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CORVETTE TODAY #110-Paint Protection Film & Ceramic Coatings With Master Detailer, Todd Cooperider
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May 8, 2025
Keeping your Corvette looking its best is not as difficult as you think. Paint Protection Film (PPF) and Ceramic Coatings have made huge advances in recent years. And who better to hear about the latest developments than someone who is a mater detailer and someone who has helped develop these products? Your CORVETTE TODAY host, Steve Garrett, brings Todd Cooperider from Esoteric Car Car back to the show to talk about the recent developments in both. Learn about the procedure and the products you need to keep your Corvette looking its best and fully protected on this episode of CORVETTE TODAY! www.CorvetteTodayPodcast.com
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0:00
[Music] welcome to corvette today the podcast
0:06
that talks about everything corvette with your host steve garrett mc and dj at one of the largest corvette weekends
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in the country corvette fun fest president of the corvette club of kansas city missouri and radio disc jockey at
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the number one radio station in kansas city for over 40 years here's steve garrett
0:28
thanks for listening to corvette today the podcast that talks about everything corvette brought to you by mid-america
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motorworks car show season is here get your corvette ready by shopping over 60 000 corvette specific parts and
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corvette owners from around the world my guest on today's show is a return guest from corvette today podcast number five
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believe it or not he's a master detailer he's the founder of esoteric car care in columbus ohio recently he put an article
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and pictorial together about c8 corvette paint protection film tint and ceramic
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coating and with the 2023 70th anniversary editions right around the corner plus car show season is coming up
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too i wanted to get todd cooprider back on the show to talk about how to make your corvette look its best and be
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protected at the same time todd welcome back to corvette today thanks steve great to be here you know i can't
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believe is on your number five and now you're into the hundreds it's been awesome to see your community growing
3:03
your show growing you know you and i go back a bit to our acura days many years
3:08
ago right and we've watched each other grow so yeah thanks for having me on for a second time it's a real privilege it's
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great to have you back buddy first of all todd let's talk about corvette paint as it comes out of the factory yep over
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the 70 years of corvette how was the paint on the c8 versus like the c7 and
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c6 and other previous years well the c8 is a lot better than what it was on the
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c7 the c7 you know it started off a little rough and then when they changed some of their paint technologies later
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on it took them some time to get it up and running you know people were thinking that you're gonna switch to a
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new paint plan or whatever magically it's going to look like a show car well if that's not the case it definitely takes time but towards the end of the c7
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it was a lot better i had a c7 zr1 that was a lot better than my c7 z06 that i
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owned and now with the c8 it's even better still having said that we always have to
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remember that it's a mass-produced car right there's limitations there's a lot of hands that touch that paint by the
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time that it leaves the factory till it gets to the owner but they continue to get better and better people have to
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understand it is mass produced and even when you get into the hand built low production number cars they can do a lot
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better but they typically need more polishing and things on those high-end custom-built cars than they do on the
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mass-produced ones gotcha now does my brand new right out of the factory c8
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need paint protection or refinement well you've got a couple different things here let's talk the refinement first
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any vehicle coming from the factory and it doesn't matter what factory or what part of the world is coming from can be
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improved upon does it need it no can you improve upon the finish yes
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absolutely it's no different than you go buy a brand new 10 000 85 inch oled tv
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that looks amazing but you get somebody who specializes in calibrating they can
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get that last 10 15 percent that the factory simply doesn't have time to do no different when it comes to a brand
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new car coming from the factory so yes you're going to be able to make some improvements and then when it comes to
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the protection side of it and what we're saying protection we're typically talking about paint protection film you
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know it's kind of an insurance policy making sure that it lasts keeps looking good for long periods of time so you
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spend 80 90 000 on a new car it's a small price to pay that peace of mind
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that you get knowing that your paint is going to stay looking good for much longer and we're going to talk about
