Mother’s CMX Ceramic Coating

[jon schapiro]

Bought a bottle and have done 3 of my cars so far. Unfortunately the Lincoln is at an other garage but I have to tell you the results are fantastic! I paid $15.95 for a bottle and have done three cars in the bottle is still 3/4 full. The finish looks like glass and the depth of the paint is unbelievable compared to normal wax. I attached a picture of my 1958 Cadillac and my 2004 mustang to give you an idea of the results.

[Solid]

Bought a bottle and have done 3 of my cars so far. Unfortunately the Lincoln is at an other garage but I have to tell you the results are fantastic! I paid $15.95 for a bottle and have done three cars in the bottle is still 3/4 full. The finish looks like glass and the depth of the paint is unbelievable compared to normal wax. I attached a picture of my 1958 Cadillac and my 2004 mustang to give you an idea of the results.

Cool, that is a good find. I thought about doing one of these coatings but the prep process/time/etc were daunting when the products came out. This makes it look easy and there are a number of good videos showing it tolerating various cleaning products and mechanical polishing.

[Steve K]

I recently clayed my Continental and am going to top it off with this stuff and see how it looks. My paint is original so has dulled with time. Using a claybar substitute (the kind with a handle and a rubber like material instead of actual clay) really brought out shine by removing tons of contaminants there despite compounding and waxing. So it will be interesting to see if the ceramic coating does even more good. The beige color of my car is kind of bland to begin with so any amount of depth added to the paint makes a huge difference.

[rick]

Jon, that Cadillac is a killer and that color says Cadillac. I love it.

Steve....... in reference to the color of your car possibly being a bit bland in your view........ mine is due to be painted Honey Beige. Is that the color you are referring to by any chance. Now might be a good time for me to find out.

And Happy New Year one day early, guys!!

Thanks

Rick

[Steve K]

Honey Beige is not the name of the color of my car. It is called alternately Navajo Beige and Desert Sand. You can see the color on the picture of my Lincoln on my avatar (left of my login name). It is basically a non-metallic light beige. I remember it being a popular color back in the 60s on a lot of cars but for my tastes it lacks the richness and depth of the blues, reds, and of course black. If I could order a new 64 Lincoln today, it would be in Regal Turquoise.

I have pondered painting mine for over 10 years. My struggle is not with choosing a color, but with painting over the original paint and obliterating the evidence of a truly rust free 64 Lincoln and the fact that the interior color (Honey Beige) was never an option with Regal Turquoise) and the interior is excellent. The old adage "It's Only Original Once" has stopped me and by this time I have resolved to keep it as it rolled off the line at Wixom. We'll see what the ceramic looks like. The car is not bad looking as it is just not my favorite

[rick]

Steve, Thanks for the reply and photos. Car looks great and I do personally like your color, too. As well, if you decide that you like the results from the ceramic coating, please indicate when you get a free moment, what brand you used. Thks

My Lincoln is an original car too, but it is sultana white and it has faded badly. I'm not personally attracted to that particular color although, I know it would be a lot nicer if resprayed and fresh. Still, I plan to go ahead with honey beige at this point. The interior was white and I've redone it in the same color. But white will go with any color and so honey beige it will be. Interesting to see that your interior was honey beige.

[action]

I too have the same opinion about white.
In AZ it feels like every other car is white.
And nearly ever service truck or van is white.

I have an adversity to that color.

>>>>>>>>>>>>Action

[papawayne]

Fewer white cars here in Maine because we don't buy them, because we know that they are invisible around a snow bank. But most of the service vans and trucks are white. My wife and I are old, and easily amused, so when returning from Hickory Corners the last time, we counted white pickup trucks. No science here, but they outnumber all other colors combined, by a very wide margin. Wayne

[rick]

Well, it occurs to me Wayne, that I must be old as well, because it's 2020. Good grief.

And I may be a heck of a lot older before I get this '61 of mine painted.

The old saying, "Here's a lot of money, oh you want even more money?" "No problem, here's some more cash and just phone me if you want more."....... just isn't woking very well.

The current shop that agreed to do the work moved my car outside into a snowbank over a month ago.

So, I'm going to have tow truck pick it up (again) and flat bed it to my inside storage. I am on the waiting list of three "restoration" shops and have placed an ad in Kijiji looking for a retired body man who wants to make some extra cash working on just my car.

I suspect these are the usual sad-sack stories. But I'll get there eventually..... maybe 2030.

I do indeed own two other cars that I plan to try this ceramic coating on this spring.

Happy New Year to All!

