Beadlock Pro Ceramic Paint Coating

UP TO FOUR YEARS OF PROTECTION, HARDER THAN THE PAINT UNDERNEATH IT.

Beadlock Pro is an SiO2 ceramic coating that cures into a glass-hard sacrificial layer over your paint. Silica dioxide is the primary component of glass, and it's what gives the cured coating its hardness. Everything the paint would otherwise take, UV, road film, bug etching, sprinkler water, industrial fallout, lands on the coating instead of the clear coat.

It's also strongly hydrophobic, so water pulls into tight beads and sheets off the panel instead of sitting there. The car stays cleaner between washes, dries faster, and takes far less work to keep looking finished.

Coating specs

• Hardness: >9H
• Durability: up to 4 years
• pH resistance: 2 to 13
• Thickness: 2 to 3 microns per layer
• Contact angle: 108°

Use it on clear coated paint, single-stage paint and gel coat. It works on exterior glass and black trim too, though porous surfaces like gel coat and trim want two coats, because the first one absorbs into the pores rather than sitting on top.

Which size do you need?

These two are packaged very differently, so read this before you pick one.

• 30 ml Kit, $120. The complete package. You get the coating, a 4 oz. bottle of Throw Back paint cleanser, Pearl edgeless coating towels, no-soak applicator pads, nitrile gloves, a door jamb sticker and an instruction card. If this is your first ceramic coating, or you're doing your own car, this is the one to buy.
• 100 ml, $189. The coating and an applicator. No towels, no cleanser. This is the pro size. A shop coating customer cars already buys coating towels by the case and Throw Back by the bottle, so paying for another three towels in a kit box does nothing for them. What they want is the coating itself: more than three times the volume for 58% more money.

On coverage, Shine Supply rates a 30 ml bottle at one small vehicle with some left over, or one full-size truck. How far it actually goes comes down to the vehicle, how many layers you're stacking and how much your applicator soaks up, so treat that as a starting point rather than a promise.

Prep is the job.

A ceramic coating bonds to the surface you give it, and it locks in whatever is still there. Iron left in the paint stays sealed under two microns of glass, and the only way back out is stripping the coating off. This is the step worth taking your time on.

1. Decontaminate with Smooth Move to pull the embedded iron.
2. Clay the surface with the Shine Supply Clay Mitt and Shine Mist clay lube.
3. Polish to take out the defects. Whatever swirls you leave in are the swirls you're looking at for the next four years.
4. Wipe down with Throw Back to strip the polishing oils. Those oils are the single most common reason a coating fails to bond properly.

None of these come in either package, apart from the Throw Back in the 30 ml kit.

Applying it

1. Shake well. Apply directly onto the applicator pad and spread evenly across the panel.
2. Watch for the rainbow. Within seconds the product takes on an oil-slick look on the surface. That's it flashing.
3. Give it 45 to 60 seconds to set up, then remove with a clean coating towel.
4. Follow with a second towel and a light pass to level it out.
5. Don't go back in. Once you've made that second pass the coating is setting. Re-wiping the area minutes later is how you get streaking.

How do you know it's ready to wipe? Do a test spot with your towel. You want slight resistance as you wipe. No resistance means it needs longer. If it's genuinely difficult to remove, you waited too long, and Slick Back will usually take off what stayed behind.

Curing

• Dry in 1 hour. After that you can stack another layer, or wipe it down with Punch It to make the surface slicker still.
• Fully cured at 72 hours. Keep water off it during that window if you can. If it does get wet, dry the vehicle rather than letting it air dry, because a water spot laid down on curing coating is a lot harder to deal with than one on cured coating.
• Stacking: up to three layers, one hour apart.

Pro tip: temperature moves your wipe-off window. Cold conditions give you longer before removal, heat shortens it considerably. On a hot day, work smaller sections than you think you need to, because the 45 to 60 seconds on the label assumes you can get back to where you started.

Keeping it beading

How you wash the car is what determines whether you get four years or two. A coating is hard, not invincible, and swirls and water spots can still happen if the wash technique is careless. Shine Supply publishes both of these, and they're worth reading before the first wash:

• Proper washing methods
• Ceramic coating maintenance schedule

If the car catches a sprinkler, wipe it down with Ignition as soon as you can. The minerals in that water will etch the coating if they're left to dry on it.

Pairs well with

• Smooth Move - Paint Decontaminator: pulls the embedded iron before you seal it under the coating for four years.
• Shine Supply Clay Mitt (Medium Grade): the coating bonds to what you've actually cleaned. Clay after Smooth Move, every time.
• Throw Back - Paint Cleanser: strips the polishing oils so nothing gets between the coating and the paint. Included in the 30 ml kit, needed separately with the 100 ml.
• Edgeless Pearl - Ceramic Coating Towel, 12pk: dedicated coating towels. Two will get you through most of a vehicle, and they get tossed afterward because the coating hardens in the fibers. The 100 ml doesn't include any.
• Shift Soap - Pure Vehicle Shampoo: the weekly maintenance soap for a coated car.
• Ceramic Coating Maintenance Kit: everything the wash schedule calls for, in one box.

Detailers Products is Georgia's exclusive Shine Supply dealer. We stock the full Shine Supply line in Atlanta and ship to the lower 48.