With isolation in full effect now, there’s really nothing else to do but find things to pass the time… For a long time, I’ve really been wanting to ceramic coat the CTR but prior to all of this COVID-19 stuff, our weekends have always been busy and I’ve got no time during the week.

With the weather and the roads still not at a point where it’s good enough to drive the car, it’s at least nice enough to work in the garage without freezing your ass off. As a result, I picked up some CARPRO products at Carzilla and went to town this weekend.

I’ll try my best to walk you through the process – it’s hard without video and I didn’t have any dedicated video set up to even do it so pics should do!

The process probably took me a good 5-8 hours from start to finish. It was rather quick as the paint was already in decent condition and I had already paint corrected last year, so it was only a matter of going over again to get anything that accumulated since then.

Aria spent a lot of time outside with me keeping me company. All dressed up and ready to tackle the project…

I won’t talk about washing the car because that’s pretty self-explanatory… After washing, I soaked the car in IronX. I was a little skeptical of the product because I wasn’t actually sure how much it would get… But if I was going to do this, I might as well do it the right way and go all the way.

When you spray it on, it goes on clear and it smells horrible. It also lingers long after you’ve rinsed it off lol.

Here it is sprayed onto the grill. I think with the ambient temperature only being about +5C on Saturday, it might have been a bit too cold or this is what it looks like when applied over PPF.

More shots of it sitting doing its thing…

IronX is supposed to start to turn to a reddish purple to show you all the iron contaminants after about 5 minutes. On the front of the car, it was really start to show a lot..

Same with the sideskirts…

The hood was the biggest culprit of contaminants as you can see by the hood scoop.

Same with the back of the car where a lot of the soot and dirt kicks up while driving…

Another spot on the trunk.

After several minutes, you take a soft MF mitt/cloth and rub it into the surface to try and agitate it a bit more. It ends up working like a light soap.

I was expecting a lot to be on the doors, but there was little, if any.

Once you’re finished with IronX, the next step would be to clay bar. It’s important to use IronX first to make your claying a little bit easier. It just makes more sense to get rid of any iron first and then to use your clay to get anything it couldn’t get.

Work the clay in your palms to mold it to make a nice flat-ish piece to rub along the car.

I’m always a little skeptical about clay barring my cars because I always believe I take good care of it. I wash by hand using a bucket method, I dry by hand, and I wash often… But even as new as the CTR is, look at what came off of half of the car. Just goes to show you that clay barring is not underrated and should be done regularly…

On the other half of the car after remolding the clay to a fresh side.

One thing claybarring really helps with is cleaning the edges of your 3M. Over time, the edges of your 3M (if any) can gather some gunk. Claying gets rid of it nicely.

A nice fresh headlight…

After I was done claying, I washed the car one more time and I always hate drying it but it’s always Aria’s favourite thing to do. She’s pretty good at it too LOL

Work work work…

Nicely clayed and ready for the next step… 

Braving the chilly weather to help a brotha out.

All washed and dried. Ready for polish.

My go-to polish has always been Menzerna. It works well with good results and has pretty low dusting.

I had to remove the Advan decals as well so I could apply ceramic coating properly. Sad 😦

Here’s the passenger side after the first pass of polishing… Meanwhile, Aria is sweeping the water out of the garage. LOL

Also removed the license plate to polish and clean behind there. It was filthy back there. Don’t forget that!

I also got a smaller backing plate so that I could get the little areas that a 6″ pad can’t get. Also important for little crevices and such to properly polish those hard-to-reach areas.

Oh and as a side note, I’m using a Porter Cable 7424. Believe it or not, this thing is almost 12 years old and is still running like a champ. It has literally been bulletproof for me. I want to make the jump to a rotary but this thing won’t die! LOL oh well… It’s served me well all these years and continues to do so.

Here’s a shot of the wing and hatch being polished.

And here is the finished result – all swirls and micro-marring gone. 

