ilogikal1

It depends which type you've got. Give me £45 and I'll tell you if you've got the right one. I don't actually know. Sorry.

Another vote for Atkin, Chris will see you right.

And now it is! http://www.amazon.co.uk/Auto-Finesse-DES200-Desire-Car/dp/B007FR4PQQ/ Must... Resist...

You keep your Chubby well away from me, young man.

Hate filling the fuel tank. Love emptying the fuel tank.

Because no such app exists. "Gas Cubby" on the other hand...

"You think that's good - you should see the other eleventy billion threads about MPG related 'achievements'..." I'm sure at least half of WhackyWill's post count is that picture.

Thank you. The most irritating thing is when you discover that one product for any given job... and then sure enough ten minutes later something else shows up on the market and claims to be better.

GM, I hate you recently, all these posts making me want to spend my money with these simple but very effective mods. Looks great, mate.

Why thank you very much, I'm glad others are enjoying it too. And to think I rubbish at science in school. It really is very difficult to argue with the two FK waxes (not least of all because they're inanimate objects ), both 1000P and 2685 really do perform exceptionally well. The only downside to FK products is their numbering system. I'm sure there's a rationality to it, but I'll be stuffed if I can work it out.

Wheels then. The following was done with some prep (fallout removed, cleaned using Blackfire Tyre & Wheel Cleaner and Wheel Woolies, then shampoo washed for good measure, but not de-tarred nor clayed because I couldn't be a*sed frankly) and then just one coat of each. The contestants are; SmartWax RimWax Poorboys Wheel Sealant Finish Kare 1000P and HubiKote HubiRims (referred to in some pictures as the blind test product - that's because it was a blind test. Obviously. From one of the Waxyboxes. Hence this particular test). SmartWax claims RimWax; Cleans, Shines and Protects in one step Reduces brake dust by upto 75% UV protection reduces wear and fading Prevents water spots Accelerates water runoff Removes minor swirls Long lasting Adds gloss and depth Repels damaging brake dust and road contaminates Easy to use - one step formula Extreme Shine + Protection for Chrome and Alloy Wheels... RIMWAX™ - Premium wax and polish delivers a brilliant shine and protective shield. Formulated with non-stick technology and anti-static guard RIMWAX is engineed dark purple to deflect brake dust, dirt and abrasives. Poorboys says of their Wheel Sealant; Long lasting protection for wheels with brake dust problems and also provides an excellent barrier against weather on wheels of any type, including coated, chrome, painted, polished aluminium, and even plastic hubcaps. Repels brake dust and grime, making wheels easy to clean and maintain. HubiKote states of HubiRims; A soft wheel wax that creates a polymer based barrier to enhance gloss and protect from brake dust. The wax bonds into a flexible microcoating which gives your wheels the smoothest / deepest gloss. The bonded wax is impenetrable to the elements gives top quality beading that revives with each wash and improves cleaning times. Safe on matte finish wheels, and other finishes including polished, stainless, chrome and powder coated. And Finish Kare says of 1000P; ... is made from a blend of synthetic waxes to obtain a high degree of consistent quality. The most important attributes of this wax blend are hi melting points and greater hardness than natural waxes. Thus, the resulting film provides not only the high gloss but resistance to wear from heat, water & other natural causes. California VOC compliant. It is great for all painted, chrome and fiberglass surfaces found on Marine, Aircraft & Automotive finishes. It is easy to use and easy to wipe off. As both HubiRims & FK1000P are both polymer based sealants and RimWax and Poorboys aren't, the idea was to put Poorboys & RimWax head-to-head on the rear wheels and HubiRims and FK head-to-head on the front wheels. So, some pictures then. I can't remember how many miles were covered between each set of pictures but suffice it to say the car was used. First up is one week after application and on a dirty car; Poorboys and RimWax already appeared to be struggling, but FK and HubiRims didn't even blink at this point. However Pooboys still sheeted just well as when it was fresh and the beading was then revived somewhat when washed whereas RimWax sheeting had slowed and the beading didn't come back at all. After two weeks, it looked like this; By this point RimWax had failed completely. Poorboys was struggling on. FK & HubiRims noticed no change at all. Again, the sheeting on Poorboys was still present but it was beginning to be shown up