Ceramic coatings are special liquids that are put on a car's paint to protect it. They help keep the car looking good by making it more resistant to scratches and dirt.
'Bro science' is a term used to describe ideas or claims that people believe without real proof or scientific backing. It often comes from personal experiences or stories rather than actual research.
Teflon is a special coating used on frying pans to make them non-stick. The speaker uses it to explain how some surfaces are hard for things to stick to, like tape on a Teflon pan.
Rock chips are tiny scratches or dents in a car's paint that happen when small rocks hit the car while driving. They are common, especially on busy roads.
Ceramic Pro is a type of protective coating for cars that helps keep the paint safe from scratches and dirt. It's designed to last a long time and make cleaning easier.
Spiderwebbing is when you see fine scratches on a car's paint that look like a spider's web. It usually happens if the car isn't cleaned properly or is exposed to harsh conditions.
A lifetime warranty means that if something goes wrong with the product, the company will fix or replace it for as long as you own it. It's a promise that lasts a long time.
Installer certification means that a person has been trained by a company to use their products correctly. But just because someone is certified doesn't mean they will do a perfect job.
Aston Martin is a famous car brand from the UK that makes luxury sports cars. They are known for their stylish designs and high speeds, often featured in movies like James Bond.
A professional detailer is someone who cleans and takes care of cars for a living. They know how to make cars look really nice and protect their surfaces.
A DIYer is a person who likes to fix or improve things by themselves instead of paying someone else to do it. In cars, this means doing repairs or upgrades on their own.
A single layer system means that the protective coating on the car is applied in just one layer. This makes it easier to put on and take care of compared to having many layers.
A pH neutral solution is a type of cleaner that is safe for your car's special coating because it won't harm it. It's balanced so it won't be too harsh or too mild.
Tufa Shell is a product you can spray on your car to help keep it looking nice without hurting its special protective layer. It's like a cleaner that is safe for your car's paint.
Tough as Shell makes products that protect your car's paint from damage and keep it looking good. They are known for being tough and long-lasting.
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You've pretty much heard it all by now, right? This coding last five years,
maybe ten, ten plus years. Stack this coding with that coding
and you're going to get eight years. But here's the truth.
And I think we're all getting to the place where we understand this.
That's marketing. Most ceramic codings won't make it
half the amount of time that they claim to. A lot of codings fail within a year.
And it's really not because they're necessarily
bad, but it's because we've been fed a ton of bro science.
Half-truse about how codings really work, how any particular brands coding
really does work. And so in this episode, in this podcast, in this video, what I
want to talk about is the lie about five-year codings,
ten-year codings, why even stacking codings doesn't really add
years. It's just more bro science. And what no one tells you about
ceramic coding maintenance. And so, you know, I think at its core, a ceramic
coding is just a tool. It's a tool in our toolbox.
It is not a one-size-fits-all. And it's something that
detailers got really excited about because there was a lot of money in it
for the first time, really ever in the detailing space.
I remember back to doing a podcast with Jason Rose from McGuire's
and him talking about kind of the holy grail of detailing
was being able to get $1,000 for a detail. And that was really difficult
to get to that number before ceramic codings. And then with the advent of
ceramic codings, that number actually felt small.
And people got ridiculed for only charging $1,000
for ceramic codings. And people would say things like, well, maybe you didn't put
enough layers on. Maybe you're with the wrong company. Maybe
you need to be certified. And all this other marketing BS that as time goes on,
we are realizing is BS. But for a long time, hitting that $1,000 goal,
that $1,000 detail was a big, big deal. I remember even hearing it live in person
from Jason being like, whoa, that's how did you even get to that number?
You know, and now with codings, it's like you're only charging $1,000.
So kind of like I like to do before we get into it too deep, we need to set the tone for,
you know, what are, what ceramic codings actually are. And I think at its core,
a ceramic coating is just a, it's very simple. It's a thin protective layer that bonds directly
to your paint to make it more resistant to stuff like UV rays, fallout. Some codings have
characteristics that repel soap. They prevent grime from sticking to the surface.
