Paint Protection (for a guy that hates detailing)

Bump. I’ve made a huge mistake:)

I’m borrowing a '23 Tahoe from the bank for a few years and want to take care of the paint.
The stealership already had to buff out some scuffs and remove bits of adhesive that was sprinkled around.

Any new hot tips beyond the above?
I see @juicedz4 has pristine cars after several WNY winters.

I love these trucks, except the for stupid rear lower a arm design. Congrats!

I dont think much has changed from above except the ceramic products have gotten even better. I use them on all our cars and would recommend. I forget which brand but I know you get what you pay for with the ceramic products.

I like the Gtechniq line. To do any ceramic the paint need to be perfect first, so keep that in mind.

Also, godspeed with black. It makes my eye twitch just thinking about keeping black paint nice. At least you cant really see the iron or tar on it like white.

After 150k in NY my car is finally rusting around the door handles and rockers. Its STILL under the VW corrosion warranty. Hopefully itll go in for all that to be replaced sometime next summer.

Dan

I don’t love 16 mpg and those arms are super low.
The air-ride should help the rest of the clearance issues until it breaks. I also don’t love it.

I wish it let me really set height. all the way down, or all the way up.

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Give up and accept your black SUV will never be truly clean. :expressionless:

3 Likes

Get a wrap!

Or serious answer, get a PPF installed.

Maybe just me but I cant shake the Grandma’s couch vibes when it comes to PPF

Id def do PPF if I was somehow unfortunate enough to be given a black vehicle worth keeping nice.

Dan

I’ve been getting into the coating game. Not the super high end stuff though, I’ve been using the diluted spray stuff. Someone mentioned an iron remover a few posts back. I use the Adam’s Iron Remover. It works amazing but has a drawback as well. It will literally strip the ceramic right off of the clear coat so keep this in mind if you just applied some ceramic.

My 3 step process is simply a normal wash, then I clay bar the entire vehicle as I’m washing it. Then I dry the vehicle and apply Lucas Spray Wax with Ceramic. The stuff works amazing. Easy to apply and easy to remove. You can find it locally at an auto parts store. I get mine at K+S Auto in NT, and I’ll buy a case of 6 bottles, and they give me a discount. I bring a bottle to the racetrack and detail my car before a session. It’s around $14/bottle.

A real ceramic coating, from a tiny glass bottle, not from a spray bottle will not be affected by iron removers. Its amazingly impossible to remove.

I did my GTI 5 years ago and its still holding up great. I just top it every 6mo with the C2V3 top coat spray.

My new favorite fallout remover is the Meguiars.

Dan

So where’s the place to go for PPF in WNY? Asking for my mother in law looking to get her Miata done.