Has anyone here tried instead of Ceramic Coating on their new C8? I’ve seen ads that compare graphene favorably with ceramic: significantly easier to apply but offering only one year durability.

I’m looking for economical ceramic alternatives, but want to see if anyone here has good or bad experience with the Graphene Coatings.

 

From what I've read, the jury is still out on so-called graphene coatings (they are still principally ceramic coatings). For example, from DriveDetailed:

Your 1 year durability for Ceramic is way off. From TheDrive:
And:

 

I applied Adam’s Graphene Ceramic spray when I picked up my C8 in NOV. It’s only been a few months however it still looks great and water sheets right off.

https://adamspolishes.com/collection...spray-coating™

 

I’m going to try it eventually. If it is as easy to use as advertised the savings over ceramic will be worthwhile. I’ll post results when I get there.

 

Hey, not trying to rain on anyone's parade, but the one reply from the link above gives it a 1 star rating due to the effect it has on trim pieces.

 

Not knowing the adverse effects you're reading about but my application of Adam's Graphene spray on my trim pieces makes them look great. This includes my coupe's engine surround which now completely sheds water with no more water spotting.

 

Click on the link and scroll down. It's on the main page. Below is the review, his words not mine. I've never used the product and simply wanted to read what others said.

Don’t use on trim

Neil Hruzek on Mar 22, 2021Applied to both my truck and car. The car is garage kept and truck is outside. After sitting out in the sun for a period of time the black trim on my truck turned white and will not clean up. The horizontal surfaces are worse than the vertical.

The garage kept car is OK, so this appears to be related to exposure over time.

I have used their original ceramic trim coating in the past and did not have this issue.

 

Well, all I can say is that didn’t happen on my trim. I used it (Adam’s Graphene Ceramic) on my C8’s paint, glass, acrylic roof and plastic trim (front splitter). No adverse reaction on any of the surfaces. The splitter is as black as the day it was delivered to me. I applied Adam’s Graphene in mid NOV, shortly after taking delivery of the vehicle, so it’s been four and a half months.

Sometimes you can’t go by just one datapoint...

 

I wouldn’t worry too much about it lasting only 1 year as you would need to touch up even professionally applied ceramic by then.

It’s nice to have something not so permanent when the new “nano ceramic graphene lithium liquid metallic diamond composite” coatings come out next year and you want to remove your old coating to try it out.

 

Regular old carnuba wax will provide a year or more of protection if the vehicle lives inside, is rarely outside, rarely driven, never driven in foul weather, and rarely requires anything other than a clear water dust rinse.

For vehicles that have to 100% live outside, or are outside for large parts of the day, such as daily drivers drive to work and sitting in outdoor parking lots every day, ceramics are worth it. However, a lot of Corvettes are in the "garage queen" category, and those cars really don't need that level of protection.

Duration of any kind of protection depends upon usage, type of care, and exposure. I suspect a long-term garage queen would be ceramic-protected indefinitely because there's nothing to wear the coating away.

 

I have used both Turtle Wax Ceramic Spray and 303 Nano Graphene Spray coating on my cars. Two stay outside all the time in the Florida sun and have been doing very well. One has 303 Graphene and the other TW Ceramic. Going on 6 months for both and they still bead water water. The 303 Nano does not water spot as much as the Ceramic does. I did not want to get a professional 5-7 year Ceramic coating on the cars. If something went wrong, they are too hard to take off. I typically wash my cars once a month so I don’t mind putting a coating on after a wash. The new coatings are very easy to put on and take off. Really, just spray on, wipe in then wipe off.

I know when I say Turtle Wax, you might think inferior product. The new TW products are light years away from their wax in the green bottle. They just developed a Graphene Spray using actual Graphene instead of Graphene Oxide like everyone else is using. It is new and I have not had a chance to use it yet but plan to in the future. There are hundreds of YouTube videos showing all kinds of products in use and torture tested. Right now I like Graphene a little better than Ceramic because it does not water spot as much but as far as durability and gloss, they are pretty close. Just an old farts opinion.

 

Well, they managed all the current marketing buzz-words.

 

I'm using the TW Graphene Flex. The one with graphene vs oxide. Highly impressed.

 

I concur with John (Zymurgy)'s comment above that the jury is still out on the graphene sprays.

I recall watching a video by someone specialize in auto detailing visiting a chemist discussing the merits of spray-on or wipe-on ceramic coating vs. graphene, and the chemist explained why the graphene isn't ready for prime time for car protection yet, mainly due to the fact that people have not figured out the chemicals used in spay today that can actually bound the graphene molecules, so the graphene spray today basically just bound the graphene powders on top of the paint, not much different from the ceramic sprays, and selling the graphene spay it's basically just a gimmick in luring people buying more expensive products that not worth the money.

