Fuzion vs. Souveran vs. P21s

[Rob Howard]

Without hurting my paint or clearcoat? The reason I am asking is because I have a couple of small scratches to get out and I tried the paint cleanser and it did not work. Also, is the rubbing compound good for just removing certain scratches or is it best used for the whole car to get the car clean and free of possible oxidated surfaces?

[ALM]

Rubbing compund is very abrasive stuff, so its going to scratch the paint if you use it (you`ll hafta polish after you use it to remove the scratches the rubbing compund made). If you rub hard enought you can take the paint off.



I would only use it on the scratched areas, not the whole car, the only time i would say use it on the whole car is if you had massive amounts of oxidation.

[scottybob1]

I agree with Steve, only use it on the bad spots. As for now many times you can use, that`s up to you. You can use it as often as you want as long as you know what can happen if you go to deep, like removing the clear or paint.

[Brad B]

It`s for spot-damage repair only. Use finer products such as Finesse It II or Pinnacle Cleansing Lotion for overall usage.

[bobdec]

Use rubbing compound very sparingly. You are removing the paint or clearcoat everytime you use it. Eventually you`ll run out of paint and be down to your primer. Problem is, how much paint do you have left? I`ve seen finishes that start to get a `shadow` in them and unexpected `pinstripes`. That`s the primer starting to show through and it`s too late to do anything about it other than repaint or live with it.

[Rob Howard]

paint. I just have a couple of scratches on the car that I would like to get out. Thanks for the replies!!!

[imported_User Name]

Okay, for those of you who have been following, I did a review of Souveran yesterday and today I had a chance to work on a NON-Metallic Black Audi A8. I`ve done this car once before (with Wet Diamond) and wrote a review. http://truthindetailing.com/Forum/showthread.php?t=988&highlight=Audi

The car`s owner is my brother-in-law who is a very busy guy and unfortunately doesn`t take care of his car very well. As I wrote in my original review, the car was covered in swirls and RIDS and even after I did a 90% correction on the car, it was back to being a swirled mess (maybe a product of black paint + poor care).

I did NOT have the time to do a full correction, so here was my process. He asked me to do a "winter wax" for him so I chose ZFX`d Z5Pro + the three above mentioned Carnaubas.

Washed the entire car with Dawn to strip and Wet Diamond left over from the last time. Did an entire IPA wipedown, followed by another wash with Z7.

The car was now ready for some Zaino. I ended up putting on three coats of Zaino and the car looked great. Again, not sure if it looked any better than it did with Wet Diamond but it looked good (I`m tempted to say Wet Diamond *MAY* have looked a bit better, but that is sheer speculation).

In any event, this test was suppose to include Midnight Sun, but because I am a brain dead MORON, I inadvertently took an empty wax tub instead of my Midnight Sun. Sorry.

Initially I thought I was only going to run Fuzion vs. Souveran head to head. I told my b-in-law to go inside so that he could give me his opinion on which side of the hood and quarter panels looked better.

First to go on was Fuzion and then Souveran. I left about a 2 inch space between the two to use as a "control" area to see if either made a difference over the Zaino look.

Fuzion

Out of the containter, Fuzion is pinkish in color and definitely has more of a chemical smell than Souveran. It is a much harder wax. All waxes got a brand new polyfoam wax applicator and dedicated MF for removal. No cross contamination of products occurred.

I applied to wax to the hood of the car, then to the driver side quarter panel (then I put on Souveran before I removed the Wolfgang). I decided on using TWO of my Eurow Shag towels to remove because I found the product to be quite oily. The first picked up the bulk of the wax, the second buffed to a shine.

Going on, I found Fuzion to be pretty easy to apply but NO WHERE near as easy as Souveran, not even CLOSE.

Coming off, it was much worse than Souveran. Fuzion is not a product I would put in the "super easy" category. I tried putting it on super thin, which wasn`t that hard to do, but it still was a bit tricky to remove.

Souveran

Prior to removing Fuzion, I put on Souveran, removed Fuzion then removed Souveran. All in all, I did both in less than 10 minutes.

Results

There is no doubt Souveran was easier to apply and remove. It is a much easier product to work with IMO.

So, how about the looks?

Well, we had three things to look at... the Souveran side, the Fuzion side, the "control" area which was simply Z5Pro (along with the rest of the car).

I brought my brother-in-law back outside to help in the judging. We looked at the car three ways. In the garage under his fluorescent lights, with my halogens and in the natural sun.

The verdict: NO DISCERNABLE DIFFERENCE FOR EITHER OF US. Yes sir, he could NOT pick a winner out of either nor could I!