Another piece I ended up doing was the tail lights and head lights. I can’t stand hazy lights… 

A closer shot…

Front grill and bumper all polished up…

Looking all slick.

Another shot. Note – the front is fully wrapped in PPF. As good as it is at hiding swirls, it doesn’t prevent everything. I ended up lightly polishing it as well and it came out good as new.

Crystal clear.

Another shot…

Had to call it a day as the sun was setting and it was getting too cold to do much else. I left it in the garage ready to tackle it today.

Half polished at this point…

Looking pretty spiffy so far…

Today, we were at it again. Slightly warmer outside and her Porsche was all charged and ready to go.

After I finished up polishing what I didn’t finish yesterday, the next and final step was to spray the panels with CARPRO Eraser. Eraser, unlike IronX, smells delicious. The purpose of Eraser is to just remove any polishing oils and dust that’s left over so that you’ve got a nice clean surface to apply your ceramic coating onto.

I figured I might as well do all the jams too…

All nice and clean…

Sideskirts all clean. Yes, the plastic is still on the door sills LOL.

I should note that I didn’t wipe the whole car down with Eraser and then move onto ceramic coating. I ended up going one panel at a time to ensure I had a clean surface each time. I would wipe Eraser on and buff off, and then apply CQuartz – panel by panel.

I got the 30ml bottle. Plenty to do 2 coats on the CTR plus a little more…

The included blox and suede cloth to apply…

Here’s the passenger side with CQuartz applied. Honestly not too different – it’s a little glossier and glassier but it’s not like I was bringing the paint back from terrible condition. It was pretty good to begin with.

I ended up finishing the whole car before taking anymore pics before the final results. One thing to keep in mind is flashing time and your ambient temperature. It was about +7C outside when applying and I was in the garage, so it flashed a little slower. By the time I finished 1/4 of the car, I figured the flash time for me was about 45 seconds to a minute – that’s when I was getting a bit of grab on the cloth and it wasn’t too difficult to remove.

After wiping away, always check for high spots using your ambient lighting. Check your panels at every angle and see if you missed a spot. It’s particularly harder to see on white since light reflects off of it so easily, but if you have good lighting, it’s pretty easy to spot. Think of it as checking for where you applied wax and missed wiping it away – you’re looking for a bit of haziness…

Finally all done! I took it outside to do one final check – especially on the black parts of the car.

Car looks great now! It’s never been this clean – even on the first day I picked it up lol.

Again, hard to see but it’s definitely shining…

And Aria always getting in the way…

I turned down the exposure so you could see it a bit better. No more swirls… Just full on gloss.

If it has done anything, it’s made the Champ white look even better!

Nice and slick.

Grill looking fire.

Wing and hatch nice and slick…

First time seeing the Fujitsubo outside in daylight too haha  

One last booty shot. It was pretty damn bright outside so it was hard to get good pics…

Obligatory Type R photo…

Unfortunately, any cloth you use to work with the ceramic coating must be trashed after. They’ll just get hard with ceramic in them and be unusable anyway. RIP.

The only thing left for me to do is let the coating sit on the car for another 24 hours and I think I’ll be applying one last coat for good measure. I have enough product for it anyway. Once that’s done, I let the car sit for about a week or two and I’ll apply CARPRO Reload.

Reload is basically the cherry that goes on top of your ceramic coat. It’s what provides the slick feeling and the gloss that you’re familiar with when applying waxes. CQuartz on its own doesn’t provide that just to be clear. It’s not smooth after application like wax is. You need reload to top it off and to maintain it every few months. It’s literally a spray on sealant… There’s conflicting views on how soon to apply it after ceramic coating – some say right after, some say the next day and some say to wait as long as possible if the car doesn’t have to go out. I’m going with the latter since all I have is time… The car remains in the garage for likely another month so the coating has lots of time to cure.

And one last shot of Aria to close it off. What an exhausting but rewarding project… I can’t wait for it to rain. LOL