Best paint treatments for cars and airplanes?

by philg

I am concerned that there hasn’t been enough disagreement here on this blog on religious topics, e.g., whether mask use by the general population reduces or delays coronavirus infection (masking K-12 students doesn’t help, according to the CDC, but let’s order it anyway!). So it is time to introduce the topic of wax, polish, and other paint treatments.

An aircraft mechanic here in the Florida Free State swears by Nu Finish for boats and planes and says that it actually does last for nearly a year. This product is top-rated by Consumer Reports as well, being super durable and almost as easy to apply as the other top-rated product, Meguiar’s NXT Generation Tech Wax 2.0.

Here are the patients:

  • 2005 Cirrus SR20 with original white paint plus some decals. It looks reasonably good after a wash, but could be glossier. The plane has lived in a hangar for its whole life, but is exposed to the sun for days at a time when on trips.
  • a 2022 Chevrolet that will be arriving soon. It will be garaged, but exposed to the sun when driving and this might be a car worth handing down to the kids so they can remember when internal combustion was like before President Harris banned it

(Our beloved 2021 Honda Odyssey won’t get any treatment because it is leased and will go back to Honda in January 2024. When turned in, the 2018 Odyssey still had new-looking paint despite never having been treated in any way.)

Both Nu Finish and Meguiar’s claim to offer UV protection. Does anyone have experience with these? Each bottle is supposed to be enough for one regular-sized car? So you’d need two bottles for a pavement-melting SUV and three bottles for a four-seat airplane? What kind of rags do you use for application?

Also, what about ceramic coatings for paint? I haven’t seen an objective comparison of this expensive process (many $thousands for an airplane) versus spending $7.59 every year on Nu Finish. The people who make money applying ceramic coatings swear by them, but consider that the people who made money putting COVID-19 patients on ventilators back in the spring of 2020 also said that was the best possible medical idea. If ceramic coating is such a great idea, why don’t Ferrari and Rolls-Royce do it at the factory?

A friend owns a car wash/detail operation. Here’s what he had to say:

We do lots of detailing on exotic cars etc. c8 [Corvette] more impressive in person than just about anything. Gm also finally figured out how to make a good looking interior. The detail shop team prefers c8 over Mclaren’s!

Be sure to get a ppf film on hood and ceramic coat as soon as u get. Worth money. GM paint is quite soft. As a result they pick up swirl marks easily.

[follow-up after I queried “Ceramic coating is not a snake oil scam? What about for airplanes ? We had some exotic formula tested on a square in our PC-12 near exhaust stack. Made no difference in glossiness or ease of cleaning.”]

Not snake oil at all.

Works 100x better than wax. The key though is the paint correction step. You have to buff paint to a very smooth finish then seal it.

The airplane stuff is a joke bc airplane paint is garbage in most instances. On cars you are actually sealing the clear coat.

The cost for ceramic on a car isn’t the coating, it’s the labor on the buffing step.

It really helps with acid rain degradation dulling of clear coat on east coast.

He’s smart and I respect his opinion, but I can’t get over my Efficient Market Hypothesis question: If ceramic coating makes sense, why isn’t it the final step at the car factory? The paint shouldn’t ever be smoother than when the car is brand new, right? Why not apply the magic elixir when the paint is new and doesn’t need the expensive “correction” step?

The PPF film that he mentioned is made by 3M, so that suggests it isn’t a total scam. On the third hand, despite the heavy truck traffic on the roads here in Florida, there doesn’t seem to be enough gravel to create a significant paint chip risk. God ran out of rocks somewhere in Georgia? And, again, if this is such a great idea why don’t they put it on at the factory, at least as an option?

16 thoughts on “Best paint treatments for cars and airplanes?”

  1. I would take your friend’s recommendations for the ceramic coating at least on the 2022 Dreadnought. I also have a detailer friend in Florida and he recommends it, but as he indicates, it is not cheap. Find someone good, pay the money and make sure they are bonafide. You shouldn’t have a problem in Florida.

    For basic washing, waxing and polishing of more pedestrian cars, I use Dawn dish detergent in a two-bucket method with a hose and a very soft microfiber mitt. I thoroughly rinse the car, and dry with microfiber towels. THEN I go around the car and find scratches and swirl marks, and I them out Meguiar’s Ultimate Compound using a 6″ Black and Decker inexpensive orbital buffer/polisher (you can also apply it by hand with foam applicator pads if you want to be super-gentle). Then I wax using this stuff: Collinite 845 Insulator Wax. This stuff is awesome as a last step wax and it is old-fashioned “get a little high while using it” and *flammable*. Good stuff and it works.

    I think the Meguiars Ultimate Compound would work well on the Cirrus. It brought the paint of a 2011 Subaru Outback back to life very well and does an excellent job on small scratches and so forth.

    https://www.collinite.com/product/no-845-insulator-wax/

    https://www.collinite.com/product/no-845-insulator-wax/

    You *MAY* want to think about the film for the front of the supercar. In that location I think it will help, but maybe not the whole car. I think you’ll know within 250 miles whether you want it done.