I`m not sure what this really means. Todd mentioned that he never noticed Souveran changing the look of Zaino and alway attributed that to it not being able to "stick" to Zaino. Maybe that is what happened here, but I would be lying if I told you I could see a difference, I just could not.

So, who was the big winner of the Carnauba showdown? Easy... P21s, by a mile!!!

Huh, you say? How did that happen?

P21s

Well after the hood revealed NO difference in looks, I decided to put P21s on the passenger doors and compare the look. All products looked identical. No difference between the three.

I know I`ve read some say that P21s and Souveran are the same product, but I don`t know if that is true and don`t care to speculate.

They do however share the same characteristics. P21s goes on very easy (like Souveran), comes off very easy (like Souveran), feels (slickness) the same as Souveran but is MUCH cheaper than Souveran and therein lies the victory.

It is also worth mentioning that my brother in law and I differed on the slickness test. I thought P21s and Souveran were equally slick with Fuzion being less slick than both of them. He thought P21s was the slickest, followed by Fuzion and Souveran (go figure).

At the end of the day, we both concluded that if we factored in all of the MOST relevant factors to us (looks, ease of use, slickness and price), P21s was the clear winner. Yes, Fuzion comes with a free refill and yes you can get Souveran as a BOGO but I`m sure you can also get deals on P21s and it just starts so much cheaper I`d have to lean towards the lowest priced product of the three.

One last thing I`d like to say on this topic, there was a time, not to long ago, where I thought the notion of a high priced was was PURE BS. Unbeknownst to Al, but he was probably the biggest reason in slightly changing my opinion. I do see some value in these higher priced products, in areas like ease of use and non-staining.

I remember the old days of turtle wax and hours of buffing, white residue, stained trim and sore arms. This "high end" Carnauba`s certainly to offer some value in this regard, but Souveran justifies it more than Fuzion. I`m still not fully convinced they are worth their money, but I`ll tolerate the conversation nowadays, which I did not tolerate in the past.

I`m sorry I did not get a chance to try Midnight Sun out, it was a simple mistake on my end. Unfortunately, this is my one any only dark car to work on, so I don`t know if I`ll get a shot until spring.

So my official score on the "Calibrated User Name Wax Scale" (where perfect is a 10 - Wet Diamond gets a 9.5 and horrendous is a 1 - Victoria`s Red gets a 1.01), here is how I would rate these products:

1st Place - P21s -> 8

2nd Place - Souveran -> 7

3rd Place - Wolfgang Fuzion -> 4.5

Oh and just to add... this was my first time using Z5Pro (I`ve always been using Z2Pro). I found it identical to Z2Pro and found it does NOT conceal even minor swirling. I like the product and would rate it an 8.5 based on the above.

[bmw5541]

Very nice and thorough review. I have heard all good things about all three, so I was a bit shocked to see your opinion on the Fusion.

Thanks for taking the time to share this with us:clap:

[Old Pirate]

Great review UN, thank you for your time doing your review and write-up.

[Cleaning Fool]

To me, to get a viable comparison between those 3 waxes I would have done it after the polishing stage not sitting on top of Z5. Really hard to see what wax is doing when it sitting on Zaino.

[imported_User Name]

To me, to get a viable comparison between those 3 waxes I would have done it after the polishing stage not sitting on top of Z5. Really hard to see what wax is doing when it sitting on Zaino.

You could be right, Al said the same thing but the most important thing my b-i-l wanted was "winter protection" and I don`t think going with any of the three carnauba`s by themselves was the answer.

I tried (and maybe failed) to deliver both.

I`ll test them again (on that same car in the spring) after a full correction!

[imported_ronkh]

Aside from applying it over Z.

Both Fuzion and Souveran are wowo products

from the fuzion directions:

"Wipe on Wolfgang Fuzion Estate Wax with a clean foam applicator pad. Use the wax sparingly. Multiple thin coats are more beneficial than one heavy coat. Apply the wax to one panel at a time.
Use a Cobra Edgeless Microfiber Polishing Cloth to buff the paint to a brilliant shine. "

So adding your own time frame may have made both harder to remove.

[imported_User Name]

So adding your own time frame may have made both harder to remove.

If you read my review of Souveran, you`ll see that I tried it both ways and it didn`t make a difference, plus where Fuzion was concerned it was probably on the quarter panel for less than 3 minutes before it was off.

[imported_akimel]

I`m too distracted by the avatar to read the review. :p

[michakaveli]

The P21S that you used, was it the 100% version?