My Prep Work Process:
As for my prep work before I applied the ceramic coating, I washed the S4 like normal with few ounces of "SuperClean" in the soap to help strip all the grease, wax, and dirt away. From that point on I opted out of the typically clay bar for a no touch chemical clay bar process. Why? Well... clay bars are great for really really contaminated cars, my car was already detailed back a few months back when I got the car, and I garage it at home and at work keep it away from all trees. Yes, I know you can still pick up a lot of crap just from driving, but I don't live in area with tons of bugs and I haven't been on any long road trips. Not to mention I really wanted to see if a chemical treatment was just as good if not better than a clay bar. Once the wash was completed, I air dried it with electric air blower (I love this thing) and started the first decontamination treatment with CarPro Iron X (affiliate link).

Decontamination Stage 1: 
Basically you spray CarPro Iron X (affiliate link) everywhere on your car (avoid your brake rotors or any exposed metal) and let it sit for 5-10mins to react/breakdown any iron contaminant. I think I had it on there for maybe 15min. Minus the bad chemical smell this give off, it is pretty cool how it turns purple (dark red) when the reaction with iron starts. I didn't see a lot of reaction on my car so that appeared to be good sign my car was already in good shape. That said, I'm not sure if this is a chemical trick or not, so I can't really say for certain how well this work. If you are looking for a warm fuzzy feeling, this might help with that. 

Decontamination Stage 2:
This next step I knew was really where things would get removed. Just like the Iron X, I sprayed on the CarPro Tar X everywhere on my car's surface and allowed it to sit for about 10mins. Luckily this stuff smells pretty good (like Oranges) so no issues here. After about 10mins I went over it again with a wash meet and sprayed a little more Tar X to make sure I got all areas of the car and to help loosen up anything that the Tar X already loosened up. Finally I finished it up with a nice long water raise with my pressure washer. After air drying my car, it was butter smooth. This Tar X really did do a good time to remove all the crap.

Polish Time:
Nothing special here just just a decent polish to help lessen any swirl marks or light scratching. I used a TORQX Dual Action Polisher (affiliate link) with the red ultra light cutting pad. 

IPA Wipe (Isopropyl Alcohol):
This is a new step for me but it totally makes sense. If you ever do any type of gluing or applying tape, you know the first step is to clean there surface with Isopropyl Alcohol. As we want the ceramic coating to bond as best as possible to the surface you need this wipe down to get it as perfectly clean as possible. Some people at this point will go back and do another wash, but a good IPA is just as good and faster in my opinion. I went with a 9:1 (water to 91% Isopropyl Alcohol) ratio and wiped down all of my car's surface. 

Ceramic Application:
I won't go into too much depth here as there is a lot of videos and sites that go over the steps, but in summary apply a little of the liquid ceramic coating on to the application pad and work on small 1 to 2ft areas at a time. This was likely the best directions I found:

• https://www.carpro-us.com/protection/cquartz-uk-3-0-30ml-kit-w-reload/

I did one coat and waited 24 hrs to do the second coat. I will say that as my garage temps were around 50-55F degree the coating didn't "flash" dry that quickly. Like a good thing for a first time attempt. It would take about 1-2mins before it would give a slight rainbow, meaning it was time to wipe off the coating. Likely in the future I would do this more in early summer later or late spring so that the temps were between 60-70F degrees to help speed up the process. 

Results & Thoughts:
While this stuff says you can put it on nearly any surface, I would avoid glass. Nearly all of my windows had hazing issues after another 2 days of curing. And yes I made sure to wipe it off good before it flashed. I can only guess that I didn't clean my windows good enough or something. I have some great glass cleaner/polisher called "Driven Extreme Duty Glass Cleaner" (affiliate link) that I completely forgot to use. Luckily it worked great to remove the ceramic coating from the glass. I did leave it on my headlights as there was no issues there. As for the rest of my car, I couldn't really say if this looks better than a traditional wax or synthetic sealant as I've never done that on this car. or this color before. Per my research it takes about 30 days for the ceramic coating to fully cure and become it's glossiest... so we will have to wait and see. I'll post some picture and video in a few weeks so we have a record of what it looks like. 

I will say this is fair more expensive than a traditional wax, but it makes sense as this is marketed to last 2 years. Only time will tell. 

 - Amazon affiliate links were used in this post

I'm really not going to go over the steps on how to install new HID bulbs in a B8.5 S4 as there is many Youtube videos out there to cover that. I will let you know that you will need to remove the Air intake box on the passenger side, so plan a head on that. I will warn you these are 4200k color so they are white with a hint of yellow. For those of you that want the pure white, well these aren't going to be your bulb. I like them because simply because this color works better for all weather situation. 5500K and higher bulbs have a hard time illuminating wet roads like what we experience in the Pacific Northwest, so the 4200k is the ideal color.

In summary way brighter, and I'm happy I got them. Sorry pictures won't do justice so you will just have to take my word for it. 

 - Amazon affiliate links were used in this post​​