When you want the most potent and effective protection for your car’s paint, you might go to find ceramic coating services in Melbourne or wherever you live. You invest in something like ceramic coating, PPF, or even consistent use of sealants and synthetic waxes in order to keep your paint looking its best in the face of numerous threats to its integrity.
But what are these threats to your car paint’s beauty? Where do they come from? Let’s take a look at the most common sources of dangers to car paint below:
1. Dust and Grit
Let’s start with enemy number 1 when it comes to car paint, and that’s any kind of dirt, dust, grit and granular debris from the road. These particles can come at your car from numerous sources. First, dirt and grit from the road is thrown up by cars in front of you, impacting your bumper, front grille, and front lower sides of the car.
Another common source is during car washing, either from stuck-on particles in automatic car wash brushes/rags, or people washing their car with a single bucket and getting the dirt onto their sponge or wash mitt. Drying the car with a dirty rag, towel, or an old t-shirt has the same effect.
Even the smallest particles of dirt and dust can cause lasting damage in the form of scratches and swirl marks. These remove the lustre from your car’s colouring, and can take some serious (and potentially expensive) work to correct it later on.
2. Bird Droppings
Bird droppings affect people everywhere from city centres to leafy suburbs. You might think that bird poop is just another annoying thing you have to clean off your car since it’s so unsightly, but it’s rather more urgent, in fact. If you don’t clean off the bird droppings right away, your car’s clear coat and paint are at risk because these droppings are actually quite acidic. Many make the mistake of leaving droppings there potentially for days before they finally get around to washing their car.
3. Bugs
Have you had bugs smash into your windscreen before? Dead bugs can get onto your car in all kinds of ways. In a similar way to bird droppings, bugs’ own body fluids can be more acidic and thus potentially damaging to your car’s paint. If there are bugs smashing into your car and dying, then there’s a good chance that these fluids are getting onto your paint.
4. Tree Sap and Runoff
Many people park under trees thinking that it’s better for their cars because they’re parked in the shade. Well, first of all they’re not wrong about the shade. The cooler shaded area is better for your car, there’s no doubt about that, but when the tree is providing that shade, there’s a trade-off that you make.
First, trees produce sap, which if it gets onto your car is no good for the paint and is annoying to clean off. Beyond that, this sap and other run off easily comes off trees any time that it rains. So, if your car is sitting under a tree as tainted rainwater runs freely off every leaf and branch, then all that runoff is heading right for your paint.
5. Rock Chips
Finally, if you’re either a fan of off-roading or adventure driving, or if you live in a more secluded rural area, then there’s a chance that among the common dust and dirt in the road, there could also be larger chunks of sharp debris like rock chips. If these get thrown up at your car, they can cause serious dents and scratches.
Ceramic coating doesn’t protect well against these kinds of damage, but PPF can, which is why people often get a combined PPF/Ceramic coating protection with PPF at the front of the car and ceramic coating on the rest of the car.