So after watching that video, I decided just do the wipe-on ceramic coating instead. It cost less, and it actually forms a much longer lasting and stronger coating on the paint than graphene sprays, not to mention much better looking in smooth shining as the result. So I'd stay away from paying for the more expensive graphene products until the techniques of actual bounding the graphene molecules has been figured out by chemists first.

 

I had a pro-grade graphene coating (SPS Graphene) on my daily driver for 14 months, 16k miles. While overall it was a very well performing product, it fell short to my preferred ceramics in some areas I consider important so it's back to ceramics for my 'cars that matter'; specifics w/ some vids here: https://budgetplan1.wordpress.com/sps-graphene-coating/

Since my daily driver no longer falls into that 'cars that matter' category, it currently has another graphene coating (Ethos Graphene Matrix) on the hood, roof and trunk lid, applied in September of 2020 and so far, is a bit, uh...less than impressive; some notes, pics and vids of that experience here: https://budgetplan1.wordpress.com/et...atrix-coating/

These were both 'true' coatings and not the graphene/ceramic infused sealants (sometime labeled as 'coatings') that come squirting outta a spray bottle.

Dug into graphene a bit more after the recent marketing 'explosion' regarding graphene that occurred last Summer.

Graphene Coatings

Hooray, a new coating technology! Maybe? Is it truly a fundamental change, smoke and mirrors, excessive marketing exuberance? If it turns out it works well for you overall, does it even matter?

Lotsa stuff out there lately, some recently released ‘Graphene Coatings’ are sparking discussion, sometimes a bit contentious, sometimes optimistic, sometimes pessimistic but unusually entertaining. Plenty of folks saying it’s nonsense and taking it to task based upon wording (Graphene Coating, Graphene-Infused Coating, Graphene Ceramic Coating, etc.) and the suspect ability to currently actually produce a true GRAPHENE COATING.

I wasn’t around when coatings came around, touting such nonsense as “Diamond-Infused 10h Hardness” and similar “9H hardness, over twice as hard as your clearcoat” claims (the latter while being technically correct, in reality proves to pretty close to functionally irrelevant…”This really soft pillow is harder than that really soft pillow”) so dunno if the backlash was similar but it’s quite interesting nonetheless. I dunno, ain’t no scientist but it is all currently quite intriguing to me. I had one of the first coatings to infuse graphene on my daily from May 2019 thru August 2020 (16k miles). Frankly, whether or not it says graphene on the label is of no matter to me, the coating in the bottle either works for me and my specific needs or it doesn’t. The SPS was a great coating overall, especially if you like slickness and high water contact angle entertainment. Didn’t meet my needs in the end but that doesn’t mean it’s a bad product at all, rather that it’s just not a great product FOR ME. Time will tell with graphene, I guess.

Feynlab Blog Post: https://www.feynlab.com/coating-chem...ual-chemistry/

Rag Company Q & A w/ Gtechniq; 46 minutes in the topic of Graphene comes up:
Chicago Auto Pros/Dr. Beasley/Ethos:
Pan the Organizer:
Generally not a fan of Pan (or really any so-called 'unbiased' YouTube product evaluator) but this is kinda interesting. Notable re: graphene is the mention that while graphene will play some minor role in water spot reduction in a thermal sense, it is so minor as to be functionally irrelevant. He goes on to explain the reduced water spotting potential via an interesting ‘brick & mortar’ analogy.

A little bit from Alfred Yow, the mind behind the Art d’ Shine/SPS Graphene coatings. Kinda clarifies the role of the Reduced Graphene Oxide component in the coatings. From a Facebook post regarding graphene coatings. Seems like a bit of a ‘helper’ to the PDMS portion of the formulation:

I think it’s gonna take some time to figure all of this out re: graphene. Migliore, SPS/Art d’ Shine, Ethos, Glassparancy, IGL, Adam’s, TAC Systems and a few more have released products w graphene as part of their formulations but perhaps more telling are those mfg’s who HAVEN'T; CarPro, Gyeon, Feynlab, Optimum and Gtechniq, some of whom have openly questioned the value of graphene given it’s manufacturing limitations at this time.

