Epoxy floors for auto and motorcycle shops

Automotive shop epoxy flooring covers repair shops, detail shops, motorcycle and powersports shops, tire shops and custom builders. Two very different spaces usually share one slab. The bays take jacks, drips and hot rubber. The front is where customers stand while you write up the ticket. Bare concrete in a bay soaks up every drip until the whole floor is one dark stain, and it sheds dust into everything. A coated floor wipes up, shows a dropped bolt right away and bounces light up under the cars.

Auto dealership floor coatings has its own page because a dealership is a showroom, a service drive and a row of bays under one roof, often with a brand look to match.

The shop floor we point people to is a showroom. At Bad Boyz Cyclez, a motorcycle shop in Sun Valley, we laid a black base coat and then poured a copper-and-black metallic over it. Bikes parked on it look like they’re on display, which is the whole idea. Service bays get built differently. The first thing we’d check in a bay is the lift anchors and any oil soaked into the slab, and from there we’d go with flake and a polyaspartic or polyurethane clear, since flake hides marks and that clear stands up to solvents far better than plain epoxy does.

This page is about independent shops. A home garage floor is a lighter version of the same idea. A working shop floor sees commercial hours, chemicals hitting the floor every day, and creepers and jack stands on top of that, so it gets a thicker build and a tougher top coat than a garage.

Summer in the Antelope Valley means cars pulling into your bays after an hour on a hot highway. Hot tires soften, and the plasticizers in the rubber attack a cheap top coat where they sit, leaving marks or even lifting the coating. That’s the reason shop floors get a clear made for hot tires, and why we let it cure all the way before the first car rolls in.

Desert dust turns oily fast in a shop. Sand blown through open bay doors sticks to every drip and makes a gritty film that dulls the floor and wears it down. Flake hides that between cleanings. A black metallic shows every grain, so we usually keep metallics in showrooms and lobbies where the doors stay closed, and put flake out in the bays where the wind and the work are.

Living with it

Wipe up oil, brake fluid and coolant the minute they hit the floor. Mop with a degreaser that’s safe for coatings. Put pads or plywood under jack stands and keep sharp tool feet off the clear. Skip long solvent soaks, and if a bay lane goes dull, a recoat brings it back.