Opticoat: Can someone explain it to me in layman's terms
 

Well, for having my car for less that a couple of week, it sure has gotten dirty awfully fast. I got the Toyo-guard and the Protector cleaning kit included with my FR-S, and I had a little read through of all the products/cleaning kit.

Seemed interesting, and I used to wash my old car by hand, but as usual, I thought I would drop by the FT86Club and see what was swinging in these forums to see if anyone had some pro tips. Well, a million threads later, and it seems like 9/10 threads are all about the Opticoat.

From what I gather it's a paint sealant that everyone seems to be going with, and it's supposed to make future washes easier.

Correct me if I'm wrong, or elaborate further if you can. Just curious about what it costs to be done professionally, and if it's a wise idea to hold out on washing it myself. My buddy has a Boss 302, and he has his hand washed at some place down the road for five bucks that he recommended, but that just seems too cheap to be a well done job.

I was checking out this place in the Tampa area. Seems reputable, and it seems like there's a service for paint coating, not Opticoat in particular, but something else. I was debating giving them a ring, but I thought I would check in here.

TL;DR
1) Terrified of washing car myself with Toyoguard/Protector Stuff
2) What is Opticoat exactly (be elaborate, if possible)?
3) Recomendations in Tampa?

P.S. <3 My fellow 86ers

Youre correct - its clear coat sealer/protector that uses an advanced polymer compound that works very well when applied by someone trained in the product and how to appropriately apply them to the car. It doesnt make it easier to clean. cleaning your car at a regular weekly or biweekly interval results in easy to remove debris, dust, and dirt.

However, i would be very interested to see how it fares during the spring.... plant sperm is a bitch no matter how you look at it.

as for not touching your car because youd ruin something? blasphemy.

Three tips to remember:
1 - use the appropriate tool for the job
2 - dont use anything on the paint that had touched the ground
3 - the best and most gentle car wash is one done by a professional or yourself. machines, diy drive in washes, and sorority girls in bikinis will undoubtedly scratch the paint worse than you will ever do yourself.

If doing it yourself, use common sense. Dont use a tire scrubber on the paint and dont use your wax applicator on the tires.

To go along with supramkivtt2jz, it would be perfectly fine to get opticoat then go get your car washed by those sorority girls. Get a few numbers while you're at it. At least that's what I would do.

I appreciate the tips supramkivtt2jz. I'm still in that initial phase of disbelief that I own the car, and I want to do everything in my power to keep it pristine. I think I'll still look into Opticoat, but I'll buy some fresh buckets in the mean time, and hold off on waxing.

Dont worry about waxing - they use a wax remover when opti coating (its clear coat safe). same with every other process. opti-coat is just the new kid on the block and does a decent job. i think youll also like zaino products as well. same class of product.

For ease since this is your first car you own, i say use a decent wash (i found zymol is nice for the price and can be found at advance auto parts) and use a quick detailer. liquid and solid waxes might be a bit intimidating if youve never done a 7 hour detail before. you have to buff out the haze and they leave a residue that can be frustrating to correct.

oh, and by buff, i mean hand buff. an electrical buffer in the hands of a novice can cause serious damage.....

Opticoat wont save you from rock chips (first hand experience :() so you may want to consider a clear bra.

I hear ya on that man. I got my first ding on my front bumper today. I was so fucking pissed.

Guess I'll be ordering some Dr. Color Chip soon.

In regards to the topic, get the OptiCoat. No questions asked. It makes washing and especially drying the car ridiculously easy. Paint looks cleaner and you can go a little longer between washes (if you can help it).

Well, in layman's terms, OptiCoat (and products like it) and paint sealer are the same compound, acrylic (polymerized methyl methacrylate, to be exact), applied at different thicknesses. OptiCoat is applied thickly, so care must be taken to get the thickness even or it might set with visible ridges. Paint sealant is also acrylic, but applied thinly so there is less worry of misapplication. Acrylic is partly polymerized, so it forms a relatively hard coat that remains flexible enough not to crack when the sheet metal flexes. It's about the same hardness as polyurethane wood treatment.

