How far car coating can protect your car?

How far car coating can protect your car?

For car owners, your daily routine may be damaging your car’s surface without you even realizing it. Driving to work, washing your car and even just parking your car out in unsheltered area can leave a long-lasting stain, scratches and even swirl marks on the surface of your car. That is why most new car owner is recommended to protect their car with car coating, that is if they want to maintain the perfect paint look and be as glossy as possible.

Every coating serves a different purpose, TEVO BodyGard S60 is proven to give the best chemical resistance while the Bodygard S36 is a thicker layer which able to withstand minor scratch and permanent watermark issue.

So today we will go even further to some extreme tests, to see how the coating surfaced perform under each torture and first up is my personal favorite, the flame test!

Does coating layer protects your car from the heat?

The only reason why we are doing flaming test is to simulate extreme temperature stress test on the coated surface comparing to the non-coated one, differently from the ceramic coating available in the market, TEVO BodyGard S36 doesn't crack nor smudge up under high heat. And of course, its always fun to sabotage and burn things up!

The bonnet is placed on the ground and 50ml of concentrated Isopropyl Alcohol is poured directly on both surface of the bonnet then immediately lit with a conventional lighter.

50m of 96% concentrated IPA is poured directly to the painted surface.

Lit up using conventional lighter.

The flame burns vigorously.

It took about 30 seconds for the flame to be completely extinguished. 

Burn marks on the bonnet.

When the fire has subsided, the bonnet is left for about 5 minutes to cool off and then it was wiped with damp cloth and it is time to see the result of the torture. The surface is still hot to the touch and water from the damp cloth vaporized immediately after contact.

At a very close inspection on every angle, the coated area is about 10% damaged with the burn marks, which is very difficult to spot and to be honest this is a very good result considering the high amount 96% IPA solutions used. On the other hand, the non coated surface have a very heavy burn mark and can easily be spotted estimated about 40% +- visible burn mark especially around the edge and the middle parts of the bonnet. This shows a clear higher durability on the coated surface compared to the uncoated one.

Conclusion: Uncoated surface is heavily damaged while the paint has cracked and de-bond

                    Coated surface has light visibility of burnt mark, no direct damage on the body paint

Moving on, we transition into the spray paint test, time to let the creativity flow.

Ever heard of anti-fouling?

You never know when tragedy is going is going to struck, sometimes lady luck is just not on your side and someone just happens to let out their anger on your precious car by spraying all over it. I tell you one thing, it ain't easy to remove those paint and just spraying water alone is not enough once the spray paint has grip through the car surface. Now let's see whether coating your car can help solve this problem.

The same bonnet that has been tested with the fire before, is tested again with a conventional spray paint.

Spray painted on the bonnet.

Additional test with graffiti is conducted by using permanent marker pen (yellow labelled) and white board marker pen (white labeled) is used to determine the anti-graffiti effect on the surface of the car bonnet.

The spray paint is left to dry for about 10 minutes. After that, a water jet is used to try and peel of the spray paint and the graffiti that is created using the marker pen.

On coated surface, the thick paint can be peeled of easily with a stream of water jet, but the thin area however require a much longer time to peel. The spray paint can be removed without damaging the original lacquer surface. Move on to the marker pen, the permanent marker needs a little bit of work to remove it by using higher pressure from the water jet, while the whiteboard marker can be removed easily with no problem.

On the other side of the bonnet, it's a different story. The uncoated surface is ruined, the spray paint cannot be removed or peeled off by just using the water jet. Even when you focus the water jet on one area for extended period, it won't peel away. The permanent marker also can't be removed while the whiteboard marker is removable.

After trying our best to remove the spray paint on both coated and uncoated surface using only water jet. We try cleaning it with 96% IPA, both surface is washable. No spray marks is traceable by using the IPA wash and even the stubborn  permanent marker stain is also removable. 

Now that's out of the way move on to the next test, which the acid test.

Why would I need acid protection?

I'm a nice guy, everybody loves me and no one could possibly hate me enough that they want to throw acid at me. Okay fair point, but acid does not come from one source and if you live somewhere near an industrial area, there's a high chance that any occurring rain is acidic.  The effect might not be as drastic as someone pour out a very corrosive acid on your car but over time it will eat away your lacquer surface corroding slowly without you even realizing it.

The test is conducted by using hydrochloric acid with 33% concentrated. A few drops is put on the surface of the car both coated and uncoated and left for an extended period of time.

The results are quite unexpected, despite the strong corrosive nature of the hydrochloric acid there is no visible damage can be observed after 10 minutes on both surfaces. A very faint smoke can be seen rising from the acid drip, and after a while it stopped. Based on the results it's safe to say that a conventional bonnet can survive a corrosion from a mild acid.

So let's wrap up everything that we've learned from all the test.

Conclusion from today's test:

No Damage : No visualize damage can be found.

Normal Damage : Minor damage can be seen at a certain angle.

Medium Damage : Damage can be easily spotted.

Heavy Damage : Damage that cannot be easily wipe off.

Broken : Damage that must be repaint the whole part.

In a nutshell, it is undoubtable that TEVO coating gives extra protection to the car surface, it might not be a complete invincible protection against all the possible damage, but those extreme damage will really ruin your car and leave a permanent mark if you did not coat your car. Overall, it’s totally worth it to spend a little extra cash for your car for the protection it gives for the long run, plus you also got extra glossiness, smoothness and hydrophobicity which is nice touch to your car.

So what are your thoughts about this test? Did you learn something new? or did you want see we test something else? Let us know in the comment below.