by FK & HubiRims which were sheeting noticably quicker. By the end of week three nothing had changed at all to the above. Four weeks on and we get this; RimWax was nothing but a distant memory. Poorboys had given up at some point during the week, no beading real, sheeting poor at best. FK & HubiKote still soldiered on witout missing a beat. Week 5 was more of the above. After 6 weeks I was left with just the two and this; The beading had started to drop off a bit on both FK and HubiRims but noth were still sheeting perfectly well - this was after a wash with nothing more than shampoo and a Wheel Woolie, by the way. There was no sign of any brake dust/dirt after the light clean but I decided to call the test to a close on Instagram as it was designed to provide feedback for HubiRims, as such the pictures dry up (pardon the pun) here. However for my own purposes I did keep note of both for another 3 weeks after this (bringing it to 9 weeks since application) and both saw a slight decline in beading but no change in beading. In week 10 I had a brain fart and a new fallout remover to play with, so my first thought was to test it on the front wheels... which pretty much immediately killed of both FK and HubiRims. The good news is that there wasn't much fallout on the wheels and it was no real difference between the two. As I said somewhere nearer the beginning, this test was done with only one coat of each. I know from previous experience that it's quite possible to seel 6 weeks out of Poorboys with 3 or 4 coats. RimWax sees no advantage to being layered, probably due to it's "cleaning" abilities rather than it's lack of abilities, but I've never seem more than 2 weeks out of it whether I put on one coat or 6. No, really, I tried 6 coats once. It took nearly as long to apply the f**king stuff as it did for it to fall off. FK1000P can also be layered and 2 or 3 coats is will see a good few months protection even through winter. I'm currently still testing multiple coats of HubiRims on another car, that was applied 10 weeks ago and it's still going strong at this point. RimWax retails at £15.95 for... an amount. That isn't specified on their own website. According to the first other source I checked, that's for "256gm tin". Poorboys retails at £14 for 227grams. HubiRims retails at £15 for 30grams. No, that is not a typo. FK1000P retails at £18 for for a f**k off big tin the size of a plate... sorry, that's 412grams in weight terms. So my conclusion (complete with SuperStu sponsored "ilogikal1 OCD rating") then; RimWax is sh*t - 0 out of 5. Or a billion. It doesn't score on any scale. At all. It only scores as high as 0 because if I did negative points I'd just be getting silly at this point. Poorboys is okay - 2 out of 5. It loses points for it's poor durability compared to others and the requirement for multiple coats to make it worth taking the wheels off, but it does work. HubiRims impressed me to keep up with the mighty FK1000P - 4 out of 5. It works very well, doesn't need to be layered to get good durability, but it's limited to just the wheels and is horrendously expensive compared to the alternative. Which brings us too; FK1000P - 5 out of 5. Easy to use, has multiple uses (can be used on the bodywork and even the kitchen hob too ), huge durability, incredibly economical (that f**k off big tin will last you forever. Probably.) and, as has previously been discussed on here somewhere, it has a picture of a shark on the tin. A shark! Having said all that, I have some G Techniq C5 to go on my wheels once they've been refurbed....

Not a bad idea that, I may shamelessly pilfer that for my test thread. Of the AF stuff I've tried; Avalanche is a 4.5 - works exceptionally well but it's not cheap. Citrus Power is a 5 at that price - works exceptionally and is a good price. Iron Out is a 4.5 - a decent alternative to Iron X, but more costly. Tripple is a 5 - great filling/glazing abilities (needs to be topped with a wax though, it's not very durable on it's own). Lather is a 5 at the 5litre price - the only downside to it usually is the cost. Crystal is a 3 - it's perfectly capable but I prefer others. Revive is a 3.5 - it's good and does what you want it too but doesn't have the durability of coatings (obviously) and it's not on offer here either. To be honest, the only gripe I have with any of the AF range that I've tried is the cost. Desire is the only wax of theirs that I've tried and it's very good but not discounted. I've not tried any of it but the Revitalise kit gets good reviews as a rule and is obscenely cheap it's almost rude not to if you're after a complete polishing kit. And I've got Rejuvenate to play with when I get round to my summer detail but these offers may not be around by then.