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paint protection film in segment number two todd what is texture and what is orange peel can you get rid of either
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yeah what it is orange peel for people that are not really for sure orange peels like if you look at the surface of
5:55
an orange and it kind of looks like a lunar surface so you've got all those low spots and high spots that's what you
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get in factory paint it's going to have that waviness or those ripples and stuff
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in it now texture that is a lot finer graininess very very light pebbling that
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you'll see inside of the orange peel now texture was a big issue in the early c7s
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and we even had a process that we offered for people who wanted to get rid of texture you can get rid of texture in
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the paint that brings out a tremendous amount of clarity without being too invasive you know you don't want to be
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sanding on oem paint but when it comes to orange peel can you get rid of it yes
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should you get rid of it absolutely not and the reason i say that is because you have to remove more clear coat than is
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recommended over the life of the car just to get that nice flat surface and
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the flatter the surface the more brilliant the paint looks you know if you go have a show card built and they're putting a lot of clear coat and
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they're sanding it down between layers to keep it super flat that's one thing but when we're talking about the small
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amounts of clear coat that goes on from the factory there's just not enough material there to safely do it you can
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remove it but chances are you're going to run into problems later on down the road clear coat failure cracking peeling
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fading what have you not to mention you run a very very high risk of burning
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through the paint and that leads me right into our next topic here there's a lot of talk about the procedure with
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which you to protect your corvette give us an overview of the procedure well whether it's a new car coming in or
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whether it's something that's been on the road for a few years it's all pretty much the same if you want to go in and
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particularly if you're looking to either refine the finish or correct some of the defects defects are going to be swirls
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sanding marks scratches marring from hands touching it it's going to be all similar you're washing the car and
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you're doing a decontamination of the surface and what that means it's a chemical decontamination which is an
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iron remover gets fall out and other stuff off of the surface that's kind of embedded and then you do what people
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know as claying or clay bar or their synthetic clay mitts there's a lot of different ways and that is removing any
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of the organic deposits that might be sitting on the surface and the goal in that is to get it down
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to just bare paint and one quick note about the claying this hurts me or pains me when i hear
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people talking about it you know people wanting to do claying at home here's a big warning if you don't take anything
8:32
else from this entire podcast never ever ever use a clay bar or similar on your car unless you are
8:40
machine polishing it afterwards because you are scratching the surface but okay important safety node aside we get the
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claying done we get all the decontamination then we go into machine polishing and what that is it's micro
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abrasives that's really removing a very very small amount of clear coat in the
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process and when i say small amount you might be removing two microns when there's a total of about 150 microns of
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total very very small amount you refine that finish and then once that is done
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you go in with your protection whether it's a wax or sealant ceramic coating ppf whatever but that process is really
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the same regardless the only difference is how heavy of polishing you're doing is
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it light polishing for enhancement or are you starting with heavy compounding to get rid of deeper defects in the
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finish there's a lot of strategy to this also in segment number two we will be talking more about full paint protection
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film in segment number three we're going to talk about ceramic coatings but todd why is ppf and ceramic coating such a
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great combination well the paint protection film is there to protect
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against impacts rocks hitting it debris flying up hitting it whatever ceramic
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coating is there to preserve long-term good looks and ease of maintenance so
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you can have paint protection film just on the front end of the car and not on the rest of it and you put ceramic
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coating on top of everything on top of the film on top of the paint that way everything looks good and consistent and
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everything has an ease of maintenance stuff doesn't stick to it as much when ceramic coating is on there so just
