Quote:
Originally Posted by dananelson1
For a new a week or two old X5, what would you guys recommend for DYI coatings? It seems the Gtechniq OR Gyeon products are top rated. But the product line and packages direct or on Amazon are vast.....
Thoughts on starter process.....
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It depends on how you're going to maintain it. Bottom line is, ceramic or not you gotta maintain your vehicle or it won't look good.
Given that, if you want to make your maintenance life as fool-proof as possible (relatively!) then pro ceramic (assuming they don't make errors) can be a good choice ...
If YOU'RE going to be doing the maintenance then maybe you don't want a long-term ceramic at all since they can be tricky to apply and given you're washing every week or 2 anyway, you can just apply a sealant at that time.
gTechniq, CarPro, etc, they all make great stuff ... also Underdog & Ethos tests REALLY well ...
Personally
I use a sealant every wash or two and I've been told it look better than spendy ceramic coatings by people with them 
And there are
durability / ease-of-application trade-offs ... for example:
* Turtle Wax Flex Wax: easy to apply, can be applied to everything (glass, trim, perspex, etc), but not a long lasting sealant (2-3 months, though some get up to 12) - though if you're reapplying every few weeks then that doesn't matter.
* TW Seal & Shine: much more durable, but a bit harder to apply
* Ethos Resist: Might be even more durable w/o much difficulty to apply
* Consumer-grade coatings: super durable, 1-3 years, but might be hard to apply with a few risks
Personally I like easy & fool-proof, so I go with the easy stuff.
My 2 cents is, the 1,2,3 is:
(1.) A great microfiber for wash media
(2.) De-ionized water (from the grocery story or, say, CR Spotless)
(3.) A good spray-on Sealant
For people willing to wash every 2-3 weeks, everything after that has greatly diminishing returns, some risks (ceramic screwups need to be polished out) unless you get a lot of sand-blasting / pitting in which case you need PPF.