Sealant comparison

Thanks for a great write up, I have on my shelf about as many products, from when I was "chasing the gloss God". I've given that up. After doing a lot of side by side tests myself, I've given up on trying to find the ultimate product. They all work so damn well, it's not worth getting my nose 3 inches from the paint to see the difference. Recently tried Mckee's 37 10 minutes sealant, and find it no different from any of the other wipe on products like Ultima, blackfire, or carpro. Works great! I finally settled on carpro ech20 as a weekly rinseless wash, and any one of these sealants every 90 days , that are still on my shelf.
 
Fair point. Most of these products are more than good enough. I'm doing this largely because there's a lot of opinion flying around with little real information or data. I just wanted to know what products are mostly hype vs. which ones work well. And also the price to performance curve.

I'm not addressing perceived visual differences. Regardless of price and durability, people can claim one product looks better than another. In my overly simple tests (using the wife) I haven't seen any big differences. But they could be there.
 
RippyD said:
Fair point. Most of these products are more than good enough. I'm doing this largely because there's a lot of opinion flying around with little real information or data. I just wanted to know what products are mostly hype vs. which ones work well. And also the price to performance curve.

I'm not addressing perceived visual differences. Regardless of price and durability, people can claim one product looks better than another. In my overly simple tests (using the wife) I haven't seen any big differences. But they could be there.
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It's interesting you talk about the "wife test". That's probably what changed my way of detailing, after trying 10-12 different sealants/coatings/polishes, my wife said to me "they all look great, I can't tell a difference in any of them", and then I realized that all my backbreaking work was so that I could be OCD and try and ascertain the difference… When really 99% of the public didn't care, and couldn't tell… The "wife/best friend test" keeps me sane, saves my poor old tired body, and keeps my detailing shelf free of more products that work essentially, just the same.
 
RippyD said:
I did some soap testing and discovered that even a rinseless wash can mask the properties of a sealant. I don't think the results here are wrong, but this may explain some of the inconsistency I was seeing that I guessed was due to temperature. The question is what to do about it? Rinsing with a MF after washing helps some. Going forward I will likely either pressure wash and not use any soap or will use a rinseless and then PW afterward. Not sure which is better and am open to imput.

For today's pics I didn't wash - I used a pressure washer with no soap. The light was bad and don't have many usable pics.

On right side where I had the best longevity things are still working, but barely. You can see DG 111 and Track Claw starting to shed water after I flooded it with the hose. It's time to call these done.
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Sonax PNS still doing something, but not much.
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Interestingly, Paint Guard+ appears to have some life left in it which I hadn't seen recently when washing with soap. This one needs a retest.
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Will try to get both hoods polished and sealants re-applied this weekend. Have some deck work and other stuff to do also - will have to see how it goes.
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Holy smokes!

111 still hanging on....

I once applied 111 to one of my former employers lease vehicles, when I worked at a car wash. It stood up admirably to the harsh chemicals and cloth brushes. That's when it won me over.
 
For what it's worth, Duragloss 101 is no slouch either. Very effective at handling light towel marring. On a well polished daily driver, this is probably the only product one would need for the duration of the vehicle's service life.

Severely underrated product.
 
Agree. I'll get to DG 101. I'm kinda testing AIOs, kinda not. I should double back and do some AIO comparison. More effort since I'm likely going through a lot of pads that day. Not impossible, just not as easy as sealants.
 
glen e said:
It's interesting you talk about the "wife test". That's probably what changed my way of detailing, after trying 10-12 different sealants/coatings/polishes, my wife said to me "they all look great, I can't tell a difference in any of them", and then I realized that all my backbreaking work was so that I could be OCD and try and ascertain the difference… When really 99% of the public didn't care, and couldn't tell… The "wife/best friend test" keeps me sane, saves my poor old tired body, and keeps my detailing shelf free of more products that work essentially, just the same.
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Been avoiding this, but will jump in lightly. We're all subject to the placebo effect. There's also something called "choice-supportive bias." We all do it. None of us are immune. I first learned about this when doing high end audio and people would go on and on about the audible differences between cables. Amazingly, any time you blind test people these differences disappear. Placebo effect and choice-supportive bias.

Same thing here, perhaps to a lesser degree. When I read somebody going on and on about how how coating is "the best" when they haven't compared it side by side to anything, I just have to roll my eyes. OF COURSE the coating you just paid $350 for and took two days to apply looks good. Your head would explode if it didn't. btw, I see this much more on the sister site than I do here.

