Clear Bra St. Charles

A couple of questions that I always get are what is the difference between clear bra and a ceramic coating?

The way that I explain it to people is the  the ceramic coating isn’t going to give you rock chip preventative like the clear bra will.

It won’t really give you any rock tip preventative whatsoever but what the ceramic coating will do, versus the clear bra, is the ceramic coating over all of the existing paint and then the plastics at the bottom down here the ceramic coating on the plastics actually keeps the plastic from from fading and kind of looking like that chalky whitish that it can get over time. Obviously that probably wouldn’t happen on a GT350 but if it’s something like your standard suvs or trucks.

It’s really important to coat the plastic as well as the paint.

So what will a ceramic coating do for your paint? Basically it’s going to help reduce micro scratching. It is not going to be completely scratch resistant – especially depending on how you wash your vehicle.

If you’re a person that likes to take your car through machine brushed car washes and that kind of thing a ceramic coating isn’t really going to be for you because the overall goal of having a ceramic coating is to keep the car looking swirl free as much as possible and as well as keeping the contamination off the vehicle in a proper way.

General hand washing or drive-thru touch-less washes are going to be your go-to.

It’s also very important to bring your vehicle that is ceramic coated into your local installer for routine maintenance detail that consists of decontaminating the coating surface properly.

Once that process is complete, you can re-top coat the ceramic coating which is really your final stage layer that you’re putting over your base coat which will keep those nice tall standing beads on the paint. That just means that it’s super hydrophobic and very easy to clean.

So those are the benefits of a ceramic coating.

-you don’t have to wax your vehicle

– you don’t have to use harsh chemicals or harsh processes to remove bugs from the front of your car

Ceramic coating is really maintenance free. It is just much easier to take care of your vehicle and make sure that your paint is still looking new.

That is the overall goal of ceramic coating.

Now, with paint protection film, not only do you get a high gloss finish like what’s on this GT350 here.

So we did the full front end and with elite self-healing clear bra so that the whole front end on this vehicle has been done. The full hood, the lights, the mirror caps, the a-pillar on both sides, the front portion of the roof, even the door cups (to keep you from scratching the paint when you’re grabbing a door handle), the rocker panels —- that’s what we call our track package —- and then as well as this quarter panel piece here – those are all areas in which you would get rock chip abrasions so those are areas where we suggest to do clear bra.

Can you do a whole car in clear bra? Yes, you absolutely can. It just really depends on your budget and what you can afford to do.

Also it depends on what type of vehicle you’re driving.

If it’s a full-size suv or truck – I wouldn’t recommend wrapping the whole car in in the ppf. I would go with a front end protection, some contact areas down the sides, and then ceramic coat the rest of the vehicle. That’s really going to give you the best protection other than wrapping the whole car with clear bra.

So, not everybody can afford a full vehicle wrap with clear bra. It is expensive stuff but it is worth it

Paints are not as durable as they used to be

Paint is just not as durable as it used to be back in the 90s or something like that. So clear bra paint protection film is very important. Many cars nowadays are painted with what is called a tri-coat paint that’s typically a two-stage paint and also has a pearl in it.

Aa lot of people give me this thing, “Well, I could probably just have the front end repainted and it will probably be cheaper than the clear bra would.”

That’s not really the case!

When you get into these tri-coat paints and some of these cars, especially like this red GT 350 here, it’s not easy to match the paint. It’s almost impossible to match factory paint. So, unless you find a body shop that’s gonna meticulously color match your car – do spray outs and all that kind of thing to make sure that it matches perfectly – it’s going to cost you a lot of money to have your front end repaint.

In the end, you’re better off just putting paint protection film on the car and being done with it.