Gyeon Q2 Syncro: Product Review and Application Guide

After having such a great experience with Gyeon Pure, which I reviewed about a month ago, I decided to give Gyeon’s highest end consumer coating a try. Like Pure, Gyeon Q2 Syncro is another new coating package for Gyeon’s 2018 lineup. Syncro consists of 2 coatings, Mohs, and Skin. Mohs is a durable coating, with impressive chemical resistance as well as great hydrophobic properties on its own. Skin goes on top of Mohs to add both slickness and an even more insane hydrophobic effect (we’ll touch on this later). The expected durability of Syncro is 24 months as per Gyeon, but since Mohs on its own is already a well known product, I’ve heard of it lasting longer than that.

Application

Like my last guide, I won’t fully be going over prep, but just touching on it lightly. If you want to get an idea on what it takes to fully prep a car for a coating from start to finish, check out Matt Moreman’s YouTube series on New Car Prep. I do want to stress how important it is that the surface is bare and clean of any oils or sealants before coating the car. If your car is already swirl-free and you feel confident that the paint you have is the paint you’re ready to lock in with this coating, I would still recommend that you go over the car with a finishing polish (I like Sonax Perfect Finish) to remove whatever your current LSP is. Whether it’s a Polymer sealant like Sonax Polymer NetShield, or a ceramic spray coating like HydroSilex Recharge or Gyeon CanCoat, you’ll need it to be removed. After that finishing polish, you’ll want to wipe down with either Gyeon Prep or IPA. I recommend doing a full car wipe down, and then going over it quickly a second time to ensure nothing was missed. If you are fully correcting your car before coating, nothing changes in terms of the final steps I’ve mentioned here, just be sure to get that paint clean and bare! Once the paint is bare and ready to be coated, put your gloves on. This isn’t something to skip, your hands will get product on them and will feel horrible if you don’t use gloves. Next, get your Mohs bottle out, as well as your applicator block and one suede. Mohs is not a coating that can be applied one whole panel at a time, you’re going to want to section things out. I did the doors of my F80 M3 in 3 sections, the roof in 4, and most other parts of the car in 2-3 sections. Use your common sense here, something like a trunk is small enough to do in 2 sections, but a rear bumper should be broken into 3 or 4 depending on size. To begin, place around 5 or 6 decent sized drops of Mohs on your suede. Mohs is meant to go on thick, and having a lot of product won’t make removal any more difficult. Once you have product on the applicator, pick a starting point and cross hatch the product at least 3 times. I found that by the third cross hatch, the product would start to flash and it would be the perfect time to remove. Grab your high pile microfiber towel and start to buff off the coating about 10 seconds after you finish applying. Depending on temperature and humidity, you might want to adjust this wait time, I was working in the low 70’s with about 55-60% humidity. The coating is bonded in the first 5 seconds, so anything after that is now just us trying to pick a time that makes removal of the leftover carriers easiest. Once you’ve completed buffing that specific section, take either a penlight or your phone’s flashlight and inspect the area you’ve just buffed for any high spots or streaks. Remove any spots that you see before moving on to the next section. These areas will be very easy to see, and will look similar to hologramming. Now that any high spots are removed, you’re ready to move on and repeat this process for the next part of your panel and the rest of the car. Err on the side of overlapping when coating the next part of your panel. Don’t worry about getting your invisible line on the car perfect, you just want to be sure that you didn’t miss anything and putting more coating on top of the section you just coated won’t hurt anything. Once you complete this process around the whole car, you’re ready to move on to your second coat. A minimum of 2 coats of Mohs is required for Syncro, with a maximum of 3 allowed. There is a minimum wait time of 1 hour between coats, but at this point if you go back and start over going in the same order as you just went, an hour will have most likely gone by. Once you’re done applying 2 or 3 coats of Mohs, you’re ready to move on to applying Skin. Note that you’ll want to wait a minimum of 4 hours between your last coat of Mohs and your first coat of Skin, I waited overnight. Skin is incredibly satisfying to use and leaves your paint feeling incredibly slick. I did at first, however, have a bit of a tricky time applying Skin. I was having issues with not being able to remove the product completely and it leaving smears of product as I tried to remove it. After some quick advice from Jeff at Gyeon USA, I was all set and was able to finish things out with no more problems. For the application of Skin, you’ll want to first make sure you’re using a new suede, and that you switch suedes frequently (every few panels) throughout application, thats why there are so many included. Take the bottle of Skin and flip it over pressing the dropper directly into your suede. Run the bottle along the length of the suede, down the middle, to create one, thin line of product. My original issue was that I was using too much. Much like Mohs, you’ll want to break up your panels for the application of Skin, but you can extend it a bit further. I applied skin in fast, cross hatching patterns, keeping my hand constantly moving. You’ll see that after about 4 or 5 cross hatches, the product will almost start to disappear. Once you reach this point, grab your high pile microfiber and immediately start to buff off the coating. You’ll immediately feel the slickness and you absolutely know where you have and haven’t applied Skin. Once you complete this process around the whole car, you’re done! When you’ve finished coating the car, give it a once-over with your flashlight to check for any high spots you may have missed. If you do see one, you’ll most likely need to hand polish that area and re-apply, as the coating will have set. Lastly, you can choose to apply Gyeon Cure to help protect the coating while its curing. This is more so necessary if you are parking the car outside, as Cure will serve as a barrier to help prevent water spots or contamination. Past this, Cure can be used every few months to keep the health of the coating up and keep it contamination free, serving as a sacrificial layer. At this point, if you have a garage, I’d recommend leaving it inside for 24 hours to give the initial drying phase some time to occur without any outside influence. If not, don’t worry, the car will be fine outside, but if possible, avoid driving it for a little while. Keep in mind that you should consider the weather if you don’t have a garage. Don’t apply the product on a Monday evening if you know it’s going to rain on Tuesday, etc, etc.

My Thoughts

Beading shot of Gyeon Syncro.
Gyeon Syncro overall was a breeze to use in moderate temperature and humidity conditions. I coated my entire F80 M3 sans the front bumper and hood, which have another coating on them that I’m testing. I found Mohs to be incredibly forgiving and easy to work with. The coating can be applied thick (and should be), however, despite using so much product, removal is still incredibly easy. If you accidentally overuse other products, they can be difficult to remove without smearing, this is not the case with Mohs. As for Skin, while its hydrophobic effect and slickness are amazing, I did have a bit of a tricker time removing it. This is simply due to a misunderstanding in directions, and was easily remedied using the trick from Jeff that I mentioned above. As far as beading and hydrophobicity go, the contact angle of this coating is insane, and the water flies off quickly and easily using less power than I normally do on my EGO electric blower. People who love tight beading will not be disappointed at all with this coating. Durability is yet to be seen, but I will be updating the blog in due time with photos and video of the coating as it ages. If this coating holds up for its advertised amount of time, I think this makes a great option for those of us who want the best that consumer grade products can offer. In my case, my car stays outside 24/7, so I want to make sure it is protected from the elements as best as it possibly can be, for as long as it possibly can be. List of Products Used: Gyeon Q2 Syncro Kit Gyeon Prep DI Microfiber Double Thick Edgeless Towel Sonax Perfect Finish That’s all for this review! If you have any questions regarding the usage or Gyeon Syncro or any of the methods discussed, leave a comment below. Until the next review, I leave you with this video of rinsing and blow drying at my first wash with Syncro. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAI7sg-UiXk