This 2022 Land Rover Range Rover Velar P340 S recently made its way to our headquarters as part of our 2024 Master Training Event. During the event, our candidates applying for Master Installer status had the chance to demonstrate their skills and refine their technique on this beautiful metallic Firenze Red factory coat. Our customer walked away extremely happy with the final product, and the knowledge that their coating was installed by the newest class of certified Master Installers, an elite detailing group representing the top of their field. In this article we’ll give you an inside look into the coating process at our training center. Let’s dive in.
The first step to coating any car is to assess the vehicle’s unique needs and features. This vehicle was outfitted with a luxurious white leather interior, a premium interior display, and carbon-fiber interior trim.
On the exterior, the Rover sports glossy, Piano Black trim on the roof, support pillars, and other trim elements towards the top of the car. As we reach the wheel wells and bottom trim, the Rover pivots to matte black plastic trim pieces.
This vehicle is a daily driver, and that definitely showed. When the vehicle arrived, heavy scratches and etching covered the surface, particularly apparent on the piano-black trim, while etched water spots covered the SUV’s windows.
It quickly became apparent that heavy decontamination and careful paint correction would be needed to prepare the vehicle for coating.
Luckily, our experienced training instructors from Auto Appearance Specialists were standing by to help. Using Iron Burn and Water Spot, they had the car decontaminated and on to the wash bay in no time.
Fireball Waterspot is a gentle alkaline mixture, formulated to break down mineral remnants without damaging the surface.
While most water spots can be removed with regular cleaners, some deep etched mineral compounds need a heavier alkaline component to break down the remaining residue.
Watching Waterspot eat away these hardened mineral water spots is an amazing experience. It makes short work of the decontamination process, and rinses off easily.
Waterspot is a great decontaminant, but you can never be too careful. For extra decontamination the instructors used PH3 Shampoo, a gentle alkaline shampoo that exfoliates the paint by eating away any micro contamination that we missed the first time. We gently hand washed and towel dried the SUV, leaving it primed and ready for paint correction.
Paint correction is an incredibly important step in ceramic coating. Paint correction was slow going, as our experienced partners Auto Appearance KC and other certified Fireball Installers showed our trainees the exact amount of pressure needed to buff out the defects, swirls, and etchings.
For paint correction, our installer trainees got the chance to use Fireball’s new product called Compound, an all-in-one, light to heavy-medium grade correction compound. Even though this is one of our newest products, many of our installers already swear by it, and have started phasing out their selection of other brands polishing compounds in favor of a full stock of Fireball Compound.
Paint correction was really where this renovation took shape. As the deep scratches and ugly swirls fell away, the deep black trim and gleaming red paint took over, showing the slick car that had been hiding beneath layers of wear and tear all along.
With paint correction completed, we finally got started on coating. We selected Fireball Devil’s Blood for the Range Rover. This car owner plans to continue using the Range Rover as a daily Driver, coating the SUV with a hard, repellant coating like Devil’s Blood was the obvious choice. Devil’s Blood is a highly resilient coating, offering premium performance, deflecting scratches and abrasions, all at a mid tier price-point.
Since the Range Rover was here to assist with an installer training, we took the opportunity to teach our trainees how to install a variety of coatings, and offered the customer enhanced protection at no extra cost.
The water spots on the windows had concerned us for the long-term clarity of the glass, so we installed Fireball’s all-new Glass Shield coating to the windshield and windows. Glass Shield is the world’s first micro-etching ceramic coating, creating a near inseparable bond with raw glass, preserving extreme clarity for years at a time.
For the interior, we selected Fireball’s new Leather Shield, a new coating specifically for leather surfaces. Leather Shield provides extreme hydrophobics and extra strong scratch protection, all the while leaving the texture and pliability of the original leather unchanged.
Finally, for the wheels and brake calipers, we selected Fireball Talon, a ceramic coating with heat and friction resistance formulated specially for use on wheels.
Installing a coating onto vehicles can present several challenges, one of the greatest being high spots and applicator hardening. As it dries onto the block, the ceramic coating begins to stiffen and make applying much more difficult – risking scratches on freshly corrected paint if an Installer doesn’t switch in time. Our installers had to switch applicators for every large body panel in order to avoid ruining all their hard work. Our team coated the entire vehicle from bumper to bumper, from under the running boards to the middle of the roof. Once the coating was set, our renovation of the Range Rover was done.
All of our installers have been factory trained in an environment much like the one outlined above, so when you come to a Fireball Installer, you know they’ve been properly and thoroughly trained. You’ll get a thorough, top-to-bottom inspection and correction like the one outlined here, and your detailer can help talk you through our product lineup to find which coating is best for your specific vehicle. If you’re looking for a ceramic coating, don’t wait, choose Fireball for a company who delivers quality in every detail.
