Beading = Protection???

[ACE]

After reading the Guru report for about the hundredth time, I realized that their whole criteria for the wax`s protection was it`s ability to bead. Do you agree with this, or can waxes and sealants protect while "sheeting" water? I don`t know. We`ve been told that carnuba beads and sealants sheet, but that is definitely not true. In the Guru test, Zaino was beading after 8 weeks and in my own experience, UPP over AIO beaded very well for the 6 weeks I carefully observed it. So it`s absolute BS that polymers don`t bead. What`s the story? No beads, no protection?

[Boss_429]

I firmly believe that waxes and sealants can still be protecting when they have lost their beading properties, and are only sheeting. Now, when they lose their beading properties, start to look dull, and don`t "spiff" up with a little QD........... they are probably shot!

Just my personal opinion though!

[EBPcivicsi]

It is my understanding that the "beading" of a product doesn`t necessarily correlate with the protection of the product, it simply means that it was chemically formulated to have a high surface tension. I think that some products bead and some sheet, it all depends on how they were formulated. I still believe that most people, including myself like to see small tight beads of water on our paint. This is why waxes and sealants are formulated to bead not sheet. Beading is also a good indicator of when to rewax, assuming you are using a proiduct that beads. I hope Mike Phillips will post on this one, I love reading his posts.

[WWR]

LOL! Well, Mike Phillips works for Meguiar`s, and many Meguiar waxes don`t bead. (Well, they claim that they purposely designed them to bead initially and sheet afterwards. Yea right!) So that is something to think about. Also, No. 26 was a product that beaded very well on The Wax Test.

The Wax Test did not judge durability on beading alone. You`ll notice that every two weeks, they wrote us a summary on how well it`s holding up in general. It included shine, and as an example, they said Klasse was still "holding up" despite sheeting. My guess is that the sheeting was different than that of the bare, control panel.

Basically, they did all the testing and gave us the facts, and now it`s our job to draw our own conclusions.

Note, however, that depth, slickness, shine, optics, and more worsen as the beads get larger with most waxes.