Setec Astronomy

I just was looking at the Optimum store at Amazon and saw the Opti-Seal suggested for interiors--Ron, would that just be for vinyl/plastic/wood/chrome, but not on the leather seats? I'd imagine you'd slide right out onto the floor if you used it on the seats. Although there is another WOWA interior product that says you can use it on leather, also, which I think I have done. I don't think I even would have bought that if I realized you can use Opti-Seal on interiors.

Usually when it warms up people come to the forum to ask questions about detailing their cars.

Welcome to the forum! Nice to see some activity here, it's been very quiet.

Do we know what kind of "dirt" that was?

Yeah, that was kind of freaky. To be fair, I'd have to ask what kind of "dirt" that was, and also point out that even though it said it was 1 ounce of ONR, it looked more like an ONR cap, which is 1/2 oz, which is normally what is used in a gallon of wash mixture, being put into what looked like a 500ml beaker, so about 16 oz, or about 8 times the amount of ONR that would normally be used.

Why did you have 3 different types of wash media? Do you prefer a specific type for specific areas of the vehicle? Or was that just to demonstrate different types for the purposes of the video?

Are you talking crickets here, specifically, or "the forums" in general? Forums aren't what they used to be, anywhere. This forum was always pretty slow besides some spurts of activity.

I kind of forgot that Opti-Clean was recommended as a pre-spray. I'm sure I've done that in the past but it's been so long I don't really remember how it worked. I've been lucky the last few years to not have huge salt messes on the cars or I've been able to wait until hose weather and do a conventional wash.

Old smell but new ingredients? I thought the offensive smell was due to a new chemical additive to assist in removing water spots?

Since pre-spraying seems to have become an almost universal part of rinseless washing, maybe that's a product niche that Dr. G wants to look at--some sort of ONR-compatible pre-spray. I can tell you there is intense interest in "snow foams" on other forums, products that you spray on before washing to loosen/remove dirt. In some cases people use these before washing, in some cases instead of a wash (think winter when you just want to get the bulk of the contaminants off). Apparently the only products that actually work seem to come out of Europe, not sure if there is some environmental restriction here that drives that. One of the products mentioned a lot is Bilt Hamber Touchless. But these are not "no-rinse" products, they need to be rinsed off. I personally have never found pre-spraying for rinseless to be of much value, but most of the time I was trying it on crusted-on salt/brine residue that just laughed at the prespray--if I feel the need to do it now I use a Harbor Freight airless paint sprayer which works kind of like a mini pressure washer to blast off stuff. Although I think when I did a pump-up sprayer pre-spray I may have been using the normal ONR dilution, a lot of people use a more concentrated dilution for pre-spray. Maybe that's what Dr. G will recommend.

AutoLabTN--You need calcium to neutralize HF. Calcium gluconate is the recommended first aid treatment if you get HF on your skin, you should be able to put that in your gallon. Fortunately it's available as a body-building supplement so you can get it on Amazon, etc. There is another calcium compound that's cheaper for just doing neutralization (vs. skin exposure), but I don't remember what it is. If I'm remembering right the calcium gluconate will form a salt with the HF, then you can pour the water off and let the salt dry and throw that out. But I don't know what else is in Wheel Brightener which might complicate the disposal. Meg's is pretty good with SDS's, you can look at that, it should also have some disposal info, which of course in today's world will say "dispose of in accordance with local regulations". They would hopefully tell you on the phone how you should dispose of it. To be fair about this I'm sure the HF content in wheel cleaners is pretty low vs. industrial uses of HF.

I completely agree with Dr. G that HF wheel cleaners should not be sold to consumers, and I would argue that they shouldn't be used outside of a controlled industrial environment, meaning I don't think even a professional detailer should be using an HF based wheel cleaner if he's going to use it say, at a customer site. I guess it could be argued that if you use it in your detail shop, and you're hosing it all down the drain carefully after using, it could be used safely, but I would only want to use it, say in a sink where any effluent could be controlled. (And at this stage of my life, I don't want to use it at all) All that being said, there are other acid wheel cleaners that are non-HF, that work well. Arguably the availability of iron-eating wheel cleaners like FerreX may mitigate the need for an acid wheel cleaner. PS The whole subject of acid wheel cleaners is muddied by the use of ABF. I remember a detailer on another forum going ballistic when he found out his non-acid boutique wheel cleaner that worked so well was really an HF cleaner, but the boutique supplier thought/called it non-acid because ABF is a salt, not an acid...until you mix it with water to make a wheel cleaner and it becomes HF. PPS These arguments sometimes sound silly when people are exposed to dangerous chemical in the supermarket, things like bleach and drain cleaner and insecticides. And of course you can go on Amazon and buy concentrated H202 and vinegar (acetic acid). Not to mention the HF wheel cleaners on the shelf at Target and Walmart. Not to be long-winded but many years ago I was in the auto aisle in Target and it was at the end of a row, and they had a long carpet runner in front of it because I guess people would drop bottles of oil etc. and the floor would get slippery. So I'm looking at a bottle of wheel cleaner, and it's got HF or ABF in it, so I put it back. And I'm thinking I wonder if anyone ever dropped a bottle of this stuff on this carpet mat I'm standing on, that people's kids have probably crawled around on...

The blurb for that applicator says the neoprene side is for OCW or Tire Shine, and the soft foam side is for Opti-Seal (the application of which is similar to Gloss-Coat). Glad you got the application worked out.