But contrary to what the marketing for ceramic codings were when they first started coming out,
they are not bulletproof. It's not invisible armor, right? It's just a harder, slicker surface
that makes your life easier to take care of it. I mean, that's really what it is. It's a
wax on steroids, right? An invisible, slicker, harder surface that is protecting the substrate
underneath. That's all it is. It's most basic form. And this is exactly where the bro science
starts to come in very quickly because in the beginning, even currently, a lot of guys or
brands out there will tell you that it's like putting, you know, glass on top of your paint,
right? They'd even have a bottle of seemingly broken glass or quartz or whatever, and a bottle
showing this is the hardness of what's going on in your paint, which for me was always weird of
like, well, glass is actually kind of fragile. It's hard, but it is also fragile. And it's also
not pliable at all. So putting a non-pliable thing onto a pliable surface or something that moves a
lot, expands and contracts actually doesn't seem like a great idea. But again, bro science doesn't
really make sense. Bro science just tells you, you know, if you put a five and a three, that makes
eight, and so you'll have eight years of protection on your car. Again, bro science, right? So
coatings are not a chunk of glass that you put on your car. It's a microscopic film. It's tough.
It's really durable, but it's not magic, right? So I think we need to set that as kind of a baseline
of like, again, it's a hard, slick surface that makes your life easier, right? When you take care
of it. It's about making your life easier to take care of it. It's not magic. It's just tough. Okay.
So again, let's be honest, like these five year, 10 year coding claims, they sound amazing. And
that's why brands use them because they sound amazing. And they sound like a different, you
know, something different than brand XYZ, right? Oh, well, you know, if so and so says theirs is
only five years, and I'm gonna say mine's eight years, right? And I'm gonna say mine's 10 years.
And it we saw every brand, which is so common for our industry of like, every brand just watches
what other brands do, and then they copy it. We're seeing it right now with version two,
version three, version four, version eight, version 10. It's like,
why is everyone creating new versions of the same thing? And then people get pissed off because
they're like, well, I just bought version two. Why didn't you tell me we're going to release
version three, right? So I have a different perspective on versions and new releases and
stuff like that that I do differently with my own brand. But what's common in the detailing
space is for people to just copy what's, you know, what's out there, what other brands are doing,
and then kind of regurgitate it in their own language. We see that all the time with,
you know, mobile detailing companies. And we see that very often with, you know,
product brands. So, you know, plus is a one that people started using at SEMA a couple years ago.
Well, this is, you know, GX five plus or whatever they're coding this called and they add a plus to
it or version, oh, it's our version three. Instead of just telling people, hey, we had to go, you
know, we don't have anything else to innovate on. So we just called it a different version and
dyed it green or something. So these claims sound amazing. But honestly, they're usually based on
lab tests. If at best, they're based on lab tests. At worst, they're completely made up.
Somewhere in the middle is that they are being fed that information from a sales rep
from the blending factory. Oh, that's what I did for a very long time. So the sales rep at the
blending facility gets the information from the chemist and then may or may not tweak that.
I've seen it both ways, tweak that information and then sell that to the brand who then sells
it to you then consumer. So most of the time at best, these lab tests are on a small panel
that never sees the sun, no one's ever washing it. And then when a brand tries to,
you know, replicate real world things, they take it through a car wash, you know, 100 times in a
row, or they do torture tests, right? And so again, to test real world circumstances is
incredibly difficult and everyone's real world is different. And so that's how all these different
testing protocols came to be is trying to replicate what people may face in the real world. But
realistically, real world durability is probably more around like two, three to five years tops.
