Ceramic Coating
I had my car wrapped with PPF (Stek) full front, full roof, full rocker panels and in front of the hips in the rear. After that much wrapping for the high impact areas I really wasn't in the mood to shell out another $2000 for ceramic coating. The prep work is the difficult part, putting on the ceramic coating on is the easy part. Obviously you can mess up a ceramic coating and allow it to harden with high-points (which will look like smudges or small bubbles on your clear coat), so you do need to pay attention with application and just take your time. Since the car is new obviously there isn't as much prep. I had Gtechniq Ultra professionally applied to my non-wrapped F80 and it was still going strong at 6 years, so I stuck with their products. Obviously as a mere-mortal I am unable to purchase the ultra and I'm Ok with a product that might need re-application in 2-3-4 years. I'm not sure how well it will bond to the wrap and expect wrapped areas to need re-application more frequently - no science behind this, just a feeling.
So yesterday we had great weather and got her washed, some water marked areas polished, and wiped the whole thing down with CarPro Eraser which removes any residual oils.
I am a fan of Matt at Obsessed Garage and have followed him since the early days. I love that he tries everything and constantly works in new products that he likes into his detailing regimen. I was happy to find that he also likes the Gtechniq products, although there are a lot of great products out there. So based on that I ordered his kit of Gtechniq Crystal Serum Light (prosumer version of their ceramic coating), Exo V5 hydrophobic coating, and Wolffs Ceramic Glass Sealant.
Apply the Ceramic coating first (Crystal Serum) followed by the Exo V5 designed to work with it (instructions say to wait 2 hours between each coating). Then did the windows. Very happy with everything, will be interesting to see how it holds up. If this is an every 2 year thing, totally worth it to me. If it lasts longer, great. I imagine the window coating will be a yearly application, but that is super easy (clean, wipe on and wipe off). Entire process took me 5 hours, but that included washing, and time in-between. That includes ceramic coating the rims, although in my experience this doesn't help with dusting but might help with staining. These newer brake pads are a different level of brake-dust hell compared to the F80...I thought the F80 was bad, BMW you have upped your game!
Also want to give a shout-out to AMMO and their Tire Mud. I think it's the perfect tire dressing. It isn't cheap but a little bit goes a long way. It's a gel and is a semi-gloss. Just makes the tires look clean.
And finally because I think there needs to be a pic, here's the car after the coatings were applied. It looks polished, they do add a nice sheen to the thing, even the Stek looks better:
My passenger side taillight is broken (came from BMW that way) so I also took it apart and disconnected the wiring harness hoping there was a loose connection but no dice, wiggled the wire and connecter as well to see if it was a poor connection...Seems the taillight needs replacement which the dealer has ordered (backordered) OR it is a wiring harness issue somewhere in the system, which would suck. I think it might be a wiring issue because there are times the light works completely normally, as if something is making intermittent connections. We will see.