Anyone ever do blind testing of products?

rotts4u

rotts4u

Member
I read where various groups get together and have meets etc where car detailing is at the forefront of the activity and It just made me think. Do any of you ever do blind tests where you use one product on half of a car hood and other products or combos on the other half and see if you can honestly tell a difference WITHOUT knowing what was applied before hand?



I do this myself on my own cars but I cant be unbiased because I always know what I applied to what part of the car. Sometimes on a longer term test over a few months or weeks I may forget and then can be honest at judging beeding or shine etc. But has anyone made a serious attempt at this?



I would love to see if some of you/or me could really tell a difference in POP and glow and shine between turtle wax and expensive products like we all seem addicted to. I know I spend way too much money on stuff and sometimes I ask myself why? Then I usually shut up and finish waxing the car (again)



Thoughts?



Don
 
:nomore:



Your feeding T H E I R lies...cease and desist this pseudo-logical rhetoric. I just spent 250 at autogeek and I know I will have more POP and SPARKLE than my stupid neighbor with his Meguiar's 3-step-o-matic-dime-n-shine. Now let me get back to :buffing:





:grinno:
 
rotts4u said:
I read where various groups get together and have meets etc where car detailing is at the forefront of the activity and It just made me think. Do any of you ever do blind tests where you use one product on half of a car hood and other products or combos on the other half and see if you can honestly tell a difference WITHOUT knowing what was applied before hand?



I do this myself on my own cars but I cant be unbiased because I always know what I applied to what part of the car. Sometimes on a longer term test over a few months or weeks I may forget and then can be honest at judging beeding or shine etc. But has anyone made a serious attempt at this?



I would love to see if some of you/or me could really tell a difference in POP and glow and shine between turtle wax and expensive products like we all seem addicted to. I know I spend way too much money on stuff and sometimes I ask myself why? Then I usually shut up and finish waxing the car (again)



Thoughts?



Don
Click to expand...



The age old discussion. Now let's sit back and wait for those who SWEAR they can tell the difference between Zaino and Meguiar's from 300 yards. :argue
 
Yeah, I'd be interested in seeing that myself.



I have to admit that sometimes, some of the stuff on here kinda reminds me of the Penn & Teller: BS episode about bottled water.



They commandeered a fancy restaurant and offered a "water menu" and brought people all these "different" waters "imported from all over the globe," some were "bottled directly from a glacier" or "Himalayan snow-capped peaks" etc.



The reactions were awesome, listening to these people offer up different descriptions of all these various waters... "Oh, this has the same refreshing after-bite of a mint" "This one's very earthy and flavorful" etc.



Of course, they were all bottled from the very same source... a garden hose on the back patio.



I wouldn't go so far as to say all car care products are the same, but it would be interesting to see how well 'knowledgeable' people could discern the difference in products in a blind test.



I'm fairly certain Joe Average (myself included) couldn't do it with any reliabiltiy, but it'd be fun to detail a car with boutique products on one side and OTC stuff on the other and watch the pro's and the connoisseurs give it a try.
 
Mike Phillips did that when I was at the Meguiars/Autopia meet a couple of years ago. The differnce between Souveran and NXT were more subtle than you would think on equally prepped paint.
 
With *properly* prepped surfaces, the initial appearance differences are going to be slight between most products. I probably wouldn't be able to tell much based solely off a one time appearance test.
 
Scottwax said:
Mike Phillips did that when I was at the Meguiars/Autopia meet a couple of years ago. The differnce between Souveran and NXT were more subtle than you would think on equally prepped paint.
Click to expand...



Witnessed it!
 
If you've seen the same paint with the same LSP often enough, you'll spot a difference.



What I do is try a different LSP on a vehicle and see if my wife says anything. I never coach her or even let her know I've done more than wash the vehicle in question. On Audi silver and the Jag, she often surprises me with what she spots.



She's spotted difference between P21S/Souveran on the Jag (that one wasn't subtle at all, probably a matter of the weird ss metallic paint) and she's seen differences right away on her silver Audis. FWIW she likes the look of Souveran best of all, noticed immediately when switched to #16 for greater durability. She also spotted the last time I replaced the #16 with 476S, which sorta surprised me. But then she's seen these cars looking a certain way for years and the lighting in the shop is pretty good for this sort of thing.



When I do freshly repainted panels with #5 or IHG, they always look very different from the panels with my usual LSP on them. Sometimes it's so dramatic that I wonder if they got the paint match right, but that's usually not it.
 
I do blind testings but usually with wine. It is the only true way to get people over the brand mind bend. If you can't see the label on a bottle of wine, and taste it blind, you have to rely on the wine's own merits and your ability to identify them. It really irritates some wine snobs when it is demonstrated that they can't even tell you what varietal they are tasting.



I did a blind wax test with some of my friends not too long ago and bet them a 6-pac each that they couldn't id the wax used. I won't go into the details but all three of them incorrectly ID the products used and I won a lot of beer. :chuckle:



If a car is prepped properly, the LSP used is very hard to identify.



My test demonstrated to my friends that just like there are wine snobs there are wax snobs. Sometimes the products we use are based on marketing and "brand recognition" more than the actual look.
 
Teutonics said:
Has anyone blind tested longevity of LSP's?
Click to expand...



Actually I am doing that now. I have a daily driver Dodge 2500 Ram truck that has a huge hood and front fenders. I divided that up into 6 sections and wrote them down on paper and dated it.



I prepped everything the same with wash, clay, machine polished etc. Then used these on various parts.



Mothers Synwax.

Soveriegn paste

Meguires carnuba from the 3 step cunsumer line.

Mothers reflections final last step something I forget the name

Zaino

Tropicare



On the first rain I could easily spot two sections that had way less beading. The beeds were twice as large as the others. I looked up the sections and it was the two carnubas Meguires and Soveriegn that has the big beads.



Then there were two sections with clearly the smallest beads and that turned out to be Reflections and Zaino.



Ill will report more in another month or two but visually I can tell them apart as mush as I would like to justify the $79 soveriegn paste I just cant.



Don
 
Sometimes, small angle difference makes noticable difference in bead size after rain on a parked car.



1992 Mercedes 300D has rather flat roof than many modern cars such as current VW Passat, or Nissan Maxima. Even on that roof, the beads are larger on area close to perfectly horizontal - this area depents on where I park, of course - than on the adjacent area on the same roof.
 
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