Longer obviously with maintenance, but when we talk about this year's claim, it's just marketing
math. They test how long it still exists. And also this kind of is the gray area thing. The test
are how long the coding will still exist, not how long the coding actually protects well,
which I think is a big disconnect. So a lot of brands obviously require that like yearly
maintenance to keep the warranty quote unquote warranty active. They won't necessarily talk
about that. But the big thing that they really don't talk about is that they will test and this
is actually something that I agreed with Sarah Codon when I met with their CEO and saw their
testing protocol is that brands will tell you hey, it lasts five years because technically
somewhere on that panel, the coding will be existing for that long, but it doesn't actually
protect that whole time. So let's break it down to like something simple we may be familiar with,
right? Like everyone will go to McDonald's and not everyone, but people go to McDonald's and
then they see how long it takes for the Big Mac to deteriorate or the Happy Meal to deteriorate,
right? So you know, oh, 10 years later, the Big Mac still looks exactly the same as it did, right?
So yes, technically, the Big Mac did last eight years or five years or six or whatever it is,
right? I think there's a few YouTube channels that do like yearly updates on this kind of stuff.
But yeah, you can leave a Big Mac out on the counter for 10 years and it'll look the same.
But it doesn't mean it's still good. Doesn't mean it's still edible, right? So could a coding
technically last 10 years? Yeah, but it doesn't mean it's still good on the car. I think another
big area that we saw people or in brands trying to differentiate themselves is in this layering
and stacking. And I personally have never been a big fan of it because when I did it in practice,
it just didn't seem like it was working. And then when I did it on my own cars, it didn't seem like
there was any added benefit to it. So I see a lot of people talking about, you know, stacking a
three-year coding on top of a five-year coding, stacking, you know, two five-year codings to
make a 10-year. And it sounds smart. And it sounds like it makes a lot of sense, like, oh yeah,
and three plus five is eight and five plus five is 10, right? But in reality, and, you know, I am
not a chemist. I work with the chemist. I've worked in the blending houses. I am one of those
sales guys that passes on the information on codings. And in reality, codings don't work this way.
But because it's bro science and it seems to, we can all agree that five plus three equals eight.
So we just think that that makes sense and science works like that. But it actually doesn't.
Because once a coding cures, it becomes slick. And so nothing really wants to stick to it,
including another coding, or another layer. So when you try to layer on top, the new one
isn't bonding in the same way that the original layer is bonding. So you're not really getting
an eight-year or a 10-year stack. You're getting that five-year coding, that three-year coding,
whatever, that 12-month coding, and then you're putting a topper on it right away. The problem
is, is that the topper that you're putting on it right away is actually taking a lot more work than
just a spray would take. So it's, if we think about like a Teflon pan, right? If you try to stick
tape onto a Teflon pan, it doesn't really work like that, right? And actually, we saw this example
with Tom when we would show that a piece, it was like the tape test, I think we called it. If you
use a polish that has a lot of oil in it, that is why you can't ceramic coat over a lot of those
polishes because they have a lot of oils in them and like the tape doesn't stick, right? It's not
a bare surface. And so the same thing is true. If you think about it and you extend the thought out
just a couple thoughts, which is something that I like to do often, is like, if you put down a
super premium coating that is going to resist a lot of things, how is that coating going to receive
the top layer? Doesn't make sense. We're starting to see now a lot of the marketing claims kind of
revert, again, brands trying to be different and saying, oh, it's a single layer coating system.
Well, yeah, it's a, every coating is a single layer coating because nothing wants to stick to
the top of it, right? And so you can maintain the coating, you can put toppers on the coating,
but if you're going to do that, why are you going to do it with another wipe on coating?
That just takes so much more time to do that, right? Some brands and we're starting to see this
single layer coating systems are becoming quote unquote again, new technology, but it's not new
technology. It's just what should have always been done, right? And so again, to reiterate, like
coatings are not maintenance free. So I think this is where a lot of shops, a lot of detailers
got themselves in trouble is like selling the idea, I remember in the early days of coatings and a
lot of detailers got in trouble because they wanted to sell a high price point. So they'd
sell a $2,000 coating, a $2,500 coating to someone. I made the same mistake, to be honest with you,
in the early days, sold at $800 coating. And then I lost all the maintenance work because I sold
a one time $800 ticket because that's how a lot of detailers were selling to the customers.
