Silica Spray Showdown: McKee's v. Gyeon v. CarPro

[kevincwelch]

One thought as each one begins to fail you could reveal that one


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Well, that's an idea....

[kevincwelch]

Here is my 2 week update. I have opinions about which is leading the race.

Conditions
Over the past two weeks, the car has seen rainy weather and has traveled on interstate highways. I would say that it got less than its usual use and abuse since we were out of town for a few days and it sat in the garage. I cleaned the hood a total of 2 times with N914 using the waterless dilution and heavily saturated the hood each time.

My wife parked under a tree Friday evening and I didn`t discover these goodies until this afternoon when I did the test.



There was one on each side of the hood, and the outcome was the same on both sides. I used the technique to clean bird bombs as described by Mike Phillips.






So, whatever is protecting Panel A and Panel C (Panel B was not affected by any bird bombs) did a fine job. I did not see any etching at all after about 18 hours of massive bird bombs sitting on the hood.

Cleaning
Today I cleaned it with a heavy saturation of N914 using the waterless dilution before performing the test. There wasn`t much beading when applying the N914, but I don`t consider that a good test of a LSP`s ability to bead water. N914 did a fine job of grabbing the grime and dirt off the hood, and it certainly was no skin off my back to wipe the hood dry afterwards. The panels felt uniformly smooth and slick. I used Shine and Buff towels to do the cleaning and Eagle Edgeless towels to do the buffing. Looks great across the board.




Beading Test
Here are the pictures of the beading. The first picture is the beading immediately after the application of the silica spray, and the second picture is the beading of the same panel today (2 weeks).

Panel A




Panel B




Panel C




My opinions: all three panels demonstrate decreased performance. Hard to tell, but A and B look similar. C definitely is more disorganized and amorphous.


Sheeting Tests
Judge for yourself.





Conclusions
All panels are slick and reveal that mirror shine, and I think it looks particularly good for a light metallic paint. In terms of wetting ability, all three panels show decreased performance in their ability to bead water. The water droplets are more disorganized, show less contact angle and are more amorphous in appearance. The sheeting is slower in my opinion; however, the materials still do a fine job of getting the water off the hood. Products A and C seemed to protect the clearcoat from those bird bombs, so I feel great about that. Nevertheless, I am getting a feeling that one or all of these products is going to tank somewhere around weeks 4-6. My next report will be 2 weeks from now, and that will be the 1 month mark from the product applications.

[Cruzscarwash]

Man panel a looked so good in the beginning

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[kevincwelch]

Man panel a looked so good in the beginning

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I'm not going to call it quits yet on Panel A. It may still have some life yet!

[Cruzscarwash]

It's only been 2 weeks, was hoping to see this at at least a month

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[WRAPT C5Z06]

I've Hydro2 and was hardly impressed with it's durabilty.

[Killerheroin]

Thank you for the update. It will be interesting to see if the product will last another two weeks.

[Marc08EX]

Thanks for the update Kevin! Looking forward to the month update.

[kevincwelch]

Thank you for the update. It will be interesting to see if the product will last another two weeks.

Thanks for the update Kevin! Looking forward to the month update.

Thanks, guys.

I think the month report will be really telling in terms of which of these products is still hanging in there.

[kevincwelch]

I've Hydro2 and was hardly impressed with it's durabilty.

How long did it last for you, and where did you apply it? What were the conditions? Just curious...