So what's my point? I put three products on the wife's Boxster on three adjacent panels. I was sure I could see a difference. One is considered cool looking. One warm. One in between. All very nice sealants. Had her look and look and look. Mid-day. Afternoon. Setting sun. "The all look good. They're all very shiny. My car looks great. What do you want from me?" Maybe there was a difference. She certainly wasn't seeing it.

Stepping off my soapbox.
 
RippyD said:
Been avoiding this, but will jump in lightly. We're all subject to the placebo effect. There's also something called "choice-supportive bias." We all do it. None of us are immune. I first learned about this when doing high end audio and people would go on and on about the audible differences between cables. Amazingly, any time you blind test people these differences disappear. Placebo effect and choice-supportive bias.

Same thing here, perhaps to a lesser degree. When I read somebody going on and on about how how coating is "the best" when they haven't compared it side by side to anything, I just have to roll my eyes. OF COURSE the coating you just paid $350 for and took two days to apply looks good. Your head would explode if it didn't. btw, I see this much more on the sister site than I do here.

So what's my point? I put three products on the wife's Boxster on three adjacent panels. I was sure I could see a difference. One is considered cool looking. One warm. One in between. All very nice sealants. Had her look and look and look. Mid-day. Afternoon. Setting sun. "The all look good. They're all very shiny. My car looks great. What do you want from me?" Maybe there was a difference. She certainly wasn't seeing it.

Stepping off my soapbox.
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And this is why I don't feel the need to buy a ton of different products. In fact, the number has diminished.

I try and maximize my abities with whatever product I have, and just go with it.

Junkman calls it "chasing a shine". We can spend thousands of dollars in the process, without addressing our techniques, and never be satisfied.

I see this a lot with compounds and tools. Everyone is fighting for the fastest defect removal, without realizing that they might be tripping over themselves with pad load. Some of these combinations cut TOO well, clog the pad, and quit cutting after a pass or two. The operator fails to take this into consideration, and will conclude the product combo is ineffective. Then the search continues with addressing technique.

And with coatings... It's insane. So many on the market, each with pretty impressive claims.

I just prefer to do a 601/111 for a high end protection and call it a day. If they want to pay for a coating, I have Gloss Coat on hand.
 
dlc95 said:
I see this a lot with compounds and tools. Everyone is fighting for the fastest defect removal, without realizing that they might be tripping over themselves with pad load. Some of these combinations cut TOO well, clog the pad, and quit cutting after a pass or two.
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Agree. I dislike one of the HD compounds - it was nearly impossible to remove (Adapt, maybe?). I'd prefer other stuff to 105. Other than that the others I've tried all seem to work fine. I will say that I'd like to have a forced rotation machine for curves and other tough spots. I'm more of a limiting factor than my tools.

Four days of rain forecast for later this week. I'll try to check sheeting before then and then we'll see how they did through the rain.
 
I've done a AIO comparison but not to the extent u did so I'd love to see one, and have plenty to send u

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dlc95 said:
Duragloss 101 is no slouch either. Very effective at handling light towel marring. On a well polished daily driver, this is probably the only product one would need for the duration of the vehicle's service life.

Severely underrated product.
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How does it compare to 501??
 
RippyD said:
So what's my point? I put three products on the wife's Boxster on three adjacent panels. I was sure I could see a difference. One is considered cool looking. One warm. One in between. All very nice sealants. Had her look and look and look. Mid-day. Afternoon. Setting sun. "The all look good. They're all very shiny. My car looks great. What do you want from me?" Maybe there was a difference. She certainly wasn't seeing it.
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This point right here is why threads like this one are my favorite.

I could honestly care less about how a LSP looks. Can I see the differences? Sure, sometimes. But I’m just interested in having something that lasts. If you polish the paint to a good standard, it’ll all look good anyway.




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Supposed to rain for the next 4 days. Wanted to check these before and after.

Those QDs are working well.
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Rover hood is looking good. I had to check one side at a time to really see what was happening. I kept noticing one slower area. If you look closely below you may be able to see it: 2nd from the front on the right side still has water while everything else is mostly clear. Poorboys EX-P. It's clearing faster than the spots with no sealant, but more slowly than everything else. I thought it could be positional or how I was directing the water. But the other side with 303 Spray Wax is clearing quickly and I moved the hose around to different positions.

