Cleaners and waxes for recreational vehicles and marine vessels Meguiars; Test results

One of the most famous and popular brands in the wax industry is Meguiar’s. Meguiar ?? s has stood the test of time as a brand. Some of its aftermarket competitors, as well as major users of the product, have complained that Meguiar’s has turned its back on the professional user market for the consumer market through its newest and largest customer, Wal-Mart. Many in the auto, aircraft and boat detail industries have even recently criticized Meguair because they feel this is a slap in the face to the loyal operator who has paid premium prices for quality products and can now see those who have the Meguiar. The brand name on the shelves.

We tested Meguiars RV and Boat product lines. What we like about the Meguiar’s RV and Boats detailing product line is that they have made a step-by-step guide for different levels of rust, surfaces, and paints. Their flagship soap number 65 is excellent as well as their wash gel (number 54) made for all surfaces of the gel coat. We thought that for a professional boat cleaning business, these products were priced a bit more expensively and admittedly they work well but are too expensive for a small 16-ounce bottle. Unless you buy it online, you’ll find the price outrageous at local marinas and boat shops, like the Marine West chain.

We enjoy the sheeting action on surfaces after use of the product. Using inline injection from a bucket of soapy water did not work very well. The product seemed very benign, so we don’t think a little soap in the water around the Marina is a problem. As for your marine cleaners and brighteners, we feel good about these products, but felt that once again we had paid a lot for them. Although the competition ?? Star Brite ?? it’s also tough on price points. I guess assuming boat owners are willing to pay more, since it is for a boat. We didn’t see that much of a difference between these marine industry products and those in the Meguiar automotive industry product line. Maybe a few minor ingredient changes for UV gel coat protection and some fancy repackaging, but you’ll have to be the judge on that.

Meguiar’s Color Restorer seems fine because it is capable of removing minor marks and scratches, but we also found that a polymeric solvent wax did the same, for example Auto Magic’s sealing wax or Diamond Shine products. We didn’t see the reason to buy this product for professional use other than to keep the brands you use consistent. We also found that these other solvent waxes did not harm anything and actually worked better than Color Restorer (Number 44) and the following Oxidation Remover product (Number 49). Meguiar’s One Step Compound ?? s (Number 67) is not too impressive, but we don’t like compounds anyway and the product is difficult to use, thick and overwhelming, although the results were decent, it did most of what you would expect too. It seemed to have another property that most of the products we use in the industry did not, and that is that it seemed to return some properties to fiberglass. Someone came up to me today and asked what was the best wax to use in an RV and fiberglass area. Much has to do with the decals, the surface, the paint and the level of oxidation. This same premise applies to boats, jet skis, and yachts. The waxes from the Meguiar line impressed us a bit and are relatively difficult to please. So this is a thumbs up for them. Their premium flagship wax seemed adequate, for ease of use we give it a 5 on a scale of 1 to 10. It’s said to last a long time, but on a saltwater boat we wonder what that means. Meguiar’s Pure Boat Wax (# 56) seemed to work fine, but we found it had silicone, a polymer blend with Brazilian carnauba and the problem with this blend, although the shine was excellent, is that in the polyurethane there are issues with some silicones. and with Imron there are problems with carnauba waxes. So if you take this special boat wax and apply it to RVs with custom paints, we have to wonder if we can cause problems. So this may not be the best thing for our team to use on trucks, but certainly good enough for the average citizen with a boat. When the average person washes their RV, there are definite problems, read this article

Now for a nice touch up product for a Boat Show account, we liked the Quick Wax Marine Number 59, with a trigger spray and also the same product in an aerosol can. We also thought it was smart for Meguiar’s to custom label all auto care products for its line of boats. Similar to the way Zep Chemicals often re-labels their products to be conveniently ready for another cleaning use. MSDS

http://www.msdssearch.com/

of course exactly the same because they have the same content and ingredients and the same instructions as well. Now the specialty cleaners for Meguiars Marine also had a non-slip hull and deck cleaner that worked well and the hard water stain remover was good enough for government work and valuable for other uses as well. The Meguiars Gold Teak Oil seemed to be above average in quality and the test site we did made us want to complete the entire deck of the ship, so we are very optimistic about that product.

The all metal polish for shiny work was also very good and seemed better than Never Dull product to shine and better than Mother aluminum polish for ease of use. When we tried the Bilge Cleaner from Meguiars we laughed because it seems a bit of an exaggeration to do it to make a specific product for that need. It dissolved the fat, but so does Simple Green for a lot less money. Here is a page on the Meguiar website where you can order the most popular seafood products.

http://www.meguiars.com/store_meguiars/search_results.cfm

Also, if you are a private boat owner, you can go to the Meguiar website and they can give you a personalized guide on what products to buy from them to help you properly clean your boat and wax it.

[http://www.meguiars.com/marinerx.cfm]

Which is a nifty value-added service for the online B2C retail part of their business strategy, but it seems to me that if they are going to sell their wares at Wal-Mart, why pay $ 30.00 for the Boat kit, $ 12.00 for the soap? all those cleaners and then shipping? We are always interested in seeing what kind of marketing materials or vendors and suppliers make and what kind of strategies they employ. It’s interesting to see them try new things and then change them. Interactivity in web strategy is important and Meguiar ?? s seems to understand this very well and has obviously invested a lot of money in his website. At this year’s 2004 SEMA Show we noted that they had the same truck on display as our Blitz Mobile at the corner of Convention Center Drive. Their unit was glossy black with the Meguiar paint scheme and during the show they had beautiful displays as always with information on their new wipe products, as well as a reintroduction to their marine line.

Overall, the Meguiar Marine Line is definitely complete and a player in the market, and they seem to be attacking it well, over time to keep whatever market share they reach they will need to improve some of their products. . However, with their brand recognition in the auto care industry, which has significant competition, they should be able to carry this strong image into the future with the marine industry. StarBrite products sell quite well and tend to sell only slightly more than Meguiar, originally they were about the only game in town. But we are seeing the Meguiar line fight for market share. What we found is that you cannot always find a complete line of StarBrite products at your local Marina, as most companies do not offer the complete line and are also not willing to offer the complete Meguiar line. Then there are already problems. Wal-Mart carries the Meguiar caravan and boat wash waxes and other automotive products from the Meguiar line. We believe that the best products for efficiency and ease of use definitely come from professional detailing product companies such as Auto Magic, Pro, Beauty Shine, Stoner, etc. And we’re not ruling out Meguiar staples like Meguiar’s Mirror Glaze or its excellent polishing compounds. But again, in the field of polishing compounds we also much prefer what 3M has to offer:

[http://www.3m.com.br/us/auto_marine_aero/]

and they also have a marine line of excellent products. But so far we are not overly excited about the rest of Megiuar’s retail line. The new wipes are fresh enough that they seem to have entered the market alongside other brands like Lexol for their leather cleaning wipes. All in all, we fully applaud Meguiar’s line of seafood products and are comfortable with about six of the products, which will probably use our tea. These are the products that we feel performed well in our tests. We are tough on all of our suppliers. And to the credit of Meguiar’s they are a tireless company when it comes to updating and listening to their customers. And we all know that good things come with age.