3D - Wipe Ceramic Coating

This is a professional grade panel wipe

Generically these types of products are called panel wipes. As the name implies, you use these types of product to wipe down a panel. The idea being to chemically dissolve and remove any polishing oils or other substances left on the surface of car paint typically after any paint correction steps that have been performed.

Normal steps for a full exterior detail

When it comes to applying a conventional car wax or synthetic sealant, the normal steps include,

Wash and dry the car.

Clay the paint if there are any above surface bonded contamination detected via the Baggie Test.

Compound and polish the paint to remove any below surface defects like swirls and scratches.

Apply a car wax or synthetic paint coating.

After step 3, you can simply move onto the final step, which is applying a car wax or synthetic paint sealant without doing anything else to the paint. Just apply the wax or sealant, wait for it to dry to a haze, wipe off the dried product and you’re done.

With ceramic paint coatings – there’s an extra step

With a ceramic paint coating there is an EXTRA STEP required before installing the coating and this is the most important step because the product you use must be strong enough to remove any residual polishing oils or other substances but safe enough to prevent dulling or marring the paint.

The normal steps to install a ceramic coating include,

Wash and dry the car.

Clay the paint if there are any above surface bonded contamination detected via the Baggie Test.

Compound and polish the paint to remove any below surface defects like swirls and scratches.

Use a panel wipe to chemically strip each body panel to prep it for the coating.

Install the ceramic coating section by section, panel by panel.

* Step 4 is the extra step. Herein lies the problem.

Clearcoat paints are scratch-sensitive - Generally speaking, modern clearcoat paints tend to be harder than traditional single stage paints like lacquers and enamels used before 1980. While most clearcoat paints are harder than old school paints, they still scratch very easy. And because the clearcoat is like a WINDOW to the color coat, (called the basecoat), any swirls, scratches, scuffs, or towel marring – shows up like a sore thumb. This is because when you scratch something clear, the scratch is opaque or whitish in color and any medium to dark colored basecoats will reflect these whitish scratches back to our eyes making them very easy to see.

Most solvents are not good lubricants - The historic problem with most panel wipe or paint surface prep sprays, are the solvents used to do the actual work of dissolving polishing oils and other foreign substances are NOT good lubricants.

Now let me tie this together - If you take a conventional panel wipe, (a product that’s not a good lubricant), and wipe down a scratch-sensitive clearcoat, it’s really easy and also very common for this process to put towel marring back into the paint you just invested hours into buffing to perfect. In case you don’t know, towel marring is the fluffy way to describe light towel scratches.

See the problem? You need to use a panel wipe to prep the paint for the coating but using the panel wipe risks putting scratches back into the paint.

So, after you've invested hours into doing all the prep work, this includes washing, drying, claying, compounding, and polishing, the paint is now PERFECT – and the next step is to take a panel wipe and scratch the paint. Not good.

Here’s the good news… 3D isn’t no conventional