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makes cleanup of the car much much easier that's great todd let's take our first break and we'll come back and talk
10:23
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mamotoworks.com i'm your host steve garrett with me today is todd cooperrider the founder of esoteric car
12:38
care in columbus ohio in this next segment we're going to talk about the full protection procedure for your
12:44
corvette todd tell us what's recommended procedure-wise for fully protecting your
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corvette like washing claying what's the whole regime there well when you're getting it ready and we talked about a
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little bit in segment one but when you're getting the car ready for paint protection film or ceramic coating it
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involves a deep cleaning and decontamination of the painted surface that includes iron remover which we call
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the chemical decontamination and claying which is the mechanical decontamination to get everything off of the surface we
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want it clean smooth as possibly can be then we go into paint correction which
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is also known as paint polishing or buffing and that's to refine the finish
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as much as possible then it is ready for your paint protection film your ceramic coating
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combination of both whatever you want to do but going in there and getting all of
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that refinement getting all the cleaning done beforehand that gets the surface in the best condition so that your paint
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protection film looks better lasts longer and so your coatings look better and last longer as well yeah you want to
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get that paint pristine because once that ceramic coating goes down if you have some flaws or marring in that paint
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you're sealing that in right yep absolutely that's one of the big things not only does it help with the bond the
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cleaner and smoother the paint is but also that's where most of your looks are going to come from is the paint
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correction it's not by adding ceramic coating ceramic coatings the icing on top of the cake the polishing brings out
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the most looks then you seal that in with your ceramic coating there you go all right when we talk about ppf what
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does esoteric recommend for paint protection film well there's a lot of great paint protection film
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manufacturers out on the market you know we've been watching things for years we're one of maybe two or three
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detailers in the country that even own testing equipment that allows us to read
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the clarity of paint protection film wow so we can go in yeah very expensive
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piece of equipment but we can go in and take measurements to figure out what has the most clarity what's going to look
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best on the cars the one that we've been using the last couple years is from expel most people know expel they're the
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900 pound gorilla so to speak in the industry very good warranty very good
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product and we've been extremely happy with the kind of results that we get or we're able to provide our customers from
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expel very nice how thick is paint protection film and how long does this stuff last paint protection film is
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approximately eight mil thick and that includes the film itself any top coat
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that's on it and the adhesive layer so it's a pretty thin material but to put
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it in perspective a mill is roughly 25 microns and with ceramic coating you're
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only adding maybe two or three microns you do the comparison to eight mils of
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paint protection film you can tell that's much much thicker now how long does it last it depends most of the
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better films on the market have a 10-year warranty and it's typically against yellowing and things of that
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nature but paint protection film is there to be the sacrificial layer that's its job so the more you drive the car
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the more hits the film is gonna take and over the years those hits will start
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to show and they will start to build up but if you get three or four years down the road and your film is starting to
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look a little bit beat up especially if you track the car that's the beauty you peel it off you put a new piece on so
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the life of it is directly related to how much driving and under what kind of conditions that you're driving in you've
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done a lot of corvettes over your period there with esoteric tell us what you recommend for a paint protection film is
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it like just the nose or a half bra or the front end or just full paint protection over the entire corvette well
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what has become extremely popular over the past several years is the amount of
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people stepping up to a full wrap all of the painted surfaces on it are done now
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you don't have to do that to much larger expense but the least we would recommend
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on the corvettes is what we call high impact so it's your full front end
