic coating.
And then use the ceramic sprays as maintenance
and boosters or wax over the coating, that's totally fine.
But I guarantee you, you will be much, much happier,
especially on a daily driver that sits outside,
that you will be much happier
that you ceramic coated your car.
I personally am.
I was so bummed about a year,
it really took about 18 months, two years in,
to not having a ceramic coating on the car
that I was like, I wish I would have done it.
And I remember that of like, okay,
I ran a test on my own car,
because I also, as a detailing business owner at the time,
did not want to sell a product to my customers
that I didn't wholeheartedly believe in.
So this was before the gloss boss was even a product.
But I started to be like, am I, you know,
I'm selling these $1,200, $1,400, $1,900 products
to a customer, am I doing the right thing?
So I really wanted to test that.
And ultimately, you know, all these years later,
six years later, I've come to the conclusion of like,
yeah, I am selling the right thing.
Like this is a valuable product to have.
And if I can make this as easy as possible to apply,
I should do that, which I did with the gloss boss.
And then maintenance it with something like Tuffa Shell,
and the Super-Soper, and that coating will last
a long, long, long time.
A long time.
If you maintenance it, it's super hydrophobic,
it's super slick, and maintenance it properly,
just like we do.
And I obviously include all these instructions
on how to do that.
But that coating will last far exceed your expectations
about that.
And so with that, I will link everything below.
Thank you guys for supporting my product brand.
It's my passion.
And in you supporting it, I get to create better products,
you know, invest heavier into products,
and make products that are easy to apply and actually work.
Which, what a thought is a thing.
So with that, ceramic coat your daily drivers.
Do you agree or not?
Let me know in the comments below.
But I'll link all my products below.
Thanks for watching, thanks for listening,
and I'll catch you on the next one.
See ya.
About this episode
Exploring the practicality and benefits of ceramic coatings for daily drivers, especially those without garage protection, this discussion shares personal experiences and tests on a Toyota Land Cruiser. It highlights the differences between wax, spray-on ceramic products, and wipe-on ceramic coatings, emphasizing the superior protection and ease of maintenance that ceramic coatings provide against environmental damage like bird droppings and UV rays. The host also addresses common concerns about cost, application difficulty, and durability, ultimately advocating for ceramic coatings as a foundational layer that enhances long-term paint protection and reduces maintenance efforts.
If your car sits outside every day… is a ceramic coating even worth it?
I recently received a comment that sparked a really interesting discussion:
"I still cannot embrace the small-bottle-type, multi-year ceramic coating product for the daily driver with no garage vehicle."
And honestly… it's a fair question.
In this video, I break down the real truth about ceramic coatings for daily drivers, especially cars that live outside with no garage.
The detailing industry loves to talk about 5-year coatings, 7-year coatings, and even 9-year coatings, but the reality is most car owners don't actually need that kind of longevity. What most people really want is something that keeps their car looking good and makes it easier to clean.
So in this episode, I share my real-world experience testing protection on my own daily driver that sits outside full-time.
We'll talk about:
• Why many people think ceramic coatings don't make sense for daily drivers • The biggest myths about multi-year ceramic coatings • Why the detailing industry is obsessed with durability claims • What actually matters more than longevity • My personal experiment running an uncoated daily driver for three years • Why cars that live outside actually benefit MORE from protection • The three realistic levels of paint protection every car owner should understand
Does it make your life easier and your car easier to maintain?
If you drive your car daily, park outside, and want your paint to stay looking great without spending hours detailing, this discussion will help you decide what type of protection actually makes sense.