Instead of selling on other attributes of the coating, they sold it on, you're not going to
have to do any maintenance. You're just going to have to wash your car. And I remember when I
did this, I went, oh my gosh, I was selling a $65 wash and wax service twice a month to this guy.
Now I just sold him on an $800 coating and I lost $130 a month. That sucks, right? Made that mistake.
So we're coming back around to the place of realizing that coatings are not maintenance free. If you
never wash your car, your coating is toast. Coatings make cleaning easier, but not unnecessary. And
that's where a lot of brands messed up. A lot of detailers messed up is they said, you do not have
to do any maintenance if you do this, but that's not true. Coatings make life easier, but not
unnecessary. And there's no place that this started showing up more evidently than in water spots.
So people started dealing with tons and tons and tons of water spots on their ceramic coating and
then being pissed because they thought, hey, I thought I wasn't going to have to do anything.
Now I'm getting water spots. What is this? Because the truth is that water spots can
etch the coating itself. So you're just ruining the coating instead of your paint, which is a better
trade-off. Same with bird poop. It can etch through the coating, but not the clear coat.
That's a good trade-off, but again, it makes cleaning easier not unnecessary.
So another big, big, big myth that was with coatings and still is, is like,
they don't stop scratches or rock chips. So they help a little bit with, you know, minor
migramarring or anything like that, but you're still going to get rock chips. You're still going to
car wash scratches and you're still going to get swirls if you don't properly maintain the car.
I remember I got called out on a warranty claim in the early days of Ceramic Pro on an Aston Martin
where the customer was very pissed. He paid for a lifetime coating, whatever,
and he wanted to file a warranty claim because he started to cease spiderwebbing in the paint.
And he was sold wrong on it and he was pissed. He paid $2,700 for a lifetime warranty on a coating
that was oversold to him and he started having, you know, regular wash marring, right? And he
thought, what the hell? I just paid $2,700 for this. Six months later, it's already failing and
Ceramic Pro didn't want to warranty it at the time and the installer didn't want to warranty it. It
was quite a mess. But again, these things are going to happen because it makes your life easier
but not unnecessary. So another big, big lie and a big myth that is finally going away but was
prevalent for a very long time is this installer certification. So because what people are realizing
is that installer certification doesn't guarantee quality, right? So both installers are realizing
this and then brands are realizing this too of like, why are we giving territories? Because for
me, in my reality, no customer cares about what brand coating I'm actually using. No one cares.
So if I have a territory of a 10 mile radius to install Jimbo Ceramic coating and but I could
just install another coating, I'll just install another coating. My customer doesn't care. I'm
just, you know, there's no brand, there's no ceramic coating brand that dominates this,
this industry enough to be getting customers knocking down your door, wanting a certain brand
of coating. Even if they are, they could be, you know, kind of directed into another direction,
right? It's kind of like, if you think about window tint, it's like, most people don't care,
there's no brand of window tint that is like, you know, oh, I got to have the expel window
tint on my car or whatever. It's, and even if you think that you could, if you're not well versed
in window tint, you could probably be skewed another way. Honestly, I don't even know if expel
has window tint. That was just the name I thought of it. So this certification idea was total garbage
that people were sold on, you know, paying to be certified and getting to piece of paper.