Rick

[papawayne]

Rick, I feel your pain, as do most of us of this forum. Have you read my post here called "getting rid of my cheap respray"? it out lines the saga I endured with just one body shop. Wayne

[rick]

Wayne, I went back and read through your past post..... "getting rid of my cheap respray".......... and ten years ago, you mentioned that you'd already owned the Lincoln for twenty years.................... I've never been really great at math but even I can add 20 + 10 and it keeps equalling THIRTY.

I was going to say something witty like............"It's going to take me a little while to absorb the fact that you've owned the car for 30 years." ....... but then I realized that I bought my old 1986 Porsche in '91 and it's still out there in the garage.......... and that little bit of math keeps on adding up to TWENTY-EIGHT.

Time keeps on ticking for all of us and now it's 2020.

I've managed this week to own my '61 Continental for one full year..... ONE

This whole body shop search seems like a big deal, but in the past year I did get a few things done..... I spent a ton getting the motor overhauled, new front suspension, new brakes etc. and it is now drivable (I say drivable because although it is Ontario safety-checked and fully licensed and insured, I have no idea what little gremlins will pop up the moment I begin regularly driving it. Obviously, it needs a period of shakedown usage after sitting for thirty years. It also has a brand new interior and so that part is done, too. So the year hasn't been a total waste but in my view when I bought the car I was envisioning four months and a fully restored unit........ that in four months I would be driving it to the golf course to make my golf buddies green with envy.

I need to be patient........... but it does look awful with that faded sultana white body and rusted trunk-edge.

I also have a partially healed thumb that was shattered in early October proving that suicide doors can be suicidal for a thumb when your mind is elsewhere and you decide to slam the door.

Rick

[papawayne]

OUCH! I'm sorry about the thumb! Wayne

[Solid]

I'm going to second the CMX product recommendation. I have played with it for a few non-car things actually and spent some time using it on a full car for the first time yesterday. It is an excellent product. I had 4000+ miles worth of holiday driving on a sealant I'd applied in early December, so I used Dawn to strip the car down of coatings. Then I used a nanoskin "synthetic clay" wheel on my random orbital buffer, plus dawn solution in a spray bottle, to work over the entire car again to get any embedded crap off of the paint and glass. Choose your poison as to how you go about it, but claying the car or equivalent to remove embedded crap before putting on a coating is the right way to set up for a new coating. The CMX is not a paint cleaner so you need resolve this first with a non-wax product. I used the Griot's wheel cleaner spray per directions to get the wheels clean, though in my experience any of these "it changes colors" wheel cleaner sprays work about the same.

After rinsing thoroughly, I started spraying some CMX on my microfiber drying towel and drying the car. This actually works pretty well because it both applies some of the product to the paint and makes both the paint and the towel hydrophobic so water comes off quickly without the towel saturating as quickly. Then I sprayed the CMX onto the car, spread it with a microfiber towel, and after a few minutes when it had set, wiped the excess off. Since it forms a clear superhydrophobic coating, I sprayed the windows and mirrors as well while I was doing the car. It will behave similar to Rain-x type products but last longer and be far less of a pain in the ass to buff off the excess (yeah... my first use of CMX was actually on plate glass shower surrounds and a door). The car looks stellar after wiping off the excess with a couple clean microfiber towels. It is well worth applying the CMX to painted or unpainted wheels too. I hope to have time to put on a second round today.

I have three recommendations for anyone doing this:

1. If you do it the way I described, expect to find very fine white dust on the car. The dust wipes right off and is harmless (does not scratch the paint) but it gets into crevices where you could blow it out with compressed air or go after it with your towels. Since chasing all of that was the most time consuming part of the process, I read a bit more and the manufacturer recommends spraying it onto an applicator where overspray will not hit the car and then applying it to the car with the applicator to minimize the white dust cleanup.

2. Get good microfiber towels with relatively deep pile. You want a lot of surface area for removing the excess from the dried coating, and it is better at trapping the white dust during that part of the process. Wash your towels and any applicator right away to limit the CMX bonding to the towels.

3. Use disposable gloves while doing all of this. Between multiple rounds of Dawn stripping out skin oil, and the solvent in the CMX, your skin will get a workout if you don't do this.

[rick]

Great detail, Solid!

[Solid]

I got to try out the behavior of it as a window coating in the wet yesterday. It is pretty cool. Even when I started off just basically driving through fog there were eventually enough tiny droplets on the windshield to trigger the automatic wipers, and they were so quiet that it is possible I giggled slightly the first time they swept past without making a sound. This was worth the time to do.