Greetings ladies and gentlemen, prepare your wallets. Amazon currently have a few Auto Finesse products on offer including, but not limited to, 5litres of Citrus Power for £23 delivered, Revitalise kit for £50 and Illusion for £50.

The simple solution would be to take a photo of the shed with the username visible... that'll be allowed, surely?

I've found the pictures, I'll upload them and do a write up on here tomorrow for the wheel sealants.

Ooh, I've got a test of that somewhere too actually (I think it was another Instagram jobbie, that). I'll have to dig the pictures out. It's never lasted more than fortnight for me, regardless of how many layers I applied. I just think there's better (and much, much better) products available that are just as easy to use but last considerably longer.

I have a bit left over, so I might reserve a panel to test this on a properly prepared panel with a pressure washer and see if that makes any difference. What I would recommend though is Bathe+, it cleans really well, feels very lubricated and adds protection at the same time. It's a great maintenance product for a well protected car and it'll save you all of ten minutes of your life topping up the HydrO2/C2... Yeah, it doesn't sound that great an idea when I put it that way actually. I don't have any Rain X, unfortunately, otherwise I would have gladly shown it what a proper glass sealant is like. I really don't rate Rain X at all, as such it is actually blacklisted (along with Rim Wax and most things Simoniz ) from my house so I'm afraid I'm even going to have to object to obtaining even a sample of this from anywhere for any purpose other than having something to throw at the neighbours intrusive cat.

