anyone has experience with carnauba wax?
- Thread starter Terry
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ca-dreaming
Member
Re: anyone has experience with carnauba wax?
I used to use it when I lived in California. But after moving to singapore and its heat I have become damn lazy.
Now I just take it to the hand wash stalls at the gas station (YIKES!)
I used to use it when I lived in California. But after moving to singapore and its heat I have become damn lazy.
Now I just take it to the hand wash stalls at the gas station (YIKES!)
Re: anyone has experience with carnauba wax?
carnauba wax give you that wet look but will not last as long as it should due to our hot climate. guess it depend on how long your car is explore to the sun as well as to the rain. so if you are using carnauba wax, you most likely will have to do a more regular detailing compare to using sealant. For our climate, sealant follow by carnauba will provide protection as well as the wet looks. that my 2 cents worth.
carnauba wax give you that wet look but will not last as long as it should due to our hot climate. guess it depend on how long your car is explore to the sun as well as to the rain. so if you are using carnauba wax, you most likely will have to do a more regular detailing compare to using sealant. For our climate, sealant follow by carnauba will provide protection as well as the wet looks. that my 2 cents worth.
centurion
Well-Known Member
Re: anyone has experience with carnauba wax?
Carnauba wax comes in several concentrations, ranging from mere 5% to somewhat like 40% .... it is a tough wax but in high concentrations it is hard to apply and in low concentrations it's almost no use to apply.
Carnauba lasts longer than most, but it cannot compare with the best polymers in long lasting protection in my use. Carnauba actually sticks around for about 2-3 weeks in our weather, compared to 1+ month for synthetics. The optic clarity of carnauba is good but not great, cannot compare with synthetics. In any case, where clarity is concerned, your polish+filler has a lot of role to play.
For quite long I've switched to synthetics already, preferring the more pedestrian Meguiar's NXT system compared to Zaino simply because I don't like the availability method of Zaino which is too much to me like a `pssst! i have this thing for a few hundred bucks, it works magic' method. But I have seen Zaino's results and it is noticeably better than the best work we can do with mass market stuff like Megs. But the effort for Megs is a fraction of Zaino's though, so fair's fair.
Carnauba wax comes in several concentrations, ranging from mere 5% to somewhat like 40% .... it is a tough wax but in high concentrations it is hard to apply and in low concentrations it's almost no use to apply.
Carnauba lasts longer than most, but it cannot compare with the best polymers in long lasting protection in my use. Carnauba actually sticks around for about 2-3 weeks in our weather, compared to 1+ month for synthetics. The optic clarity of carnauba is good but not great, cannot compare with synthetics. In any case, where clarity is concerned, your polish+filler has a lot of role to play.
For quite long I've switched to synthetics already, preferring the more pedestrian Meguiar's NXT system compared to Zaino simply because I don't like the availability method of Zaino which is too much to me like a `pssst! i have this thing for a few hundred bucks, it works magic' method. But I have seen Zaino's results and it is noticeably better than the best work we can do with mass market stuff like Megs. But the effort for Megs is a fraction of Zaino's though, so fair's fair.
Re: anyone has experience with carnauba wax?
have to agree with rliewky.... sealant topped with wax will give you the best of both worlds.
protection wise, most sealants last longer than wax... how much longer really depends on how often you wash your car... for example, a coat of P21s wax loses its shine after 1 week if you wash your car everyday (but then again it's a beauty wax)... the shine of 3 coats of zaino can last around 2 months in our climate, though it'll probably protect for slightly longer than that.
personally (not making a scientific claim here, just my personal observations), i find that sealants perform well in preventing oxidation but can be quite useless against bird bombs/water spotting.. though this could be due to the fact that you apply sealant less often than wax for most people.
looks is pretty much subjective... most sealants will leave a "glassy" look.. think of your car as having an additional layer of clear coat... i.e. very reflective... some people don't like this look as it can make a dark-coloured car look sterile or like plastic-wrapped/cling-filmed when it's too reflective (i.e. your eye tends to see the reflections instead of the colour of the car). This look can be desirable/great for white/silver cars though where achieving depth of reflections can be difficult.
wax, on the other hand, can give your car more warmth.. (e.g. the look of a car when you say "that black car really looks black!") which explains why some people see benefits of using it with darker colours. Furthermore, some waxes contain fillers, which can mask swirls (spider webbing) on dark cars... thus avoiding the need for an abrasive polish ever so often (you don't want to polish so often that you remove too much of your clear coat... twice a year is a good yardstick). A top of the line wax (zymol's concours, swisswax BOS and upwards) will also cost more than your top of the line sealant.
To achieve a really wet look, consider using a glaze to go along with your sealant/wax. You can use an acrylic based glaze if you're going the sealant route, or an "oil-based" glaze when using a wax. Some paint cleaners such as swisswax's, zymol's hd-cleanse, or p21, also makes the paint more wet looking.
hope this helps! cheers!
have to agree with rliewky.... sealant topped with wax will give you the best of both worlds.
protection wise, most sealants last longer than wax... how much longer really depends on how often you wash your car... for example, a coat of P21s wax loses its shine after 1 week if you wash your car everyday (but then again it's a beauty wax)... the shine of 3 coats of zaino can last around 2 months in our climate, though it'll probably protect for slightly longer than that.
personally (not making a scientific claim here, just my personal observations), i find that sealants perform well in preventing oxidation but can be quite useless against bird bombs/water spotting.. though this could be due to the fact that you apply sealant less often than wax for most people.
looks is pretty much subjective... most sealants will leave a "glassy" look.. think of your car as having an additional layer of clear coat... i.e. very reflective... some people don't like this look as it can make a dark-coloured car look sterile or like plastic-wrapped/cling-filmed when it's too reflective (i.e. your eye tends to see the reflections instead of the colour of the car). This look can be desirable/great for white/silver cars though where achieving depth of reflections can be difficult.
wax, on the other hand, can give your car more warmth.. (e.g. the look of a car when you say "that black car really looks black!") which explains why some people see benefits of using it with darker colours. Furthermore, some waxes contain fillers, which can mask swirls (spider webbing) on dark cars... thus avoiding the need for an abrasive polish ever so often (you don't want to polish so often that you remove too much of your clear coat... twice a year is a good yardstick). A top of the line wax (zymol's concours, swisswax BOS and upwards) will also cost more than your top of the line sealant.
To achieve a really wet look, consider using a glaze to go along with your sealant/wax. You can use an acrylic based glaze if you're going the sealant route, or an "oil-based" glaze when using a wax. Some paint cleaners such as swisswax's, zymol's hd-cleanse, or p21, also makes the paint more wet looking.
hope this helps! cheers!