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hood fenders bumper mirrors and then your high impact areas which would be
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your rocker panels the lower part of your door like on the c8s the blades right there by the doors and then the
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area right behind the rear wheels those are the areas that are going to take the most abuse so doing that is going to put
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you well ahead of the game and if you want the peace of mind just knowing everything is protected you go with a
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full wrap at the very least that high impact area is going to save you a lot of trouble if you do just the front end
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i'll guarantee you those lower areas the rocker areas areas right behind the rear wheels are going to get all chewed up
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and look like they're sandblasted in a short period of time probably buddy that's for sure talk about paint
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protection film patterns because there's a lot of pre-cut patterns on the market do you recommend those i've seen some
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paint protection film where you can actually see the edges which is not good at all yeah there's also a misconception
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out on the market some people think that pattern work is somehow bad it's like the triple a league so to speak compared
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to the big leagues that's not the case now patterns most of the patterns are good but most of them come not designed
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to wrap edges so if you're typically looking at like you know if the dealers do an install if they're hiring somebody
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to do it it's usually they're going for the lowest bidder which means you're not getting wrapped edges on that stuff when
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you don't wrap the edges they don't look as clean with patterns we can go in the software manipulate those patterns to
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say okay we want to extend these edges so we can wrap them and that is a very
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very good way to go the other way it's called bulk where you're just taking a great big piece of material you're
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wrapping it you're hand trimming some cases like hoods that's the best way to go is a big bulk piece as opposed to a
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pattern nice thing about the c8s even when they first came out like expel for instance they get a hold of cars really
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quick they've got a huge team that does nothing but pattern making and they go in develop those patterns and then if
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they see down the road and there's room for improvements they'll update the library so installers myself can go and
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have all the latest information these days it's rare to see people doing like
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all bulk work and with bulk work you have a lot of chance you're cutting on the car and if it's not somebody with
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high level of skill you end up cutting the paint underneath so while at one time the bulk way of doing it was a real
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positive now it's gone more to patterns but customized patterns not just
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straight stuff right out of the software because you can see all the visible edges and there's also been a lot of
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upgrades in paint protection film talk about some of the different upgrades that you can get because i know that i've got on my c7 corvette i got the
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self-healing stuff and that's really really cool yeah the technologies over the last five and ten years it is just
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night and day difference a lot of times when people think paint protection film first of all they still refer to it as
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clear bra which was a brand name under 3m and they think of those partial hoods you know where it's only like 18 inches
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within a year it's super cloudy it looks horrible there's all kinds of orange peel in it you don't really have that
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anymore the clarity has gotten much better we've got the self healing or
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what's called a semi self healing top coat on them the adhesives are much
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better much less chance of any kind of yellowing going on but with that self-healing aspect it's not going to
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self-heal from a rock chip but if you rub up against it something happens you
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get a small scuff or some light swirls those are heat activated so either in the sun or with hot water or with a heat
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gun those things will just completely disappear bigger scratches no rock chips
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no but all that light stuff is going to come out once heat gets to it and it makes a big difference in keeping that
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stuff looking good for a long period of time and now they've also got matte finish and satin finish in paint
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protection film as well right yeah so we do a lot of that people want to change
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up the looks of their car so if you have a black car and if you take that and change the whole thing to satin i mean
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that gives it a really cool stealth batmobile kind of look about it and then
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what you do is some of the other areas like the carbon flash areas or if you have carbon fiber you put clear paint