And in no way related to that... Those of you who follow me on Instagram will already know that about 4 weeks ago I did this; Yep, that's right, I taped up the French doors and made them all smeary in different ways. Actually, that's not quite true. I cleaned (some of) it first. I'm sure you can guess from the above pictures what's happening here, here's what's applied where; Now you might have noticed that country has seen a bit of rain in the last month, but it actually has taken 4 whole weeks for any of it to actually fall on this particular window. I've since realised that the front of the house seems to get most of the rain. I haven't got a clue why. But anyway, it turns out this week that the rain was falling in the right direction. So, here's some pictures of rain... The square(ish) sections And for reference, with the tape lines marked And for comparison, the untreated glass; This is the Car Chem section (with the tape line visible above it); PIAA section; And the G5 section (which I would have sworn was in focus at the time, but hey ho); In terms of beading PIAA appears to be little/no different from the control area with nothing on, whilst Car Chem and G5 both appear to be fairly similar. There's a visible line of resistance above G5, a similar effect was above the Car Chem section but no sign of anything about the PIAA section - the same was the case for the tape lines in the top section when it finally got rained on enough but if you've seen one picture of a wet window... Sheeting is very different with G5 way out ahead. As can be seen in this short video; Now it's worth nothing that this is on static glass. I've run all three on my own car numerous times each (although not all three together) and all three do what you what you want them to in real world application. On the car my thoughts are as such. PIAA - works well at 35mph+ when freshly applied which slowly drops to over 40-45mph as it starts to fail, then just eventually stops working altogether, Car Chem - works well at 32mph+ when freshly applied and slowly drops off to speeds of over 45mph for a while and then sharply drops off to higher speeds until it's failed completely. G5 - works brilliantly at speeds as low as 23mph+ for several weeks then slowly drops off until it fails completely. In case it makes any difference to you, my car was always running the PIAA Silicone wipers with all of these sealants and none of them ever smeared. G5 juddered for a minute or two in very light rain when first applied but nothing after that and none at all from the other two. In terms of application, both PIAA and Car Chem are very similar liquids whereas G5 is a bit thicker (but still very runny). On the above window they were all applied with individual make-up pads (kindly donated by "Harley" Quinn... because my geekery actually knows no bounds ), but PIAA and Car Chem can be applied just as well using microfibre cloths. G5 can be too but it's hugely wasteful this way. I find it easier to get decent coverage of a not-too-thin-not-too-thick layer using the make-up pads for the PIAA and G5, but Car Chem doesn't seem to matter much whichever way it's applied. PIAA is a squeeze/drip onto applicator, apply to glass, allow to haze, apply a second coat, allow that to haze and buff. It goes on as easily as it sounds, it can take 10-15 minutes to cure fully though and buffing takes a little of pressure to be thorough but nothing too strenuous. Car Chem is a simpler spray on (either onto the glass or applicator), allow a minimum of 8 minutes to cure and then buff. It's just as easy to apply, if not easier because it's a spray, but does take longer than 8 minutes to cure (again, about 10-15 minutes) and I've found if it's smearing at all it's because it's not cured fully. Buffing is p*ss easy when it's actually cured though, absolutely no pressure is required at all. G5 however is a bugger to apply (comparatively). It's a drip onto the applicator, apply to glass, allow to cure, buff method, again a second coat is expressly advised in the application instructions. The problem (such as it is) is that it cures very quickly, so you don't get much working time with it whereas the other two you've got a good 10 minutes, this you've barely got a full minute before it starts to cure. Buffing is a chore too, if you leave it too long it just doesn't want to come off. You've got enough time to do the full windscreen, but only if you don't f*ck about really. PIAA costs £4.99 for 150ml Car Chem costs £6.99 for 100ml (on it's own, or for an extra £1 you get their (excellent) glass cleaner, 2 (very good) microfibre cloths and even a funky little carry bag. Bargain!) G5 costs £9.98 for 100ml. Personally, I'd happily recommend any of them as they're all very capable. PIAA works out the cheapest. Car chem is the quickest, easiest too apply (and if you spend the extra £1, you get everything you need for clean, protected glass). G5 works the best once it's applied. Nanolex is next on my list, so look forward to yet another review coming forth... eventually. Update on post #92 and the follow up to that on post #99.

Whilst BSD does have some very impressive water behaviour, it's just too much of an ar*e to apply for my liking, even with the better spray head. I just don't get along with to be honest. It wasn't bad at the self cleaning thing though, as you mention, but I didn't find it any better than the FK Pink wax that was on the wings to be any worse really.

Waxoyl, whilst still perfectly usable, is a bit old hat these days. I prefer the Bilt Hamber Dynax range to this, personally.

I've realised I've not actually concluded the Reload/C2v3/BSD, nor the HydrO2/Wetcoat/Bathe+ stuff from the first page. So I'll address that first; all of them were going strong when I got bored and started the wax test. The HydrO2/Wetcoat/Bathe+ were all clearly weakened because it didn't take anything more than a strong APC wash, but then none of them were applied with a pressure washer and Bathe+ was only used for the wash, there was no additional application after that. Both Bathe+ and Wetcoat have earned themselves a place in my arsenal, for simple ease of use I'll probably be going this route for my winter protection this year (yes, I know it's not even June yet!). HydrO2 would have earned a place but for the fact that my preferred distributor doesn't stock it, absolutely no other reason than that and it will be my 'go to' if I can't get Wetcoat for any reason. Reload didn't seem to be holding up too strongly, in all honesty, but it was still hanging there. C2 and BSD were doing better, but again they were all removed fairly easily with multiple hits of APC. I doubt I'd buy Reload, and I still dislike the application of BSD but I will happily use C2 again. Now that, that's out of the way, have a teaser of what's coming next;

Be honest now, did you at any point take a gulp of paint whilst simultaneously dipping our paint brush in the beer though?

Looks good, Graham. Fair old effort doing it with everything in situ, too.

That's the buzzer switch. It switches on/off the buzzer. You're welcome.

Try Atkin Motor Engineers, in Malton. Drop Chris a message on here; Atkin666