It really has taken a long time even at the other detailing forums for people to embrace rinseless, even though by nature most of the people who come to forums are fairly open to new ideas (except for the odd Kozak user).

Holy cow, I was just looking on another forum, that was 10 years ago when TW was selling that wash, pretty funny some of the comments regarding ONR. What did Dr. G do, Ron, fill up a tank truck with ONR and send it off to TW?

Ha! Classic small biz strategy. PS I hope you're not violating an NDA disclosing this TW dirt.

Well, not to go on and on on this topic, but I think it's more complicated and difficult than that. Certainly in today's social media/YouTube world people can become educated on rinseless washing, and it shouldn't be difficult to overcome that ignorance. I think it's a combination of "muscle memory"; people understand spray-and-wipe products (waterless washes) because everybody has used Windex or bathroom cleaner, and it's kind of a natural habit. In a different way, a conventional car wash evokes all kinds of other memories and rituals, perhaps memories of helping your dad or brother to wash his car, or "spring is here, time to wash the car!" So I think some of it is people not wanting to let go of familiar things or things that make them feel good, and some of it is, as we see in todays world, just believing what you want to believe. Even at the other detailing forums, there was stiff resistance to rinseless washing for a long time, even though QEW had become a winter staple in the rust belt, but it was never something that you would do if you could use a hose instead!

Anthony's trick was to take a nitrile glove, put a round yellow foam applicator in it, then wrap a piece of Scott blue shop towel around it. It wouldn't surprise me if the "swatch around the foam block" was a more elegant emulation of Anthony's method, which of course goes back to the original Opti-Coat 15 years ago. And of course the "saver" applicators are also an extension of that original idea, a foam core topped by a non-absorbent barrier topped by an absorbent "cloth". You can see there's a reason Anthony was Dr. G's go-to guy for a long time for testing, etc. Anthony was also very early with videos of ONR and coating application. Anyway, I usually do it some way with the Scott towel, that way if it gets dirty or crusty I just throw it away. Not that I do very much coating, as I said, it seems mostly headlights and wheels.

Wait, why are there no applicators or leveling towels to throw in the trash with Gloss-Coat? I typically use the blue Scott towels for applying coatings (old Anthony Orosco trick), but I mostly do small areas like headlights and wheels, and I go back over it with that if I have any spots that didn't flash right.

Ha, I remember that it had a different dilution rate, and I remember people on other forums being distraught at it being discontinued. There were probably some ONR-haters in there, too! I think the dilution ratio difference threw everyone off from making the ONR connection. Funny.

That's always been a tough needle to thread. Normally I would say it would be better to get product feedback from forums like this, but that's not a mass-market perspective (not to mention forums are dead). Rinseless is a difficult concept for the public; they understand a conventional car wash, and understand spraying a cleaner on something and wiping it off, but rinseless is a murky in-between that people don't understand. It also takes more equipment and setup (finding a bucket and a "sponge"). Turtle Wax for some unknown reason came out with a rinseless wash a few years ago (for one season), and even Meguiar's discontinued theirs some years ago, although that was a Detailer line product, not retail. I guess as a (sort-of) objective observer, I'd say the uninformed and finicky nature of the retail market is going to lead to a lot of SKU's, something which Dr. G refused to do with, say, the creme polishes. He's got to bear in mind when Turtle Wax misses with a product, it winds up on the clearance end cap at AutoZone or Walmart, or at Big Lots (is Big Lots still around?), not in the Optimum warehouse. Of course if Amazon owns it (the inventory), I guess it's the same as my earlier example. When Dr. G sobers up from his weekend in Vegas (KIDDING, JOKE, don't ban me!) I'm still interested in whether the new wheel and tire cleaner has anything in it making it better than OPC for that purpose.

Respectfully, I know ONR is at V.5, I'm asking if ONRWW has also been upgraded to that level; as I noted Ron had told us at the V.5 release that ONRWW would not be upgraded, but sometimes Optimum waits until stock is depleted to do these things, and I know ONR is a lot more popular than ONRWW. Sometimes I think I'm the only one that uses ONRWW, it's a great wash. Well, I like it. It's been a long time since I've used anything else, since I bought a big bottle of it. I'm on the original version, BTW.

Ok, now I'm confused. I thought when ONR went to V.5, the Opti-Coat store said it was V.5, unless I'm thinking of Amazon, which does say V.5. The Opti-Coat store just says "new formula". But ONRWW also says "new formula", and Ron told us that the V.5 improvements would not be added to ONRWW. Is the store "new formula" just left over from from 2021 when they were both updated? Or has ONRWW now been updated to the V.5 base?

Well, Opti-Clean is supposed to leave a lot behind, protection that builds up (as noted in a video with Mike Phillips and Dr. G at the time it was introduced many years ago). Dr. G also talks about the "protection" from ONR building up over time, and the TRC crew discusses that after they leave the Optimum booth, about leaving something behind, and leaving something behind that interferes with other things. I guess this is never going to end, like the fuss when Meguiar's dropped the D114 rinseless and there was a huge clamor for another rinseless that "left nothing behind". I am a little concerned with the splintering of the Optimum lineup to apparently serve many voices; I'm not sure the Amazon crowd is who I would be listening to, but I guess good for Dr. G if he thinks he can capitalize on it.

Grant, have you tried to "Reset" the coating? Although 3 years may be about the life of UK, depending.