Review: Sonus Trim and Motor Kote

I recently picked up Sonus Trim and Motor Kote (which can be found here) as an accessory to dressing my engine bay.  It can be quite difficult to get applicators in tight spots and avoid leaning all over your front bumper, Sonus' offering counters this by offering a spray dressing.  The directions are as follows

• Thoroughly clean your engine bay
• Lightly spray your engine bay
• Wait 15-20 minutes before applying your second coat
• Wait one hour
• Remove any overspray while it's still wet

Here are some of the products used to clean my engine bay, I am not a fan of hosing my engine down.  I don't prefer to use heavy amounts of water because I don't want to worry about covering up delicate pieces of equipment, and this way I know everything that is touched and where the chemicals are going.  I think there is nothing wrong with using a foam gun with a degreaser solution and then hose it down, but I just don't prefer it.

The products here are assorted brushes, my non-paint safe microfiber towels, and Meguiar's D101 in an Adam's APC bottle due to the foaming sprayer which I think is great.  For APC I absolutely recommend going with foaming over liquid spray, it allows it to be much more clingy, remove dirt and grime, and stay attached to work on the media much longer.

You can see the status of my engine bay, dirty overall it has been a month or two since the last time I cleaned it.  Nothing too greasy but a solid layer of dust and dirt.

Here it is after cleaning it but before applying the spray, much cleaner but still very dull looking.

And now the final results and look, note this is pretty soon after the first application, roughly 2 hours so I expect it to dry up more and lose some of the gloss.

My overall thoughts are that a spray product has it's positives and negatives.  It spreads and levels exceptionally well, there are no clumps, I didn't notice any missed spots, and it allows much better coverage than would be possible with a foam applicator.  Now the downsides, there was quite a bit of overspray on the front bumper and it streaked very badly and took quite a few wipes to remove it all, I originally thought I missed the dilution on my ONR wash, but it turned out to be it.  This may be due to poor technique on my part, but I think it's very difficult to effectively spray the forward portion of the engine bay and not get some on the paint.  I did not leave it on to find if there would be any negative effects due to the directions saying to wipe it off while it's still damp.

I do like this product and think it's perfect for engine bays but I may look into just using plastic sheeting to cover up the front bumper to avoid overspray.

Thanks for reading and post any questions or comments below !