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protection film over top of that so you have some really cool contrast you know we've had people that want a satin roof
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or a satin hood so you can mix things up however you want and there's colors too if you want
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a blacked out roof you can get black paint protection film that looks like paint because if you've ever seen a
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vinyl wrap on top of the car it looks bad i mean there's no clarity there's so much texture and orange peel and stuff
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in it but if you put black paint protection film on it looks like a painted panel much much better so yeah
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you can get creative it's not just about the protection you can change up the looks of the car too that's so cool i
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love that well buddy let's take our final break and when we come back we're going to talk about ceramic coatings which would be a hot topic as well here
22:05
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you're listening to the corvette today podcast with steve garrett hey thanks once again for tuning in to
25:25
corvette today the podcast that talks about everything corvette brought to you by mid-america motorworks car show
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season is here get your corvette ready by shopping over 60 000 corvette specific parts and accessories at
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mamotoworks.com i'm your host steve garrett with me is todd cooperrider the founder of esoteric
25:44
car care in columbus ohio in this final segment we're going to talk about ceramic coatings first off todd explain
25:51
exactly what ceramic coating actually is and what it does for your corvette well i would love to ceramic coatings they
25:58
are one of the most misunderstood misrepresented products in the detailing
26:04
world unfortunately there's a lot of bad information out there particularly from a lot of the manufacturers and having
26:10
people believe that they're scratch proof and they're so hard that bullets will bounce off of it and set fires on
26:16
it everything else well here's the reality and where do i get my information well i've been working with
26:22
ceramic coatings for over a decade working with manufacturers on product development and testing things in the
26:28
real world for a long long time so having said that ceramic coatings provide two benefits for the customer
26:36
one long-term good looks you know how you wax your car it looks fantastic but after the first rain or wash you know it
26:42
already doesn't look as good with a ceramic coating that's going to continue that beautiful shine and looks for
26:49
several years it's a very gradual drop off in looks so your car always has that
26:56
freshly waxed or freshly sealed look so that's benefit number one benefit number two is it's we'll call it
27:04
self-cleaning characteristics or ease of maintenance because stuff doesn't stick to the
27:09
ceramic coatings so easily your car cleans up much much easier in
27:15
the same thing on paint or wheels best way to really introduce people to self-cleaning characteristics or ease of
27:21
maintenance is when you put coating on their wheels somebody who does not have carbon ceramic brakes you find out just
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how easy it is to clean up all of the brake dust that's on the wheels so self-cleaning characteristics long-term
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good looks what it does not provide people talking five eight ten years of
27:39
protection you know this chemical resistance scratch resistance it's so hard that nothing's going to happen to
27:46
it that couldn't be further from the truth and some of your listeners are probably going to be a little bit upset
27:51
when they hear me saying this because they may have bought into what people told them but if you go and you talk to
27:57
somebody about ceramic coatings and the first thing that they're talking about is how scratch resistant how hard it is
28:02
and how it's going to last you five eight ten years my advice run away
28:08
there you go you heard it from the expert everybody also now this is a big deal todd do you have to have paint
28:14
protection film on the corvette before doing the ceramic coating no you do not you can do either way or a combination
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of both if you're going to do a mixture of paint protection film and ceramic coating the paint protection film always
28:28
goes down first and then the ceramic coating goes on top of it or if you have
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no ppf on your car ceramic coating is going to go on the paint it can go on the plastics it can go on wheels and
28:40
brake calipers there's a lot of different areas that it can go but one is not dependent of the other they can
28:46
be used separately or they can be combined good to know also can ceramic coatings be applied over waxes
28:53
absolutely not a part of the coating process is that decontamination and
28:58
stripping everything from the surface if you have any kind of remnants of wax or sealant or quick detailers or whatever
29:05
on that surface it's going to prevent the coating from getting a good bond so
29:11
chances are what would happen if you didn't prep it properly first your coding is simply is not going to
29:17
last nearly as long as its potential interesting i did not know that i'm glad that we talked about that because
29:23
there's a lot of people that have said can i put it over waxes and if you can't now you know again from the expert todd
29:30
also talk about what else you can put ceramic coating on you alluded to it but what about interior glass windshields
29:36
and back windshields can you use ceramic coating on that yeah there are different formulations depending on the substrate
29:43
that it's going on to so let's say glass for instance there are glass specific
29:49
coatings it's a different kind of chemistry in formulation they're not going to be as durable as the regular
29:54
stuff on the paint particularly on the windshield because you got the abrasion of the wipers but it makes a big big
30:00
difference it's for outside glass not inside and really you're going to get the most bang for your buck on the
30:07
windshield your back windows and stuff it's not going to make as much of a difference there are coatings for leather surfaces
30:14
oh yep once again it's there to help the cleanup be much much easier on it stuff