The reason the websites for the manufacturers are confusing is because this business is completely unregulated, and the manufacturers can say, literally, anything they want about their product, and other's products. For example, most of them make claims about being a ceramic coating, or a glass coating. Complete BS. They add finely-ground sand to increase the specular reflectivity to the coating, but the sand adds no hardness properties (the same way aggregate adds no hardness to concrete), yet they will advertise the coating as "ceramic" to make it sound like something truly scratch-proof. It isn't. It still scratches just like a plexiglass window. Exactly like a plaxiglass window. It's the same stuff.

zaino is not in the same class of products as Opti-Coat.

Opti-Coat is like a hand applied layer of clear coat which is permanent. It can only be removed through abrasive compounding / polishing. The Zaino line is all conventional waxes / sealants which may be very good at what they do but are not comparable to Opti-Coat

Similar products to Opti-Coat include 22PLE and EXO. These products are in the same class as Opti-Coat

and regarding rock chips, Opti-Coat may help a bit but it is not a force field. My clients who do a lot of commuting who are concerned with rock chips I recommend paint protection film because nothing compares to that. The PPF may still get rock chipped but it can be removed in a couple years and replaced

Maybe I did not word that correctly, but Opticoat is a product of Optimum Polymer Technologies which sells products in the same class Zaino. I did not state Zaino sells a product directly comparable to opticoat, i stated Zaino sells the same class of product.

They had a version of a acrylic paint sealer in the 90's. When people saw that it did not shine like regular wax, try tried to remove it ruined their paint.

You can get any body panel repainted for under $300 so why bother.

If you are in the tampa area. Look up gary dean. Just remember you are not paying just for opti-coat. You have to pay for any level of paint correction and detailing that has to be done. How much prep work needs to be done is what is going to drive up the price of the opti-coat install.

I've done the research and unlike some other coatings, the Opti-Coat/Opti-Guard line of coatings are not a fine sand filler or acrylic type coating. It's a polymer with a silicon-carbide based chemistry that bonds to the paint in a way that common sealants and waxes can't. It is permanent and thick, and with a mohs hardness rating around ~9 it's far from plexiglass soft.

Nathan

9 mohs? You serious? You're saying that this coating can only be scratched by a diamond. A steel knife will find no purchase. Sandpaper will be its equal?

Whoops. I meant 9H on the pencil hardness scale. Definitely not the same thing. :D

I think one of the problems is individual detail shops that don't have any kind of scientific knowledge of the product writing advertising blurbs. Now that I think about it, I think I've read, "9H mohs hardness" on a website somewhere.

9H isn't a mohs hardness level. It's a pencil hardness level. Basically, anything a 9H pencil (the hardest pencil lead made) won't scratch gets a 9H, so it's a minimum threshold for the hardness. It could be much harder or just barely there, but if a 9H won't scratch it it gets a 9H rating using that test. So technically, most urethane clear coats pass that.

I've noticed on my own car that I have to worry less about swirl marks etc. with the coating on, and it's ability to shed water while driving is something I've never seen before, and I've waxed a LOT of cars.

I work with release agents for my job all the time, and optiguard/opticoat remind me of the properties of some of our polymer release films. They bond with the mold and make it so that NOTHING will stick to them. We're talking epoxies that will bond just about anything sliding right off the surface. The way opticoat sheds water and other contaminants reminds me of this, and I think this is one of the key benefits. When you rinse the car down, a much higher portion of the dirt/poo/dust etc that is on the car falls off easier so you don't have to push as hard or wash as aggressively. This combined with the slightly harder nature of the coating compared to the urethane clear coat makes for a nicely durable finish. :) Also, I've found that it doesn't etch when a bird craps on it. I got a bird bomb on my hood when I first bought the car and it etched the stock clear bad enough that it had to be polished out.

Optimum Australia has a good page on the hardness of the coating: http://www.optimumcarcare.com.au/con...pti-coat?.html

This guy:http://www.autogeekonline.net/forum/...0-cquartz.html

Did a pretty extensive review of Cquartz and Opticoat over a 2 year period. Let's see wax hold up to that. I think the best thing for me, is that it leaves a 2 micron (3 for optiguard) coating instead of the .02 microns a normal wax or sealant leaves. So even if it's not the ultimate in hardness, if you scratch it, the likelihood that the scratch has remained within the protective coating and not compromised the clear coat itself is much higher. That, to me, is a serious benefit.