It's crazy. So just like on that Aston Martin, I've honestly seen coatings fail, not because
necessarily the product was bad, but because that person was fed, that customer was fed a lie,
that simply wasn't true, right? They, and they had the local lot boy wash the car and he marded
up. Why? Because coatings aren't bulletproof, right? They make cleaning easier, but not totally
bulletproof. So I think to do it right, whether you're a DIYer or you're a professional detailer,
I think these are kind of the rules that I stand by is I pick one good coating. So stick to a
reputable brand, some of that has clear, you know, instructions, clear expectations, and that the
coating is easy to install. That's why when I was developing the gloss boss, I focused on a
single layer system. If you want to use that kind of marketing verbiage, but I focused on a coating
that was extremely user friendly. The gloss boss is a professional grade coating. My chemist makes
two grades of coating. One is a consumer grade, which just has less solids in it. That's the
only difference. The professional grade has more solids in it and the chemistry is a little bit
different because of that reasoning. And so, but I use the professional grade, which is incredibly
easy to install. I have customers that have never, ever installed a ceramic coating before,
ever in their life, installing it with zero issues, which is how I think a ceramic coating
should be because whether you're a DIYer who has never installed a ceramic coating before,
or you're a professional who has installed dozens of coatings, at the end of the day,
they both want the same thing, something that goes on slick, smooth, and easy without any issues.
You don't want a high spot, which is just coating residue, basically, left over and then you can't,
you know, you can't level that high spot. You can't get rid of that high spot. No one wants that,
right? So, I pick a good coating. It's a reputable brand, my brand, with clear instructions. Every
bottle comes with clear instructions. You're not buying a bottle and getting no instructions or,
you know, you're not getting an applicator or, you know, whatever. I make sure to prep properly,
so clean, clay, polish, panel wipe if you want, and then install the coating. I like to install it,
you know, thin and even. I work a multi-section at a time to give adequate
time for that coating to bond to the surface before I wipe the residue. That's one thing I like.
With my coating, it is not, it is extremely forgiving. It's not finickety with like humidity
and temperature and blah, blah, outside, inside, all this other crap. Like, obviously,
common sense rules still apply, but it's extremely forgiving. And most times, most,
every time I'm installing the gloss boss, which I'll link below, I'm doing two to three panels
at a time before I even level. So, what this does is it gives the coating adequate time to bond to
the surface. You're not wiping too soon, but it's also super forgiving. Like, honestly, if you coat
the whole entire car, which usually takes about an hour with the gloss boss, and then you take it
outside for a sun check and you see a couple high spots, you could generally just wipe those high
spots with a dry towel. Worst case scenario, you're taking a little bit of the picture perfect
polish and you're going to touch up those areas with by hand to work down that high spot, but it's
not tricky at all. I'm not trying to, you know, trip you up. I want you to have a good user experience
when it comes to this as well. So, obviously, after you have the car coated, maintaining it with a
really good soap, something like the Super Sober, where you don't have to touch the car as much.
Again, the whole premise with the Super Sober is us, you know, who we like to keep our cars clean,
we're taking the time to ceramic coat our car, and then we don't want to scratch our car, but we
like to keep our car clean. How do we keep our car clean often and how do we clean our car often
without scratching our car or running the risk of scratching our car, right? And that's where the
whole Super Sober was developed, especially if you have your car ceramic coated with something
like the gloss boss, you are really going to be able to do a virtually a touch free wash with a
pH neutral solution that isn't degrading the coating, right? And then, of course,
I always use a ceramic safe spray, like Tufa Shell. It has replaced my detail spray because
the reality is that we like to touch our car. We like to wipe our cars down. We're car nuts,
we're car freaks. We want the car looking good. We don't want our cars looking bad. So, I just
replaced my detail spray with Tufa Shell because, again, Tufa Shell and all my products were designed
to work extremely easy. And when you use high quality raw materials, there's no reasons
that the product doesn't work good and work easily. So, where a lot of these brands have gotten
trouble is they try to take shortcuts, right? So, they put too much oil in their compound. This
is the example I always use. They put too much oil in the compounds, which makes it nicer to use
because it has, quote unquote, long work times, but then actually leaves an oily mess on the surface
and is hard to remove or they use smelly solvents. And so, even like 3D1, my beloved 3D1, they use
a really smelly solvent. Why? Because it's significantly cheaper. Smelly solvents are
significantly cheaper than solvents that don't have a smell, right? And so, with the
picture perfect polish, there is literally no smell in the polish. And that's because I use the solvent
that is, you know, 10 times more expensive, probably not 10. It's probably like 3 times more expensive
than a solvent that smells. Why? Because stuff like that is important to me. I don't want my
that's a big area with polish, but same with Tuffa Shell. There's tons of things that I can get
into about why Tuffa Shell is better, but it goes on like a detail spray. And in fact, I'm going to
do an upgraded torture test with Tuffa Shell just to show how stout that detail, it's not a detail
spray, but ceramic spray is. So, I like to add Tuffa Shell on often, not because I'm worried
about the coating failing. It's just because I wipe my car down after I get done washing it,
which is what I do, right? So, why not wipe it down with something that is also going to add
protection to the ceramic coating, right? So, and I think, you know, where the future for
ceramic coatings, I think there's going to be a big move that we're seeing to like the single
layer system that we're already seeing. I don't think graphing coatings are the next thing.
