What's the fuss about beading??

S

StevenH72

Veteran
OK, so stay with me for a minute.

I love it when you see a good beading after re-applying wax / a good detail in general.

However, I can't help but wonder if beading is any good for the car or not?

Yes, beading is a good indicator that there is still some sealant/ wax covering and protecting the paintwork, but my car is always the last to dry in my car park.

I came home from work yesterday (a nice sunny day) and all the cars in the car park were dry....mine, however, still had beads on the bonnet and roof.

Surely this can't be good for the car? Would it not make more sense for waxes and sealants to possess super-dooper water sheeting properties, instead of beading?

Is our fascination with pretty globules of water actually causing undue harm to our cars?

FWIW, here's a pretty beading pic of my bonnet from Saturday:

20131117_121052_resized_zpse0dea5ed.jpg
 
Funny enough i had a similar thought yesterday after it rained and then overnight froze, so my car looked like this
ubapapy4.jpg


Which is actually frozen beading (i opened the boot lid which caused the runs)

Thats cant be good?


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Beading is a sign that as you said you still have wax/sealant protection on the car. This sealant/wax prevents the water to dry on the lacquer of your car paint.As a result your paint will last longer and will be more vibrant compared to cars without wax/sealant because dried water on the paint accumulates over the years and starts corroding the lacquer on your car's paint. Be proud that your car has beading on it when others don't because that means you are protected. Besides when you push the throttle beeds should slide off your car in minutes! Hope this helped! :thumbsup:
 
As vendar says - the very fact that it is beading means the paintwork is still protected to some degree, unlike unwaxed cars where the water is drying directly on the lacquer. Also, between the beads is usually completely dry, whereas on an unwaxed car the whole surface stays wet and dirty. I am not bothered about it on my paintwork as the car gets a wash regularly.

However I have wondered about it on my roof recently because I gave it a seriously good going over with the AG fabric roof kit a while back, and whilst it beads something epic (up to a point, large amounts of rain eventually soak through), it goes in the garage in the evening and when I go back to it in the morning it still has water on it. Even though the rest of the car is dry. Not sure if it's doing any harm having water sitting on it so long, but I did actually dry it the other night :oops:
 
There is plenty of satisfaction in beading! There's the knowing the paint is still being protected from contaminants, there's the aesthetics of it :P and then the satisfaction as Vendar says, of driving off and seeing it just fall off your car, leaving no marks!
 
VENDAR said:
Besides when you push the throttle beeds should slide off your car in minutes! Hope this helped! :thumbsup:
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Not in Edinburgh this winter they won't Vendar :thumbsup: - they tend to stay frozen on all day as the sun makes an appearance somewhere over Northumbria .

Agree with the rest the Beading means the paintwork is still protected so the water is not in contact with water - besides which it is only water .
 
You may soon be boasting about having no beading at all on your paintwork as the chemists who are manufacturing the next generations of sealants and coatings are hunting for ever more superhydrophobic compounds that can be used - the higher the contact angle they can produce, the more the droplets resemble a ball of water rather than a dome and the better the coating will be at shedding water, this is called 'lotus effect' after the plant leaves that have this as a natural property.

Theoretically, if they can produce a coating with a contact angle of 180 degrees, water wouldn't bead on anything other than a perfectly flat surface, as the slightest of angles would cause the droplets to roll off like tiny ball bearings. The higher contact angle means that the surface tension of the water droplets would tend to trap dirt inside the droplets as they roll off, leaving you with a cleaner car 8)
 
Maniac said:
Why would beading be bad for the car OP? Water on the paint surface? Well there's wax in between so....?
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I have no clue, Is Wax completely impermeable? i.e would a car never corrode with wax covering all surfaces?
 
Water likes to stick to things. When it sits on wax, which repels water, it has nothing to stick to but itself. Hence the beads.

It's far better for the paint to be waxed, than not.


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StevenH72 said:
Maniac said:
Why would beading be bad for the car OP? Water on the paint surface? Well there's wax in between so....?
Click to expand...

I have no clue, Is Wax completely impermeable? i.e would a car never corrode with wax covering all surfaces?
Click to expand...

It's pretty impermeable to water, at least when fresh. It does degrade over time though due to UV and washing - 1 to 3 months maybe ? - and I guess the harsher the weather and dirtier the roads the faster it will lose it's effectiveness. I don't think wax will prevent corrosion per se, but it should reduce the contaminants that reach the paintwork where it is applied. Of course there's still ways for water to get on / under paint - stone chips, scratches, and how many of us wax the inside of the boot, the inside edges of the bonnet etc ?

I am actually quite nervous about that last question as the answer from the likes of you lot may seriously impact my OCD :cry:
 
PerryGunn said:
You may soon be boasting about having no beading at all on your paintwork as the chemists who are manufacturing the next generations of sealants and coatings are hunting for ever more superhydrophobic compounds that can be used - the higher the contact angle they can produce, the more the droplets resemble a ball of water rather than a dome and the better the coating will be at shedding water, this is called 'lotus effect' after the plant leaves that have this as a natural property.

Theoretically, if they can produce a coating with a contact angle of 180 degrees, water wouldn't bead on anything other than a perfectly flat surface, as the slightest of angles would cause the droplets to roll off like tiny ball bearings. The higher contact angle means that the surface tension of the water droplets would tend to trap dirt inside the droplets as they roll off, leaving you with a cleaner car 8)
Click to expand...

This sounds exciting to me, would much prefer to have a sealant that sheeted water off efficiently. That way I don't have to worry about any potential harm (whether the fear is founded out of sound reasoning or not :wink: ) that sitting water may do to my car.
 
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