Cheers,
Nathan

So would you recommend taking delivery then going to a reputable detailer to have the Opticoat followed by a clear bra/PPF on the front bumper to cover the basics?

When I read that mohs blurb I about spit my coffee! A liquid that hardens like a corundum under room temperature? I'm pretty sure NASA would be interested in that.

That's what i did. After i took delivery i did not drive much until i got opti-coat installed. A week after I got opti-coat i got clear bra installed. In just 3 weeks the clear bra already saved me from stone chip.

I got my bumper done by Bryan Walroth in Toronto. He did an amazing job!

When you do the clear bra, look into XPEL, seems far advanced over the old kid 3M.

lol, you go ahead and let us know how that works out for you ;) You obviously know nothing about paint and body work. It's much more complicated than just "getting a body panel repainted." If you're okay with that body panel sticking out like a $3 dollar bill, that's fine...there's a fair amount of blending that needs to be performed in order for say, an entire door or quarter panel to be repainted. Even if the paint came from the same batch the car was originally painted with, without blending out in to the surrounding panels, the repair will be incredibly obvious, look incredibly terrible, and be an incredible waste of money...unless you're paying with the aforementioned $3 dollar bills.

Zaino is in no where near the class of product as opti coat. Look up reviews and some detailing forums about optima and the products they produce. I highly recommend you applying it yourself, and get a real detailed, not a $99 hack job special. To thoroughly clean, clay, decontaminate, and polish the car. The coating is not a sealant, it's a coating. A type of hybrid carbide ceramic if I'm not mistaken. Once applied correctly over a prepared surface you'll never truly need to wax again. Just wash. Think of it as another clear coat that can take on acid rain, salt, etc. there are tests done by detailers that on there own testing and veal have poured bleach, and even muriatic acid on the coating it it barely did anything to it, keeping your paint and clear coat safe. It's a truly revolutionary product and not the typical detailed scam coatings. In all my year of detailing I can tell you how well most of the dealer coatings lasted. Not even in the same ball park.

I ended up doing exactly what I asked. I took delivery from the dealer with the plastic sheeting still in place, drove it home, and had the Opti-Coat Pro and Opti-Glass installed the next day. The car looks flawless! I couldn't be happier. Now, to get the Xpel on there...

Forcefield of wonder.

Can you get Option-Guard over the clear bra, door protection, etc. or would it have to e removed and reapplied?

Is ClearBra still the goto or are there better options now? Mine has the coating but, let's face it, you need all the protection you can get.

I'll be the same. Once my BRZ is delivered, I'll drive it once its color corrected and opti-guarded.

For those with this installed that have had rock chips, how bad was the damage? For example, did it damage into the paint itself, or just the opti-guard?

It's been said but to repeat as seems weekly someone has the wrong idea of what super waxes "LOL" like opticoat, Exo, Opti Gaurd are....

Opti coat/opti gaurd DO NOT improve protection against chips, the only solution in that respect is 3M or such. Personally there are better films now then standard 3M, such as XPEL that is a better product and doesen't "yellow". Many folks have it on thought that Opti Coat is a rock/chip protection it is not, not one bit...

Exactly. I've known exactly what it does for sometime. More of a curious question of what to expect IF I have a few rocks (in terms of how deep theirs in particular were) from other owners.

I'm not going to be driving my car too much until its installed (as I am getting my BRZ early next month) as I want the paint in the best possible condition before its corrected and then applied.

I have had several rock chips after having my car coated. The coat does basically nothing against a rock moving at those speeds. I will post a pic of the rock damage to my hood when I get home if you would like.

If possible, I'd like to see what the damage was, just to know what to expect.

I've had my 13 TC for less than 9 months (until I get my BRZ) and have had chips straight to the white metal area of the car. Some of these seem inevitable though.

Pic didn't really turn out so well but its the best I can do without a macro lenses.

http://i.imgur.com/ofaFEQDh.jpg

I checked and the chip went though the coat, the paint, the undercoat and scratched the metal underneath a tiny bit. :thumbdown:

touch up paint ? put a clear coat and repolish and rewax

If you're planning on doing both opti-coat and a clear bra? Would you guys recommend the opti-coat first? That seems like the logical answer..but i read people doing it both ways.