    Why not at the factory? Because manufacturers still do try to throw a bone or two to the aftermarket so that they can keep men employed and making a living doing these things (and they are almost all men.) In my experience, also, people actually enjoy establishing a relationship with their detailers and car gurus, even at this late date. Even Porsche does not do it, as far as I know, but you can spend thousand$ getting film applied to your new 911 Turbo S. The aftermarket is part of what keeps the enthusiasm alive and I think the automakers have decided that it actually helps sell their cars, because people love to personalize them and so forth.

    These are just my recommendations and recent experiences with products and services – your religious practices may vary.

    • BTW I have nothing against NuFinish. As a true “one-step” bottle of goop, I have always heard good things about it, dating all the way back to the 70’s and 80’s commercials I used to watch on WPIX Channel 11 in NJ (broadcast from the Twin Towers.) I use the Meguiars Ultimate Compound because it does a great job with small scratches – it contains a very mild abrasive. I do not know if the NuFinish formula has changed significantly since 1976, but for a fast job on a car you want to get clean and shiny quick and easy, it’s hard to beat. That’s the kind of thing where you take it to the local car wash for the super-basic wash, then you apply NuFinish in the parking lot while you vacuum out the interior. Looks good, fast and done.

    • Oh I should mention (sorry for the MPs) – I have successfully used Meguiar’s Speed Clay 2.0 – not for the paint but to clean the GLASS including the windshield on my Ford Escape Hybrid. First I wash with good ol’ Dawn dish soap. Then I use isopropyl alcohol on a microfiber towel to remove any residues. THEN you use the Speed Clay 2.0 (which is really not clay) and it just annihilates any bug residues, light streaking from the windshield wipers, and everything else. The results on glass are just fantastic and it is attached to an ergonomic, mouse-shaped thingamabob that makes it easy to use. I wet the surface with water while using the Speed Clay 2.0. It’s awesome. I never knew my windshield could be so clean. And the Meguiar’s tech guy in California is a nice person, I spoke with him on the phone for more than 1/2 hour.

      Also, if you DROP the Speed Clay 2.0, you just wash it off with a hose. The “action” surface looks like it will last a long time – I’ve done my car’s glass several times with it now and there is almost no wear.

      https://mothers.com/products/speed-clay-2-17240

    • Sorry Mothers Speed Clay 2.0 not Meguiars. The other nice thing about the SC2.0 is that you can toss it in a Ziploc bag and store it in the car, so when you have to clean the windshield you just need some water, or even glass cleaner at a filling station, wipe with the Speed Clay and you’ve got a super clean windshield in 5 minutes or less. That’s where I keep mine, because windshield washer fluid and rubber squeegees alone are a joke when the bugs really become determined to make it through the glass.

    • @Phil

      > spending $7.59 every year on Nu Finish

      Where are you able to buy Nu Finish for $7.59? It is available at my local AutoZone for $10.99, which is a reasonable price considering it was advertised for $5.99 in 1976.

      @Alex

      Where in NJ did you grow up? Even though Channel 11 was an NYC station, they had a news bureau on the campus of Fairleigh Dickinson University in Rutherford, which is now owned by Felician University.

    • SN: I think it was $7.59 at Amazon when I wrote this post (about a week ago). Today it is $7.97 at Amazon. That’s a 5% increase in our inflation-free (TM) economy (annualized rate closer to 250%).

    • The Collinite factory is in Utica, NY. Walked past it daily in the 70-80’s on the way to/from school. The apocryphal story was that Collinite Wax was the preferred wax for the B52s at Griffiths AFB in Rome, NY. Collinite 845 is good stuff.

      Alex posted great tips. Going to try the Alex windshield treatment on the next wash.

      WPIX had good cartoons.

    • @Scarlet Number: Heh. I’m surprised you didn’t ask: “What Exit Are You From?” That’s the proper way for two NJ denizens to introduce themselves, after all. Lol.

      For the purposes of this blog, I will say: “Somewhere between Exit 145 and Exit 135 on the Garden State Parkway” which should narrow it down. I once had a girlfriend who attended Montclair State University and is now a K-12 teacher (and I was hot for her well before she was a teacher, as Van Halen might have said) along with knowing several friends who attended Kean College, when it was still a College and had not yet succumbed to the “Must-Be-A-University-At-All-Costs Higher Education Arms Race.”

      I have also met Jon Bon Jovi in PERSON along with the entire band in their hotel rooms because I once taught basic computing to the man who owned the nightclub in Sayreville, NJ where Bon Jovi really got off the ground. At one time I was also a minion for Eddie Antar of “Crazy Eddie” infamy. I have taken a bus many times as a child to the Short Hills Mall, and I once tutored a learning-disabled boy from Short Hills whose father happened to buy a boom box from me at Crazy Eddie and then was impressed enough by me to ask: “I have a son who is trying to learn computers but he has a learning disability (he was hyperactive ADHD). Would you come to our house in Short Hills and tutor him?” He was a very nice man and I like to think that over the course of about 6 months I helped his son because I was very patient and the kid liked me.

