Ceramic Coating for Oconomowoc Lake, Wisconsin

From our shop

About 25 minutes

Price

Quoted per vehicle

Prep

Rear-end correction usual

Best month

May

Frequency is the whole difference

A public-ramp vehicle launches on a weekend. A private-ramp vehicle launches whenever someone wants the boat — an evening, a lunch hour, a hot Tuesday. Every launch throws lake water up the tailgate, rear glass, rear quarters and bumper, onto panels that have been in the sun, and every splash flashes off and leaves its minerals and its algae in a ring.

Multiply that by a season of launches from home and the rear of the vehicle carries more bonded lake mineral than anything we see from public ramps, and it usually carries etching under the spotting by August. This is not a vehicle that can be kept clean by washing after each launch. Nobody rinses the truck after a Tuesday lunch-hour boat ride.

What a coating does at a private ramp

On a coated rear end, splash water beads and runs off the panels before most of it can dry. What does dry leaves its minerals on the coating, not on the clear coat, and the next rinse — or the next rain — takes it away. The algae and silt behave the same way: they sit on the coating and release instead of bonding.

So the tow vehicle can launch from home all summer without the rear end turning into a decontamination job in September. That is the entire argument for coating a lakefront tow vehicle, and it is a stronger argument here than anywhere else in Lake Country because of how often the ramp gets used.

Prep, and doing it in May

A vehicle that has done a few summers of private-ramp launches bare usually has etched mineral rings across the rear panels, and a coating seals in whatever is under it. So the rear of the vehicle is decontaminated and corrected before anything goes on, which is where the price moves from the quoted figure.

May is the month here rather than September: the coating needs to be on before the season, not after it. Corrected and coated in May, the rear end goes into a summer of launches with something between it and the lake. The interior protection conversation is the same visit — the cabin of a lakefront vehicle takes the season as hard as the paint does.