Sealant Vs. Carnuba Protection?

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Imatk

New member
I just read in another thread that carnuba protects your paint finish more than a sealant will.



From debris, bird bombs, acid rain, etc. etc.



Is this correct?



I've used a lot of nubas but I went back to Zaino for the durability and, I assumed, the better longer-lasting protection.



Someone give me the low-down.
 
Sometimes I've seen evidence of that, comparing #16 and Collinite to KSG and UPP. Dunno how much you can really extrapolate for it, but my outside/beater cars seem to do fine against environmental contamination with those waxes and my more pampered vehicles sometimes get issues when protected with the abovementioned sealants :nixweiss
 
I witnessed an interesting phenomenon today. A friend called that he had washed his car and he wanted to come over for a quickie wax job.



He arrived minutes later (our town is 20 "minutes" long). While I was WAUDing his car, I noticed a fresh bee poo on the A-pillar. I scraped it off and voila, a nice etching - in less than 15 mins!



This was never an issue with the former Collinite layers, but it proved to be too tough for the 3 month old #21 ×2. His car is a 1.5 year old Honda Accord (aka Acura TSX).



I experienced sprinkler etching in less than an hour with multiple Z2Pro layers, so when it comes to tough protection, I always use a heavy carnauba ×3.
 
#21 etches like crazy on my Subaru. It a 24/7 outside car. I hit it with a couple of layers of Collinite 845 to protect it. I have no explanation for why it happens but it does. Soft clear is more susceptible from what I can see because my Mercedes W124 doesn't have the same problem.
 
Water etching on Z2 in less than an hour? Wow, must be something in the water over there. I have had my car out on 90 plus degrees and it got drenched by my neighbors sprinkler and baked in the sun for several hours and it wiped right off.
 
Bence said:
I experienced sprinkler etching in less than an hour with multiple Z2Pro layers, so when it comes to tough protection, I always use a heavy carnauba ×3.
Click to expand...



My same experience....
 
Carnuaba definately has some advantages.

One is the ability to absorb rain water droplets and leave the paint looking just washed and dried.



However the sealants I've been using for some time now have always provided me with protection that totally prevents water spots from leaving a stain, fallout, sap and tar failing to stick properly and just coming straight off with a warm shampoo at 1000 psi.



When I used meg's waxes over a decade ago, I noticed that alot of contaminants would stick to the car (suzuki swift back then)

I discovered sealants in 1999 and haven't looked back since



As long as a car has a few layers of both sealant and carnauba, the protection should be great and your car will only suffer contamination from exhausts, brake dust from other cars.

My falcon has not had any fallout on it for five years. It just doesn't stick and wipers might as well be removed completely as they haven't been used for six years.
 
i use switched to a sealant when i got a black car. i read, probibly here, that a carnuba has a much lower melt point than a synthetic sealant. as hot as a black car gets sitting in the sun on a summer day, i would assume the carnuba would evaporate off in a day. the sealant would tolerate those hot days better, and last longer. atleats this was my conclusion, let me know if i'm mistaken.



until i found this web site, the product that beaded the longest for me was, mothers carnuba cleaner paste wax. used it for religiously for years. post-autopian i've used a few different sealants, all bead many times longer that the mothers.



:idea
 
It's pretty hard to beat a good carnauba's protection. Sure, sealants last longer (generally), but when it comes to raw protection, nubas rule.
 
never seen anything good about wax except absorbing water droplets

It can attract dust when it begins to break down and I hate how some take alot of slickness out of the finish
 
Acrylic Synthetic for me.





I'm having a bad day, van got hit by hispanic who had no insurance and no license and I find out I have no way of making her pay for the damages. :hairpull



Derrick
 
I've always found in my experience that good, quality synthetics have more dirt and grime resistance and allow water to fly off the car and not stick. I just never found the same true with any carnauba...grime tended to stick more making the car harder to keep clean and makes washing more difficult. For daily drivers, I'm 100% syn for their longevity and protection!
 
All this talk of etching *does* make me thing that OTOH (compared to my previous post and general praise of carnaubas), some sprinkler water in Memphis got on the A8 and etched it *terribly* despite its fresh coat of #16. Aggressive rotary work didn't remove it, so we're just living with it lest I run out of clear prematurely.



TigerMike- Noting that YMMV always applies, I find that both #16 and Collinite do the self-cleaning thing very well. Better than BF, UPP, and KSG for instance. But then I haven't tried all that many sealants either.



3wide- As I understand it, once the carnauba dries/cures/whatever its melting point is higher than one might assume. While the Souveran on my Jag's hot hood does fail before the wax on the rest of the car, ScottWax uses Souveran on black cars in Texas and reports very good durability. I used carnaubas exclusively back when I had nothing but black vehicles (back before there *were* sealants), and they always worked fine for me. More YMMV stuff I suppose...
 
Thanks for the replies everyone. So it seems that there is no consensus.



I guess I'll keep using Zaino. It gives me the longer durability. I was a bit worried that people said the sealant doesn't protect against the acid rain and so on but if there's no conclusive opinion... I guess I'll keep doing the same thing :)
 
3wide- As I understand it, once the carnauba dries/cures/whatever its melting point is higher than one might assume. While the Souveran on my Jag's hot hood does fail before the wax on the rest of the car, ScottWax uses Souveran on black cars in Texas and reports very good durability. I used carnaubas exclusively back when I had nothing but black vehicles (back before there *were* sealants), and they always worked fine for me. More YMMV stuff I suppose...[/QUOTE]



i've read alot of scottwax threads about cmw, and was supprised he used it in the texas summers. i'd maybe have better luck with cmw. this summer when i first bought my black car i had a fresh coat of mothers wax and it sat outside for two days at my girlfriends parents, they live on a farm and the car got smothered in dust. when we went to leave it just seemed like the suface of the car had gotten stick and the dust litterly stuck to the car. for some dumb reason i tried to remove some of it with a claifornia car duster and swirled the crap out of it. since then i switch to sealants, it's sat outside in the sun alot since then and has never gotten the sticky feeling on the surface like it did that day. in another month or so here in iowa it's going to get cold and crappy, i plan to relayer my exp and maybe in the spring get some cmw and give it a try.



:buffing:
 
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