Waxing intervals

[awdG35killer]

How often do you wax your legacy? Or cars in general?

 

How often SHOULD you wax it?

 

I just waxed my 13 2.5i with Meg's ULW and its friggin beautiful. I haven't waxed a car myself since my 02 sentra SE-R specV when I took delivery over 10 years ago lol. Always paid someone to my 05 lgt, But I'm pretty sure ill be doing it myself from now on.

[xero287]

I wax my car every time the water stops beading. XD

[awdG35killer]

I like that answer haha

[apexi]

There are a number of factors involved in how often you should wax in my opinion. Factors like what type of wax do you use, where is your car stored, type of weather conditions your car sees, etc. I typically wax my car twice a year, once in the spring, and once in the fall. I used to wax my car with collinite 476s, but recently switched to collinite 845 now that I apply the wax with a random orbital buffer. Sometimes I'll hit certain parts of the car twice when I wax my car, such as the front bumper, hood, and the areas underneath your side view mirrors since they always get beat up in the winter.

 

I'm not sure how durable megs ulw is, but I would at least wax the car once in the fall, once in the spring, and couldn't hurt to do it again in the summer if you have the time and energy. This is assuming that you now live in denver, and use to live in so-cal?

[xero287]

I think that a sealant is more important than a wax.

 

Even if you just use the sealant as the wax.

[OCDetails]

Wax is a funny word. People use it as a verb and noun. "I wax my car with sealant" for example. Same thing with 'polish'. People will polish their car with wax or with compound. It is just semantics for the most part, but the literal words are actually products just like Kleenex and Band Aid are specific products and not simply a category of tissue or bandage.

 

Anyway, now for my long winded response.

 

Wax has a fairly short lifespan depending on the environment that you put it in. The problem is that it will 'build up' if you are just waxing a car that never sees the sun. After awhile the surface will just look cloudy and wrong. Wax isn't clear, so it makes sense that too much of it would do that. But on a vehicle that actually sees the sun and wind and rain you can expect the best carnauba wax to last maybe 6 weeks. Again, just because it says wax on the bottle doesn't mean it is a carnauba. More and more I'm seeing people put 'wax' on a sealant just to avoid the confusion of having to explain the difference to consumers. So if you apply Meguiar's Ultimate Liquid Wax (which is actually a sealant) you can expect much more than 6 weeks of durability. But if you apply Meguiar's Gold Class Wax then you can expect the 6 weeks because it is just a carnauba.

 

Sealants typically last somewhere around 3 to 4 months. The Meguiar's Ultimate Liquid Wax is something I used in the middle of June and it held on till early September for example. Of course this was on my car which stayed in my garage all summer except for bad weather days or road trips, so the durability might be a little extended on that particular test. I'm testing it again for winter to see what it will do, so we'll see.

 

What I do with wax is just apply it once a month whether it needs it or not. On a daily driver it is going to likely be to the point of needing it once a month anyway, so you can't hurt it by following that routine. If you use a sealant you can cut that down to maybe once every other month if you want to make sure it always looks its best. On some sealants you can get several months out of one coat, so it just depends on how much time you want to spend on your car.

[V8Bait]

I wax my car every time the water stops beading. XD

 

I wait until it stops beading or when I start having a hard time blow drying the car off. Usually about once a month or every other month.

[OCDetails]

I wait until it stops beading or when I start having a hard time blow drying the car off. Usually about once a month or every other month.

 

That's about right for a wax. Around 6 weeks is all it will last and you'll probably start to see it lose the 'beading' before that. The wax is what provides the surface tension which creates the beading effect. Once it wears off the water will start to sheet and pool on the car.

 

I like how you can always tell the waxed cars after a rainstorm. Unwaxed cars will dry off almost immediately because the water sheets and it is easier for it to evaporate. Waxed cars will still have beads of water all over it hours after the rain stopped. I should walk through a mall parking lot after a rainstorm some day and count cars that have beads and those that don't just to get a general idea of what percentage of the population keeps their cars waxed. At least it will tell me which percentage of the mall rats do.