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Not sure if it's slower or failing already. If it doesn't hold up over the weekend I'll probably reapply and try it again. Could be an application issue.
 
We got some rain over the weekend - maybe 0.25". I washed both hoods this afternoon with N-914 at 256:1. Let's start with the easier one first. After washing I rinsed with nozzle and then flooded the hood. After a few seconds here's how it looked:
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The middle section (Fast Clean & Shine + Aquawax) cleared a few seconds later. The Ech2o + Reload on the left never fully cleared. So those are good for a week or less. Not terrible for a detailer. The DG 931 is still doing well. (Fixed it - had wrong DG product #.)

The Rover hood is more complicated. I washed it, rinsed it with a nozzle, then flooded it. The water mostly stayed there. Umm.... what the heck happened? I started looking at smaller sections. The front left was sheeting water: Four Star Ultimate wax, Dodo Surpreme, and McKee's fast wax (in that order) were clearing water well. Not much else happening. You have to look closely but the line between the clear area and standing water is there.

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I thought to myself this has to be wrong. I got a clean MF and soaked it with water. Flooded the hood, and then wiped it down. My thinking was that some soap residue must be left and it's masking the sheeting action (at 256:1 and a rinse, how much could really be left?). After wiping, I flood it again. The results were maybe a little better, but largely the same. Those three panels cleared fairly quickly, followed by BF Carnuba, SFX-4, and Nano Shock. Griots Spray Wax and Megs 20 had a little action, but not much. I waited about 20 seconds. Then I waited another 20 or so. The rest of those products just aren't clearing water.

Here you can see the Nano Shock area clearing and others around it with standing water.
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Maybe application error? These products aren't exactly hard to apply. I hate to label all the ones not sheeting as terrible products, but they seem to have failed. Will try again in a few days to see if I get a different result. Would like to hear from anyone who has significantly different results with those products.
 
Maybe a dumb question but the angle the car has where you rinse it. Do it have a very horisontell level? I see some times most on parts of the roof but to the hood also if the surface the car stands on has a certain angle that makes the level of horisontell extreme. But on the other hand it's more of bigger blobbs than the look of a done protection.

Did you have a PW to do a final rinse with? Don't know if it's gonna make a difference but maybe worth a shot to try to PW rinse the N-914 off. Then do the sheeting test.

How does it look when spritz with a fine mist of water to the surface. If it beads up or not.
 
Good questions. I had decided to pressure wash with water after washing but didn't have time yesterday. Will do so today. Hoping that revives some of of those sealants. Regarding angle, my driveway slopes quite a bit. The Rover hood drains toward the windshield for these tests, the Sentra slops a little toward the front. I'll get angle measurements later this morning. I'll try spraying a fine mist and see what happens.
 
Ugh... 931/932. The pink stuff that smells like bubble gum. Fixed it above.
 
EDIT: leaving this results up, but they may not be accurate. I did a quick test a day later and got better results. In the interest of being as fair as I can to all the products, I'd prefer to go with better rather than worse. I don't know why there's a difference.

--------------------

Did some testing with the pressure washer and rinseless washing. Pressure washed the hood, then flooded it and monitored. Then washed with N-914 @ 256:1 and flooded to compare results. Noticed a few things:

1. I was too impatient yesterday. Some of these are working, but very slowly.
2. Some of them aren't working. They may clear after 4-5 minutes and when I wash I can see tape lines, but they aren't doing much at all based on water movement.
3. I didn't see any significant difference in how these behaved after pressure washing or after rinseless washing.

The two fastest cleared water in under 15 seconds. The Dodo product is a little faster.
  • Dodo Supreme Acrylic Spritz
  • Four Star Ultimate Spray Wax
These next five took closer to a minute. The fastest of these was Nano Shock:
  • Nano shock
  • SFX-4
  • Mystery #4
  • Megs 20
  • 303 spray wax
The next two took between 1-2 minutes:
  • McKees Fast Wax
  • Blackfire Carnuba Spray
This group was all 3+ mins. I stopped timing after 3:30.
  • Poorboys EX-P
  • Prima hydro
  • Griots spray wax
The last group appear to not be working. After 3.5 minutes these didn't move water any faster than the areas without sealant. They eventually get clear of water, but so will the un-sealed areas.
  • Griots Finishing Sealant
  • HD Poxy
  • Prima Slick
  • Rupes P808
  • Poorboys with Carnuba
  • 3M Synthetic
Will try to get some pics posted - didn't have much luck getting usable ones.
 
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