      By the way, if I am not mistaken, Jon Bon Jovi is from the same Bongiovi family that operates a funeral home in Raritan. I have many, many friends in New Jersey to this day, most of them stable people with interesting stories to tell.

      https://bongiovifuneralhome.com/27/About-Us.html

    • @Rick: Yes, awesome after-school cartoons, and … BATMAN! Also I liked WPIX for their nightly news anchors, some of the movies they showed, and because they had a public service announcement talking about current events that went something like: “We offer these public service messages because we think you should know what your neighbors are thinking…” and it was a very strong example of their commitment to civic duty. They aired multiple viewpoints about controversial issues of the day – in a serious way – to let people know, well, what their neighbors were thinking.

      I always liked WPIX. They were pretty independent-minded and had a lot of quality programming. Odd Couple, Barney Miller, etc., etc. A quality station at the time. And of course, NuVinyl commercials.

  2. I’ve used Nu-Finish, and usually have a bottle around somewhere. I think it’s a good option for someone like me, who’s not going to go to the trouble of clay-bar, pro-quality wax, and buffing machine.

    Recently, my son has been working part-time as a detailer at a delivery point for a particular manufacturer. If they are representative then I think post-factory treatments including ceramic and PPF may be worth it, but only if you make sure that the factory finish has been properly sealed/touched up first. We hear lots of stories from him about how bad the finish can be for vehicles new from the factory.

  3. Had the ceramic coating applied (high end shop) to my 2019 Audi about 3 months ago, wow, I’m a believer. For the first month I washed my car with a leaf blower (no rain, dry conditions, lots of dust). After that when I washed it the water literally ran off!. My shop gave me a bottle of something to re-apply (wipe on after a wash), but have not bothered with it. Let’s see how it does when the snow starts to fly and the roads are coated with magnesium chloride (not a problem in Florida!).

    As to why it’s not offered as an option – good question. But another example is the company DPS that offers a coating for snow skis that they claim is so good and permanent you never have to wax again (https://www.dpsskis.com/products/phantom_permanent_waxless_glide). But they do not offer it as a factory option on their skis. Maybe inventory challenges?

  4. I must start this post by admitting I still do not care about Black Lives Matter. For your cirrus SR-20 I would recommend this product.

    https://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalog/cspages/washwax.php

    All you do it hose down the plane. If there are especially dirty parts (the belly for instance) you can use soapy water to clean the really bad areas. After that, you spray this stuff all over the plane, then you let it dry and once it dries you will see a dry white film form over the plane. Then you just wipe it off and the plane is both simultaneously cleaned and waxed. Works fine on all surfaces even windows. This product is probably more geared to do-it-yourselfer because it seems to have the best results with the minimum of amount of labor. If you are considering sending your favorite latin-x essential worker to toil over your plane in the hot Florida sun for many hours there may be better products out there.

  5. Cars with combustion engines do seem like the last symbols of individualism and freedom. It is ironic that for the hippies the gas guzzling VW transporter was their preferred symbol. Their “intellectual” successors (hypocrite cultural marxists) prefer the centralist approach:

    A car “owner” must be tracked by GPS and voice commands (I don’t believe that any conversation in a Tesla or within reach of Amazon Alexa is actually private), must connect to the centralized grid to recharge, must use a special plug and charger.

    I guess a large array of solar cells could make one somewhat independent again, but then Tesla will probably include measures that the car only charges when the charging station can authenticate itself.

  6. NuFinish here, but I buy 5+ yo cars. Basic mechanical carwash, NF twice a year (outdoors in panhandle FL, brutal sun). Water always beads up, gloss is good. I may try the exotic glass cleaning, glass is a nuisance.
    As for factory, finish is pretty “green”, probably don’t want to be too aggressive.

    No experience with airplanes except airliners with 2-part polyurethane specced mostly for the temperature extremes between taxi and FL 35. Planes get stripped or sanded and repainted when going dull, nasty business. The paint is essentially same as marine Awlgrip.

    The rocks in FL roads are historically shells but who knows with all the oysters dying off.

  7. @Rick: Here’s the windshield of my 2010 Ford Escape Hybrid after the Mothers Speed Clay 2.0 + glass cleaner with isopropyl alcohol intermediate step. The gray quadrilateral in the background is an object I removed, but no retouching was done on the windshield.

    This is an 11 year old car at the beginning of this summer when the bugs were very heavy, the windshield was covered with bug splatter, mild tree sap and assorted other detritus. This took about 10 minutes total, and follow-up cleanings are even faster. It also did a good job cleaning up windshield wiper streaking. I’m very happy with the product and use it on all the rest of the glass.

    https://i.ibb.co/pzK2Y10/FEH-WINDSHIELD.jpg

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