Diamondbrite – After 40 months of Total Neglect

In February 2007, I sent my daughter’s Satria Neo, a seven month old car, over to Paint Shield Asia Pacific, the local importers and distributors of Diamondbrite, the paint protection system to get the car treated. The car looked very good when it was completed a couple of hours later.

According to the instructions from David Lancaster, the Mat Salleh who has moved here and set up the Diamondbrite office in Glenmarie here, the paint is protected for good, although the guarantee is for six years – however, once a month, after washing the car, I was supposed to do the final rinse with a watered down solution of ‘Conserver’ – this is a kind of booster that adds a microscopic layer on top of the protective Diamondbrite layer, and over time, make it some microns thicker, therefore increasing the protection. At the same time, it is supposed to ‘fill’ in the gaps caused by tiny scratches in the paint, and keep it shining.

The Satria looked quite good after one application of conserver after 40 months of neglect.

The fact of the matter is, I simply neglected to do this – my daughter studied away from home, initially 70 kilometres away, then 250 kilometres away, and now she works 145 kilometres away. Not very high up the food chain of employment, she does not have a driver to wash the car everyday, and neither does she have the time to wash it herself. To add more salt to the wound, her car is parked in the hot sun 24/7.

In the forty months that she has had the Diamondbrite on the car, it gets washed about once every four or five months, when it gets serviced. This year, it has been washed twice, both times when I visited her, and having nothing much to do, took the car out to one of those kampung car washes in the small town where she is stationed.

But there were stains and blemishes that couldn’t come off!

Well, the car came back and looking at the paint, I noted that the paint surface had some serious-looking blemishes and marks, and patches of faded paintwork that looked like it had been the resting place for some bird dung. In addition, there were marks that looked like remnants of dead insects permanently embedded into the front bumpers and the bonnet. There were also some deep scratches on the paintwork – these scratches looked like some animal (probably my dog) had tried to jump onto the bonnet or a cat had scratched clawed its way over the bonnet while trying to get away from my dog. I have no record of whether the cat survived, but the paintwork had come off the loser.

So what did I do? I dug up my bottle of ‘Conserver’, the very same bottle that David Lancaster had passed to me when I took the car 40 months ago, and after washing the car, diligently proceeded to do the final rinse with it. The end result was a Satria that looked quite decent, but the afore-mentioned marks, scratches and blemishes were still there. Hmmm! I wondered if I would need to send it to the paint shop for a once over, and then I had the ‘brilliant’ idea to ask David Lancaster to have a look at it, and see if he could do anything about it.

See the ultra-violet degradation from sitting in the sun 24/7

The first thing he said when he saw the car was, “ Hmmm, the paint still looks pretty good for a car that has been out in the sun for three and a half years. For a car of this dark colour, I would expect the paint to have started fading.” Looking at the Proton badge at the front and rear of the car, one could see the amount of ultra-violet degradation the poor car had been subjected to.

“Mr. Khong,” he went on, with his index finger waving left to right in a disapproving manner, “You know you have to use the conserver regularly, because that is what helps to keep the protective layer going.”

This is the result after the work. Note -only the bonnet and front bumper was reworked.

“Fortunately, the damage seems to be on the Diamondbrite layer – you see, the Diamondbrite is bonded to the top of the paintwork, and acts as a ‘sacrificial lamb’. It takes the brunt of the abuse – no problem – we can get your car looking as good as new!” said David with a beam in his eyes.

His guys went to work, with Sashi, his shop floor chief shaking his head and mumbling, “Aiya, you must use the conserver lah! Then you won’t get this problem one!”

Note the stains and blemishes on the bumper after 40 months of neglect

What he did was this – he washed the car, and then took a close look at the paint surfaces – this one is a scratch, maybe can get rid of, that one is a stone chip, too deep, so cannot save, these are stains, must be from bird sh-t that has remained on the paint for more than a day, maybe can save, etc, etc.

Then Sashi went to work –using Jewel Ultra Premier Cut – a very fine rubbing compound, he used a mechanical buffer with a soft pad attached (not sandpaper), and gently polished off a thin layer off the top. David explained, “ He is buffing down the top layer of the Diamondbrite layer to get rid of the stains and scratches, after which he will put on another layer of Stage 2 Diamondbrite layer to build up the layer of protection again. If you had used the conserver as specified, this would not happen.”

Taking the top layer of Diamondbrite off the bonnet and bumper

So what actually happened was some recovery work – take off the top layer of Diamondbrite, and add on another layer – and voila – the car was as good as new. As a point in passing, the recovery work was only done on the front bonnet and bumper. The bumper had some bad insect marks, and the bonnet had some bird dung stains.

At the end of a couple of hours, we stood back to admire the handiwork, and the good news is that I do not have to send it to the paint shop after all. In fact, it looks better than the day it came from the showroom. There are a few spots that cannot be repaired – a set of scratches as a result of going too close to and scraping a wall, and a couple of stone chips on the bonnet that were too deep to be fixed. The blemishes and stains were completely removed, and everybody was happy. David, because it proved the Diamondbrite still did its job despite my total neglect of the use of the Conserver, Sashi because he put the shine back on again (and he is very proud of his work, and me because I can almost picture the delight on my daughter’s face when she gets to see her car again when she comes back this Friday to collect her car!

Giving it a wash to clean the dust off before re-applying Stage 2

A fresh top layer is put on the bonnet and bumper – the rest of the car is untouched

Buffing with a micro-fibre cloth after curing for 40 minutes. No polishing required

She’s beautiful again!

Rear View -Still good after 40 months -in fact it is as good as new, if not better!

From now, it is Conserver once a month – it will keep on looking just as good for as long as I do it

YS Khong