Do you use your vehicle for work? Contractor / own your own business? What I'm getting at is, do you figure it into your tax return. After living 15 years without a truck payment, and now looking forward to paying five years for this amount of money, it's hard to get in the heads of others who are constantly upgrading every couple of years. Obviously easier if you make six figures.
On the ceramic coat, did you use regular retail products? I assume the professional grade products are of much higher quality.
16 hours of work is...a lot. I'm not the guy that says my time is too valuable to do it myself. I do EVERYTHING myself. But I bought a truck just now, in my midwestern winter. Can't really sit in the driveway every day polishing my truck like a Floridian can. For fear of the elements, I haven't driven it since last weekend when I drove it home from South Carolina. It just sits in the driveway avoiding the salted roads.
I use mine for work, self employed, own my business so I do write it off but I do like keeping vehicles a few years past when they're paid for and drive with no payment; I haven't had a truck/car payment since 2008.
On my paint correction, I use professional products (painted cars in college so the paint correction is no big deal) I used a griots garage big foot 15 mm throw DA polisher. I have a rotary but seldom see a need to use it with the pads (Buff-n-shine Uro-Tec pads) available today and 3D One or Menzerna. 3D one was made for black paint and is outstanding and cleans up easily, no snow storms.
I used Gyeon MOHS ceramic coat and also Carpro 3.0UK.
I put 2 coats on mine but in all likelihood, I will get some 3M Trizact 3000 and 5000 pads and DA the paint in a couple years or when the PPF starts looking bad and needs replacing.
16 hours isn't bad, it takes me right around 6-8 hours to do paint correction and another 3 to prep for and ceramic coat