Unique Detailing is a professional auto detailing and ceramic pro installation centre. Unique Detailing specializes in full auto detailing, clay bar decontamination and paint correction. Unique Detailing's Vancouver Auto Spa is located on SW Marie drive but they also has a fleet of trucks offering full mobile detailing for cars, trucks, RV's and boats throughout Metro Vancouver. Ceramic Pro is the ultimate in paint protection. At their Vancouver Auto Spa, they will clean, polish and protect your car with Ceramic Pro providing a hard shell to protect your vehicle for years to come.
Transcript:
Hi everyone and welcome to Center Lane I'm Bruce Hitchen. We're here at Unique Detailing which is the home of Ceramic Pro Vancouver and we're talking to Kurtis Martin. Now Kurtis has owned this business for some time and he's going to tell us a little bit about ceramic coatings, how they improve the look of your car, but also how they make your car last longer. Now before we do that I want to remind you to subscribe to my channel and click the link below to be notified of any future editions.
Now Kurtis, I wonder if you could just tell me a little bit about how you got into car detailing and how long you've had this business?
Well car cleaning and detailing has been a bit of a knack for me since I was a child. I was doing the neighbours cars and the friends cars and it kind of snowballed to going to people's homes and doing their parents cars and before you knew it, I'm thinking, I got a little bit of a business here so one thing led to another. I went from a Cadillac to a truck that was properly outfitted for mobile detailing and here we are today in a proper facility with a couple of trucks doing mobile detailing throughout the Metro Vancouver area.
Tell me a little bit about how it's evolved over the years? I know you started simply doing detailing and now you've moved into ceramic coating. Can you tell me a little bit about how
that evolution has taken place?
Well it's interesting, the industry really has changed a lot over the years. The biggest change would be ceramic coatings. About six years ago I got introduced to it from a friend in Japan who
found some breakthrough technology of ceramic coatings on cars like teflon on paint. You know something where you don't have to wax every single year and I was thinking well this sounds interesting. So that was my first introduction to it. It wasn't long after I started getting some
products and trying different ceramic coatings and now I'm fixed on Ceramic Pro. They get a great line of products that not only protect your car from simple elements like the sun and
the rain but it keeps it a lot easier to maintain, easier to keep the dirt off, stays cleaner longer, and they're chemical resistant so you can't wash it off with a simple car wash.
I know that you ceramic coated my928 lately and the water just seems to bead off of it and it's beautiful. I get so many comments on it, I mean part of that is that you've polished it beautifully before you do that work but you know it repels the dirt as well as the water. Tell me about the hydrophobic properties of Ceramic Pro?
Well with the ceramic coating on there, the paint is extremely hydrophobic like you mentioned. It's almost like a Teflon surface on your car which is great because if you do get a little bit of dirt and contaminants on the paint surface, simple even rain droplets can encapsulate that dirt and roll it off the vehicle. So imagine power washing or hosing it down is going to do that same effect but amplified.
Now how is it different than wax, you know, you put wax on and it lasts for six months or so and then it slowly comes off. Why is ceramic coating different because it goes on a lot like a wax product?
It's similar in some sense but it's completely different. Waxes sit on top of the surface,
they're big molecules that are sitting on top of the surface and if you think about like a candle and you roll it down the driveway. The amount of dirt that it would collect, it's not the same in the terms of a ceramic coating. We got nano particles that are so small you got millions of particles making a covalent bond into the pores of the clear coat, giving that permanent adhesion. So how long does it last? Ceramic coatings vary, there's some products that might only give you a couple of months, those are the lower end do-it-yourself coatings and then Ceramic Pro is a professional grade coating that has up to a lifetime protection.
Tell me the differences between sort of the lower end do-it-yourself, why should someone, you know because I go on Facebook and I see ads for ceramic coatings and that sort of thing, and I think well maybe I could just put it on the car myself. Why should I bring it to you, well why should somebody bring their car to you?
It's the same reason you try not to cut your own hair or maybe paint your own car There is a lot of steps involved which you don't want to do if you don't know. If you're not doing the right prep, if you're not doing the right procedures throughout, if you're not giving it the right cure time, the right ambient temperature. You will not get the proper adhesion you need. Lighting is going to be a huge issue if you don't have the proper lighting. You might not notice the high spots you're leaving behind and in turn might create more work to fix the problems that you've done in trying to apply it yourself.
You mentioned prep, tell me a little bit, I mean, I guess the prep is the same whether you're just detailing a car or actually going to that next step and doing a ceramic coating. But just for the viewers tell me about all the steps you go through to prepare a car?
