So I've never done a product review on Autopia mostly because there are a number of members who do very good reviews and because I hate gushing about products. I am intimately acquainted with how Autopia can cause you to want to try "the next best thing" over and over and over. I am also aware of how "flavor of the month" products tend to come and go very quickly around here. I do admit that I have been guilty of buying some of the hyped products, and while most have been quality purchases, none have "blown me away". It's the old standbys that you've been reading about for years that tend to be my 'favorites" (Menzerna polishes, poorboys lsp's, p21s,
souveran, etc...). Because of that I've all but stopped buying "new" products lately, and have just stuck with buying the products I know and like in bulk.
That said, I recently ran out of a couple of my "stand-by" sealants, one being
Menzerna FMJ and the other being Poorboys EX-P. Now I do have Z2pro, Z5pro, UPP, EX, WG DGS, etc... but I decided I wanted to try something new, so I took a leap of faith and ordered a pretty wide selection of werkstatt stuff (Prime Strong, AJ, AJT, CJ,
CG, AG). Before I go on I just want to add that it was cool of them to ship USPS for international shipping; as many Canadians know this helps us avoid duty (which would be about $25 on my $80 order). It also means the order can be tracked and generally arrives quicker than with UPS. The package arrived and was well packaged and in good condition.
I like to try all new products on my car first to get an idea of how they work in terms of application, dry time, removal, etc... So yesterday after returning from muddy Vermont I washed, clayed, polished with prime strong on a grey pad, buffed off after 30 min, then applied AJ via PC and buffed off after ~1 hour. Before I get to my impressions I want to say I am probably not going to post pics. I have them and they look great, but as we all know on properly prepped paint most stuff looks great in pics. I am a decent enough photographer but my cars paint is in good enough condition that even at full resolution it's tough to spot subtle differences in the paint. So I am going to hope you all respect my opinion enough that you'll trust my words without needing to see more shiny pics of my car.
Here are my impressions:
Prime Strong reminds me a lot of the old
AIO. It removes very light marring pretty quickly, it is also a bit tough to remove. Not "I let
SG sit for 30 minutes in the sun" tough, but it requires a bit more effort than some polishes/sealants. I very much liked the finish I was left with. I did have some super light drying induced marring that it took care of, and the gloss/wetness was very nice. I did expect it to be "sealant" like in it's reflectivity, which it was. Very reflective, super slick, almost made the paint look grey in the sun (which I typically don't like, but know a lot of people love).
I think I'll find myself using this relatively often. It seems to be a good "one step maintenance" kind of product, in that its of similar cut to other very light polishes like sfx3, vanilla moose, etc.. but provides some real protection. Of course it makes a great base for AJ, which brings me to AJ.
I applied AJ via PC and did it very thin per the instructions of everyone who has used it.
Two dabs, did a panel then went over the panel again. After the pad was primed I was able to use one small dab (maybe the size of a pea) to do an entire panel. Instead of immediately buffing it off I wanted to see how it would work if I used it like I use my other sealants, so I let it sit while I polished my chrome, sealed my wheels, dressed the trim, tires, wheel wells, cleaned the glass etc... After 50-60 min I then buffed it off with a dry mf. I found removal to be very easy. So up until now this review has been fairly muted, I like Prime Strong but didn't *LOVE* it, however I must say that I was really shocked at how much I liked the look of AJ. I very much expected it to look like Z2pro (which is kind of my baseline for "sealant-y" sealants), and it did to some extent, but on my black car there was definitely a depth and darkness that I don't see with most other sealants (aside from maybe Z5pro). It was also very, very wet looking and super slick. I was impressed. I will say that I still prefer the look of a carnauba like Souveran on black, but for a sealant AJ looked amazing imo. I then tried out AJT just to see how it applied and again was very impressed by the ease of application and the significant increase in gloss. The paint looked like a moving liquid. This morning I went down to see if it had changed at all but didn't notice an increase in depth, slickness, gloss etc (as some people have reported). I applied another "layer" of AJT in about 10 min.
I think between the new Z5pro and AJ/CJ I pretty much have my sealant bases covered. I will keep using EX because it is so great in the sun, but I don't see myself buying another sealant any time soon. Z5pro will likely be used on cars that need a little filling help while the jeffs stuff will be used on anything else. I am pretty excited to try CJ on my car now that I know how good AJ looks, and that I tend to prefer the carnauba look on black.
Cheers.
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