Before cleaning up a 2009 Honda minivan I decided to test a few products on the hood. These are not similar products, which makes this review a little unusual but hopefully interesting. This car is a daily driver and will be great for testing durability. Every panel except the test hood was treated (2x) with Ultima PGP, so that will be a point of comparison over the long-term durability test. Tape lines were left untreated as controls for comparison for all tests. Car has a thick clear bra.
Prep work on hood:
- Washed with optima no-rinse
- 2x spray/wipe with 1:10 Megs APC+
- 2x spray/wipe with 1:10 alcohol and DI water
Product applications:
- Chemical Guys Wet Mirror Finish (2 coats)
- Wolfgang Deep Gloss Paint Sealant + Pinnacle Souveran Liquid Wax (1 coat sealant + 1 coat wax)
- Autoglym HD (1 coat)
- Klasse High Gloss Sealant Glaze (2 coats)
Tests:
- Darkening (as compared to control stripes from tape exposing naked paint)
- Slickness (judgement of the friction between finger tips and paint at increasing pressure @ about a 45 degree angle to the surface)
- Sheeting (rate of water shedding, see video)
- Beading (ability to create the smallest and most uniform water beads compared to control surfaces)
- Gloss / depth (the most subjective test looking at the visual depth / richness of the coated paint)
- Durability (will repeat the above tests over the coming weeks; plan to run test for 2-3 months)
- I did not use ease of application as a criterion for evaluation. If I had, the from easiest to hardest results would be (1) Wolfgang + pinnacle combo, (2) CG WMF, (3) Autoglym HD, and (4) Klasse HGSG was the most difficult.
Results:
If I could not clearly distinguish a difference between products, they were given the same rank for the given characteristic effect
1 = Greatest effect (best), 4 = Lowest effect (worst), the lower score is better
CG WMF
3 Darkening
4 Slickness
4 Sheeting
4 Beading
1 Gloss/depth
TBD Durability
(Score: 16, Rank 4)
Wolf DGPS + Pinnacle Sov. Liq.
2 Darkening
1 Slickness
2 Sheeting
2 Beading
1 Gloss/depth
TBD Durability
(Score: 8, Rank 1)
Autoglym HD
4 Darkening
2 Slickness
1 Sheeting
1 Beading
2 Gloss/depth
TBD Durability
(Score: 10, Rank 2)
Klasse HGSG
1 Darkening
2 Slickness
3 Sheeting
3 Beading
2 Gloss/depth
TBD Durability
(Score: 11, Rank 3)
Notice how much Klasse HGSG (right half of image) darkens the paint compared to the Autoglym HD which has almost no darkening effect (right half of image). Look carefully at the control tape line (absent tape) down the middle of the image. The Klasse darkens more than the rest, a gloss second was the Wolfgang + Pinnacle Sov. combo.
And Autoglym HD gets the award for best beading AND best sheeting, who would have guessed? See the videos to see the tests.
Sorry the lighting isn't better in the videos:
Sheeting test: [video=youtube_share;6Djx-VoXEpY&feature=player_profilepage] - LSP Sheeting comparison[/video]
Beading test: [URL="http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_profilepage&v=sgRkTWdlhEE] - LSP Beading Comparison[/URL]
