What products to protect your car against UV damage

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SemiColon
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What products to protect your car against UV damage

Post by SemiColon »

Good day Detailer guize.

Are there any products I can use to protect my paint and plastic/rubbers against the Sun?
Poor car is exposes to the elements at work the entire day as the promised "Covered Parking" is taking longer than expected.

Thanx :grin:
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Re: What products to protect your car against UV damage

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Re: What products to protect your car against UV damage

Post by Kyle »

Don't gingers dissolve in the sun tho?

Ergo

he must get to work pretty early and leave quite late.


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Re: What products to protect your car against UV damage

Post by SemiColon »

Thx for the PM Kyle.

Alron I have SPF50 for my bod thx.
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Re: What products to protect your car against UV damage

Post by lawrence »

SemiColon wrote:Good day Detailer guize.

Are there any products I can use to protect my paint and plastic/rubbers against the Sun?
Poor car is exposes to the elements at work the entire day as the promised "Covered Parking" is taking longer than expected.

Thanx :grin:
Well the primary protector against UV damage will be your clear coat protecting the base coat from fading (this is the primary purpose of your clear coat).... so.... those of you who are over-polishing your cars by a) either doing it too often or b) giving it to a hack who removes too much each time, youare dramatically reducing the longevity of your clear coat and can more than likely expect the onset of clear coat failure sooner.

You can then obviously top this base layer of protection with another sacrificial barrier, which will come in the form of either:

- a wax
- a sealant
- a coating

Within the above broad categories there are obviously hundreds of brands each offering their own product and each of them claim to be better than the competition so some homework is required in order to ascertain who backs up the marketing hyperbole on the label with the contents in the bottle and who is just overselling for the sake of making a sale.

You will generally find that a wax will not last as long as a sealant which won't last as long as a coating, and with each increase in longevity, you will typically see an increase in price too - the flip side of that coin being the less durable products require more frequent re-application.... as an EXAMPLE you could have to re-apply your wax 1 a month, your sealant 3 times a year, your coating once a year... (of course there are so many variables that this is just an example to help understand the concept).

Your typical paint thickness is around 100µ (that is 0.1mm) for all 3 layers (primer/base/clear) on an OEM paint job - by comparison a coating *may* get up to 1µ thick or 0.001mm and a sealant or wax is pretty much immeasurable in terms of thickness, so as you can see, whilst waxes/sealants/coatings do offer some protection, the bulk will come from your actual clear coat - so preserve it !!!!

In my opinion, determining if you should be looking at a wax/sealant/coating will be based on:

Your budget
What the car means to you
How much clear it has
What sort of condition (swirls etc) the paint is currently in
How much time/money you are prepared to throw at maintenance
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Re: What products to protect your car against UV damage

Post by GaVeN »

What the guru above said.

There's no perfect answer here really.

Any sealant/wax/coating is better than none at all. Maintenance washes followed up by a quick detailer is also not a bad idea to help extend the life of the sealant/wax/coating.

As far as rubbers, bumpers & trimming goes, most of the dressings/conditioners have UV protection as part of their formulation. Even tyre dressings have that now to extend the life of them from cracking/degrading prematurely.

I'm more than willing to demo some product for you, and you can go buy those (If you're a keen DIYer), or bring the car and I can get it protected for you, as I'm not far from you
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