So typically whether we're working on a brand new vehicle or a used vehicle we're definitely going to wash it, decontaminate, get rid of all the iron particles, do a clay bar procedure, dry it thoroughly, inspect the paint, make sure we know what we're working with, how many swirls or deeper scratches do we need to get rid of. Even a brand new vehicle often needs polishing so at that point we will do anywhere from a one to a three stage polish, with no silicone or waxes in our polish, remove all those polishing oils with solvent and alcohol, make sure the surface is completely clean and clear of any polish, oils, silicone, waxes. At that point in time we can put the ceramic coating to properly bond to the clear coat surface.
How long does the process take if you were to drop your car off here, how long would someone have to wait?
The typical process for us is a three-day procedure. Both these cars have been three-day procedures and the reason being for that is the prep work is usually a full day. The base coat application is another day, and then before applying the top coat we need to wait for that base coat to cure and then apply the top coat and then before it goes into the elements of the rain and the sun we need the car to cure an additional eight hours. So usually three days is the procedure for our ceramic coatings.
I know that there's a line of products with Ceramic Pro. It's not just about paint protection. Tell me about some of the other products that help protect the car?
Ceramic Pro really sets itself apart from other coatings because they do have specific coatings for specific areas and different vehicles. So of course we got the you know, paint 9h and the top coat product. We have a wheel & calliper product, product for the windows, product for the interior, for the leather, for the fabric. But they also have a line for marine which is great so they have a more industrial application for marine which is more resistant to salt corrosion and uv rays.
So they do have a wide variety of coatings, even for paint protection film and vinyl. When you do a car are there different levels in terms of how much protection, how good of a job I guess orthe different types of products you use?
Well we have with Ceramic Pro a various of options ranging from a six month coating to a lifetime coating and a couple options in between. The difference is going to be how many layers of the base coat we apply and the top coat for what type of longevity we're going to expect. So there's something for everybody's budget.
Let's just move on to, because I know you do protective film as well and a lot of people wonder well, if you're doing protective film do you need to do ceramic coating and vice versa? Tell me about sort of how those two products vary and how they work together or can work together?
So that's a great question. A lot of times people are indecisive between if they want to do film or ceramic coating or just one or the other or a combination of the two. Frequently in here we'll do high impact areas like the front bumper perhaps the hood and the mirrors with paint protection film because that's going to protect you from stone chips and flying debris. Now ceramic coatings won't give you a hard enough protection for actual stone chips but it will give you that slick hydrophobic and protect against the swirl scratches. So often it's, it's just too expensive to do the whole car and paint protection film so we'll just do the front bumper and then we'll coat the whole vehicle with Ceramic Pro. Now back to the question you asked earlier about different products, Ceramic Pro actually has a specific product for paint protection film and for vinyl as well. So yes, paint protection film is going to protect the car but you can't polish or wax paint protection film and you want that to stay hydrophobic and you want that to stay clean. So we have a coating specifically for film to make sure the ease and maintenance of your film won't be a pain. And I want to just go back to polishing for a minute because you know some people would think, oh you just run over it with a polish, but it's quite an involved process.
I know when I brought my 928 in here and it looked pretty good but the difference between the way it looked when I brought it in, and the way it looks when it comes out of here is quite something. What are the steps and how how do you go through that in terms of polishing the paint?
I mean polishing paint might be the hardest part in prior prep to ceramic coating. You know, quite frankly, every vehicle is different in terms of the hardness of the clear coat, the defects in the car, do we have dust nibs to remove, deep sanding scratches, light swirls? You know maybe shopping cart scratch on the side, so we need to evaluate the paint, understand its problems, oftentimes measure the paint, realize how much clear coat we have to work with and at that point do anywhere from a single step you know paint enhancement to all the way to wet sanding down deep defects and three-stage paint correction prior to the ceramic coating.
Any last thoughts on sort of why someone should really sort of consider having this done to
their car?
I think ceramic coatings are good for people who not only, don't maintain the vehicle so well, but for those who do maintain their vehicle well. It just makes the maintenance of the car more enjoyable. Like I said, it keeps the vehicle cleaner, longer. It keeps it that high gloss like it's always been waxed look and the days of struggling to remove wax off the car and get the white residue out of the cracks are a thing of the past.
This product is chemical resistant, it's got shine like no other, it's got UV protection, it's got a
hardness above 9h which makes the paint less likely to scratch, and it's permanent.
Thanks very much Kurtis. I really appreciate all of your information on ceramic coatings. Now, I have also done a couple videos for Kurtis just showing some of the work that he does. Not only the auto detailing but the ceramic coating process so be sure to click on one of these links right here and you can see those videos. Again, remember to subscribe to my channel and thanks for watching.
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