Maybe self-healing coatings, self-leveling coatings would be great, like something that you could
just apply and not have to wipe or level at all. I do think the next wave of coating are going to be,
and I would love to see this, a coating that you could apply, kind of like an X-coat was,
or like a self-leveling clear, where you wouldn't have to do any paint correction.
You could just apply the coating. I think that'd be very cool. I don't, the issue that I think
that they're running into with that is the longevity of it. I don't, I think it's hard to
get the longevity out of that, but I don't necessarily think that the future is longer
lasting coatings. I definitely don't think that. I don't think like a 15-year coating.
I don't think anyone cares, honestly, past five years. I don't think people can see past five
years. That's why for my gloss boss, I rated it at three to five years. I think that's a very
respectable, relatable timeframe. Can it last longer? Yes, probably, but I just don't think
it's realistic to say that. My marketing claims from my brand are about being realistic, transparent,
and honest. Like, could it last longer? Maybe, but I just don't feel comfortable saying that,
because I don't think my personal conviction is that the future isn't longer lasting coatings.
I think it's smarter coatings that can be maintained, reapplied easily, love to see the
smell come out of coatings. That would be very cool too. I think the self-leveling and self-filling
coatings are really the future of the coatings, but I don't think we're quite there yet. I still
think we have a little bit of a ways to go before we get there. Again, at the end of the days,
ceramic coatings aren't magic. They're just a tool. They're a tool for detailers to make more money,
run a more legit business, make life easier. If someone's promising a 10-year miracle coating
that you never have to touch again, that should be your first red flag. If they're using bro science
and if it seems to make sense, but if you ask three additional questions and it starts to not
make sense, or they don't answer those additional questions, that could be a red flag too. If you
want something easy to apply, easy to maintain, I would definitely highly recommend the Gloss Boss
and Tough as Shell. It's what I use on my own personal cars. I think it's just the best ceramic
coating and ceramic spray there is out there. I hope you guys enjoyed that one. Hopefully I
gave you some real advice and not just fluff. With that, I hope you guys will choose to subscribe.
Thanks for supporting the Jimbo's Detailing brand. I really appreciate that and I'll link everything
below. Other than that, make sure you use Code Podcast to save some money on your order. If
you are going to spend over $100, use Code First. You get free shipping over $100 and then if you
use Code First, you're going to get a free drying towel on top of that as well over at Jimbo's
Detailing.com. Thanks for listening. Catch you guys on the next one. See ya.
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About this episode
Ceramic coatings are often marketed with exaggerated longevity claims, but the reality is much different. Many coatings fail within a year, and stacking them doesn't extend their life as advertised. This episode dives into the misconceptions surrounding ceramic coatings, including the importance of maintenance and the myths of installer certification. Listeners will learn about the true nature of these products, how to choose a reliable coating, and the best practices for maintaining their vehicles. The discussion is backed by real-world experiences and a critical look at industry marketing tactics.
You've been sold a lie. Those "5-year" ceramic coatings? The layering tricks? The "maintenance-free" promises? It's time to break down what's real and what's just marketing hype.
