There ’s a big , shiny elephant in the garage that we need to address . Serious gondola hoi polloi have been hip to this for geezerhood , just likewashing your car without water . For everyone else : unless you ’re planning on taking your million - dollar beauty to aconcours - level car showthis weekend , please , stop using wax on your car . To paraphrase the greatInigo Montoya , " You keep using that wax . I do not mean it does what you think it does . "
Real wax literally grows on trees
allow ’s briefly search what it is that you ’re putting on your railroad car . The palm leaves of the Brazilian carnauba tree generate a wax that , when the leaves are chopped off , hardens and isharvested for various uses , like the hard scale on various candy and medications . It ’s also what ’s in the glistening bath of Copernicia cerifera wax you bought for your car . That ’s all okay and good – it really does provide a hard coating that protect your auto ’s paint … for all of about a fortnight .
And it doesn’t last very long
Unless you ’re obsessed with your railway car enough to spend a few hours every other weekend waxing it , you ’re not take anything close to the protection you require . Wax ’s foils are uncomplicated and unavoidable : it ’s incredibly susceptible to the elements . Even park in the sunshine expedites its deterioration .
Ultimately , the one thing real wax does well is impart a slightly yellowish depth to the spirit of your paint – so if you ’ve just drop five figure on an absolutely gross paint job , go decently onward and keep using it . Otherwise , you ’re doing thing the old - fashioned way , which in this character , mean more difficult and not as good .
What you should be using is called sealant
Sealantperforms a largely similar function to wax , but it ’s so immensely better , it ’s like comparing a 4 K TV to your grandfather ’s 19 in pipe television . Sealant is a synthetic chemical compound that bonds to your paint to imprint a hard shell , protect your key from aging at the helping hand of the sun or an tempestuous bird . The biggest difference ? It lasts much , much longer . you may licitly go up to six months before having to reapply sealant , depending on how rough of an environment your car see sidereal day to day .
It’s so much easier to use, too
chafe wax onto your paint , wait for it to haze over , then buffet it off is about as verbose as mow your lawn . Even if you pay someone to do it for you , that cost adds up if you have it done biweekly … which again , you ’ll have to . Sealant , on the other hand , is easier to apply , and many orders of order of magnitude sluttish to remove .
As a bonus , if you ’ve clayed and polished your paint beforehand , it really will look like someone pelt fluid chicken feed on your machine . If you have no melodic theme what I think when I say things like claying your paint , do n’t worry about it . Just use a sealer and you ’ll be very happy with the result .
By the way, “wax” is not a catch-all term for making your car shiny
A fast gripe from a devoted car guy : people often expend brand names to identify other alike product – think " Kleenex " instead of " tissue . " That ’s not something you’re able to do here , because wax and sealant are so very dissimilar . If you say you ’re " waxing " your railway car , I ’ll just feign you mean you ’re using carnauba wax in an attempt to get that yellowy deepness . If you mean it in any other way , you ’re misuse the word and opening the threshold to disarray .
Sealant ’s not the futurity , it ’s the present tense . There’seven nerveless raw stuffon the purview , but let ’s save that for another day , shall we ?
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Flickr/Graeme Maclean
Wikimedia/Tacarijus
Flickr/Jean-Pierre
Flickr/Jayme Frye