The primary ‘optimistic benefit’ of graphene as it’s currently marketed is the potential reduction in water spotting due to it’s ability to reduce surface temps; occasional mentions of graphene’s toughness is tossed about but that seems to be a secondary point. Any visible performance benefits such as slickness, water behavior and similar are (as Albert Yow explains it) not due to graphene at all so, well…I dunno. When I had a graphene coating on my car that Summer I shot temperatures of the panels in full sunlight on a Summer day and the temperature difference between the graphene panels and uncoated panels was negligible as was the temperature difference between a ceramic coated panel and a graphene coated panel.

Will be fun to watch but not convinced that it’s really any kind of ‘revolution’ given my personal experience with it. I guess that could change in future…or not.

What I get from all of this is:

1. Current technology does not allow for any fundamentally significant level of Graphene to be incorporated into a coating.
2. Any real or perceived benefits of a graphene coating have very little (if anything) to do with any trace amount of graphene in it.
3. The functional foundation of any graphene coating is basically the same as a ceramic, likely Siloxane/Polysiloxane/Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) or Polysilazanes.

So if we bake a ‘Graphene Coating Cake’ the cake batter itself is the same as if we baked a ‘Ceramic Coating Cake’ and the graphene in the cake is not significant enough to even be considered the frosting on the cake but rather merely the handful of ‘sprinkles’ on top of the frosting on top of the cake. Maybe.

I kinda view it as using a ceramic coating that for some reason has an extra word on the label, and merely taking up space on that label is likely the greatest visible contribution ‘graphene’ *currently* makes to the overall satisfaction. That said, given all other factors being equal w/ any particular ‘graphene’ coating vs a favored ceramic, perhaps look at it like the oft-debated use of a foam cannon…it doesn’t hurt and maybe, just maybe, it would help to have the graphene in there…IF the positive aspects of it (real or perceived) fit your particular situation. Ya pays yer money and ya takes yer chances!

Methinks just because it says `graphene` on the label doesn't make it a bad product but perhaps merely a questionably marketed one. The graphene coating I had on my car was very good overall, had some great attributes…but not due to the graphene IMO. That aspect of it (graphene and waterspots) didn`t pan out but it was otherwise a solid performer, quite good actually.

And for me, that`s what is kinda sad about the current graphene landscape; sensationalist marketing is gonna drag down some otherwise good products just because they have the world `graphene` on the label.

If I had a vehicle that better fit the strengths of the graphene coating I used, I would not hesitate to use it again, not because it said `graphene` on it but because it worked exceptionally well in areas that have nothing to do with the currently reported benefits of graphene.

One item of note (or maybe just an interesting ‘thing’ is that after letting a 75% empty bottle of the SPS Graphene Coating sit undisturbed on the shelf for a few months, the ?graphene? settled out to the bottom of the bottle. Was quite obvious w a dark, bottom layer of ?graphene? with clear liquid on top; I know I took a picture of it but I just can’t find it. What does that say about, well, anything? I dunno but perhaps worth mentioning. Figr’d “Well, I can’t see it from my house…” so I shook it up for a minute or two and applied to the hood of a fleet truck at work. For the month or 2 I watched it, it performed ‘normally’.

Do some research and find a coating that appears to meet your needs. If it says graphene in the label, fine; if it says ceramic on the label, that’s fine too.

Personally I think graphene technology doesn’t currently exist to take advantage of the intrinsic benefits of graphene but that doesn’t mean a graphene coating is ‘bad’ in any way, shape or form.

I’ve tried a boxload of ceramics and a few graphene coatings as well. Some of the graphene products ate some of the ceramics for lunch and vice-versa. Pick what you believe to be the best coating for you and ignore the words on the label.

Some say “Graphene is nonsense” but then again anyone who has used a ceramic that claims “Diamond-Infused 10h hardness” knows that the hardness ‘thing’ is pretty much nonsense as well so I guess at this point graphene AND ceramics have their own ‘extensions of reality’ claims attached to them.

Again, a coating with graphene in it/on the label may indeed be a very good product, one that can exceed your expectations; I'm pretty much of the opinion though that any trace amounts of graphene in it has very little (if anything) do do with the overall performance and effectiveness; just another marketing hook until the technology exists to make a cost-effective automotive protection product that can *really* take advantage of what graphene has to offer.

As with anything, YMMV.

 

^^^^^ Nice write up BudgetPlan. It will be interesting to see how Graphene progresses in the future. If it is true that Turtle Wax figured out how to use real Graphene instead of Graphene Oxide it could go a long way to help all Graphene based products. Torture testing unfortunately is not real life but it is interesting to watch. I do like that the majority of the Ceramic and Graphene spray on products are easy on and easy off. They all seem to last at least six months and have a good shine / slickness to them. Makes my life a lot easier when it comes to keeping the cars cleaner.