Having Trouble with Ceramic Coating not Beading?
Cleaning may be the Solution
The problem of coating not beading could be very challenging, especially if you have encountered it before. However one thing you must understand is that this problem doesn’t necessarily indicate what is needed.
Some couple of years ago, we installed ceramic coating on a Tesla, and the vehicle coating did not receive better maintenance after then. To our greatest surprise, after blasting with water we witness zero hydrophobicity. We just decide to close for the day and clean the car up, but as soon as we went back to rinse, we observed that the coating was intact.
What this has revealed to us is that even when the ceramic coating is not beading that does not mean it has failed.
Here is the discovery: hydrophobicity is dependent mainly on lower surface energy. Lower surface energy makes it difficult for water to remain on a surface, while higher surface energy makes it easy for the surface to be wet. Contamination accumulation increases surface energy resulting in the lack of hydrophobicity.
However, as shown in this video, that increased surface energy could again be brought lowered by merely taking away the contamination. That is the reason you will see in almost all the ceramic coating maintenance manual that is very important to always clean your coating. This is the surest way of getting the best performance from your coating.