30:20
and go stick to it you're not going to get as much blue jean transfer and things on the leather you have got your
30:26
regular paint coatings you can use that on all of your glossy carbon fiber so
30:31
you got carbon fiber trim on the inside carbon fiber on the outside you can put those coatings everywhere wheels they
30:38
have a separate formula it's a high temp formulation for the wheels and the brake calipers we always do if we're doing
30:44
wheels and if it's a painted caliper we're always doing those and then you also have formulations for plastic so
30:51
you've got cars that have plastic trim or the cowling of the windshield wipers or what have you formulations that will
30:57
go on that you can even take on the plastic coatings you can take an older car that the exterior plastic trim is
31:03
kind of faded out and it's almost gray yeah that coating will turn it back to black and it will stay looking that way
31:10
for several years wow that's pretty cool now when you were talking about ceramic coating on carbon fiber you couldn't see
31:16
me but i did have my hand raised well i know that you've always been a big fan of carbon fiber both inside and
31:22
out of the car absolutely all right now here's the 10 million dollar question buddy what ceramic coatings are on the
31:28
market and which ones do you recommend well unfortunately there's a million different ceramic coatings on the market
31:35
steve if you wanted to next week you could have steve's finest ceramic coatings
31:40
you go out it's just a re-badge re-bottled something else there's only so many manufacturers of the product out
31:46
there i would say for us there's three different coatings kamikaze coatings that come out of japan we are the us
31:54
distributor and importer of that we were the first worldwide distributor of the product once i found out how great they
31:59
were about seven or eight years ago we've got jion coatings that is a korean brand jion is a huge huge global company
32:07
we were the original importers of it into the united states very very happy we've got a lot of new videos on some of
32:13
their new stuff for 2022 and we've also been using expel coatings designed to go
32:19
on top of their paint protection film and paint and other formulations that we've been using and having good luck i
32:25
haven't said that there's a lot of good brands and there's a lot of really bad or me too brand take a look at the kind
32:32
of messaging that the companies are promoting their stuff i said if they're talking about super hardness levels five
32:38
eight ten year durability scratch resistance all these things it's best just to walk away from that company go
32:45
to the ones that really speak the truth about what coatings do and you should be good to go which leads me into my next
32:52
question how long does ceramic coating really last another very very good
32:57
question and a highly misrepresented thing in the industry what i like to
33:03
look at coatings is what is what i would call their effective life how long are
33:08
they working for you how long are the looks holding up how long are the self-cleaning characteristics i don't
33:15
care if in a lab setting you can detect the coatings still physically on the
33:20
surface because we've already agreed that it's not providing you chemical resistant scratch resistance any of that
33:25
other stuff i don't care if it's not there once it loses its looks and once it loses itself cleaning characteristics
33:32
it's ready to be done how long is that typically two to three year range on a
33:38
daily driven car we're speaking a two to three year range that stuff will start to drop off and here's the other reality
33:45
check on that too most cars unless you're talking about a garage queen within a couple years it's
33:51
going to get some scuffs and scrapes and bumps and bruises and people walk by it their gym bag rubs up against it
33:57
whatever else so the coating may still be good after a couple years but it's ready for a refresh polish out any kind
34:04
of defects and reapply but yeah somebody's talking that really long lifespan of the stuff that's simply not
34:11
the case i figured that was probably the way it would really really go talk about how people can get a hold of you and
34:18
reach you at esoteric and also talk about your social media outlets on social media we're extremely active and
34:24
have a strong following one of the big ways is on youtube just looking up esoteric detail we've got over the years
34:31
we've produced close to 600 videos a lot of that is going to be on how to's how
34:37
to polish your paint how to apply ceramic coating how to clean your wheels all these different educational topics
34:42
but we also do a lot of reviews slash how to's on the products how to get the
34:48
most out of them so youtube is a big way for people to connect with us and learn
34:53
about us on instagram and facebook at esoteric detail we've got a couple of different accounts esoteric detail is
35:00
more of our services esoteric car care esoteric products that's all of our product sales division and then our two
35:06
main websites esoteric detail.com is our main corporate website esotericcarcare.com
35:13
is our product distribution website and they both link to each other typically speaking you search esoteric and you're
35:19
going to find us in one form or another that's awesome buddy thank you so much todd for being back on corvette today
35:26
this is a real education that was perfect thank you so much well thanks for having me it's always a joy to get
35:31
on your show and to be able to connect with the corvette world corvette community has been very good to us over
35:36
the years and we're very active with them and with clubs and fundraisers and all that fun stuff so anything that we
35:42
can do to help educate people on how to keep their corvettes looking best we're all for it thanks for listening to
35:47
corvette today and please be sure to tell your family friends and other corvette enthusiasts about the corvette today podcast and also thanks to our
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purchase at novastretch.com you've been listening to corvette today
36:30
with steve garrett if you'd like to contact steve with any thoughts on the podcast or ideas for guests on corvette
36:36
today you can email him at steve stevegarrettdj gmail.com
36:42
that's stevegarrettdjmail.com garrett has two r's and two t's or
36:48
connect with steve on social media on facebook twitter or instagram using at steve garrett dj
36:55
thanks again for listening to corvette today [Music]
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you
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