What were your old school products you used?

rotts4u

rotts4u

Member
I know most of you are pretty young but at 42 years old that made me 16 way back in 1979. My first car was a slightly used 1978 Camaro and I tried every wax I could find even back then.



Some of the stuff I used to use is listed below



Rally (as I recall it was a white cream type wax.



Turtle (same as is sold today)



TR3 Resin glaze came out and I remember it being the first thing you could leave on overnight to "cure"



Of course the Mirror Glaze PASTE wax I think it was about like if not the same as #7. It set up like concrete and would take me forever to get off the car.



And I recall something called Shines like the sun. I think it was in a yellow can and was a typical paste. Back then paste waxes were real wax. Liquids were sissy waxes.



I think there was a carnbua wax that had the word classis in the title though that is all I can remember.



I washed my car 2-4 times a week back then and wax was at least every 1-2 weeks. In the winter I would get hot water from the kitched to keep it from freezing while I dried the car.





So if there any old timers out there what else did you used to use back in the day?



Don
 
When in my teens after I got my first car, I believe my first wax was Rain Dance. At the time, I thought it produced outstanding results. Afterwards, I moved to Mother's and Meguiar's. As a big Meg's fanatic, I probably used every Meg's product under the sun over those later years. Years later, I then discovered polymers, i.e. Liquid Glass, Zaino, etc. I have stuck mostly with polymers ever since, but continue to at least try new products as they come out, always looking for the proverbial holy grail.



When I first started out, my buffing equipment consisted of t-shirts and those 12-pack of crummy terry cloths you get at AutoZone. But hey, at 16, who knew? :D Funny thing is, I used to get compliments on my first car and even once a flat out offer to buy from a stranger, when using Rain Dance. Hehehe I had no idea what a buffer was, and did all my polishing by hand, the hard way. It was a hugely labor intensive process, but boy was I proud of the results I was able to achieve polishing for hours at a time, sweating away.



I like to think of it as a natural progression of experience, techniques, and products. I am glad I started out on the low todem pole, doing things the hard way, so that I gained experience about products and processes all these years. I think nowadays, people starting out like to go straight to the top, and I personally believe you miss out on a lot of things in doing so. For one thing, you miss the appreciation of where you started and where you are now.



:)
 
I've been using Meg's pro line since I was a kid.



I'm *still* using some products that I used back in the mid-'70s, and my family used them for a long time before that. E.g., Meg's #16 is still my go-to LSP and I still use #3/#5/#7 too. The smell of those products is a real time machine experience.



I can't quite remember name of the pink glaze I used so much of, it was a pro product I got at the local autobody/paint supply place that came in white quart bottles...it was just a little more abrasive than Meg's #9 and I used it after Meg's #2. This was back in the day when you could use #2 by hand on single stage.



Seems I was always drawn towards the "pro" products.



I tried the "Classic Car Wax", taupe-colored stuff in a black tin, after Consumer Reports raved about it in '76. It sucked and I took it off (with the pink glaze) and went back to #7/#16 or later #5/#16.



Tried stuff called The Treatment but went back to the Meg's. Actually, I tried a *lot* of stuff but seldom more than a few times. A buddy of mine swore by the TR-3 stuff.



I used Malm's for quite a while, and it really wasn't bad stuff. Not as nice as the Meg's but OK. Their polish ended up being a bit abrasive for year-in-year-out use on the Jag though :o Maybe I should've stuck with that pink glaze!



When my elderly aunt got too infirm to use Meg's multi-step stuff, she still kept her car in great shape with Rain Dance. The Meg's consumer line cleaner wax (A12) is basically the same stuff it's been since the early '70s, and I know some elderly people who've done fine with just that. That seems to be a trend among people I've known- get old and use cleaner wax. Works better than some of us "who know better" might think ;)



Rotts4u- Heh heh, put that wax on nice and thin and it'll come off easily. My family started using it back in the '50s because it was so much easier than Simonize.



I have just a few years on you, so we grew up around the same products.
 
Blue Coral baby! Meg's #16 was another favorite and Armol All was about the only rubber vinyl treatment available. My first car was a 70 Mach 1 and it was cleaned several times a week. We put Blue Coral on like icing on a cake one guy on each side of the car swirling it on thick enough that you couldn't tell what color the paint was. Then we spent the next 3 hours getting it off. I'm sure a can of it would last all of several weeks. :grinno: Man I was stupid at 16, those were the days.



It really didn't take all that long to figure what we were doing wrong. We got into rotary buffers soon after and did pretty fair work considering our age and training.
 
Back in my day it was Vista wax, Dupont New Car Wax, Dupont #7 polish, Simonize Paste wax Bodyguard, Bodysheen, Johnson J-Wax, Car Plate and Carnu, Turtle wax and Blue Coral and Porcelenize.
 
With my first car, a white '74 Impala "Spirit of America", I used TW Rubbing Compound, TW Paste and some Simoniz for those infrequent, unscheduled times that I said "maybe I'll wax the car." Everything was done in direct sunlight with Ivory dish soap, kitchen sponges and old rags--luckily it was white and 13 years old. The paint was ok, but the vinyl roof was ruined by Comet in '75 and, mechanically, the vehicle was certainly ready to go to pasture when I put it down in '88.



My '81 Z28 got a brand new tin of RainX paste wax that lasted while I owned it from '89-92. Sometime in '89, I also picked up a can of Liquid Glass. I remember thinking $10 was an outrageous price for car wax, but the name sounded awesome and the 'Vette on it was beautiful. I put it in a "special place" and forgot about it by the next time I went to wax. I finally got around to using it, two cars and three states later, in 2001. For an 11 year old product, it sure impressed the hell out of me.



That was all until I found this place a few years ago. Funny what a few years can do!
 
these are my dads old waxes

there was a paint spill on the blue coral... DC1 is doing a slow job of removing it but it is working

4549mini-Picture.jpg
 
I used to use Meguiar's Cleaner Wax exclusively in HS when I first started driving and caring for my luxurious 1978 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme 2-door. Total pimp mobile. Anyway, for the interior I used some crap that was like clear oil. I can't remember the product, but it was marketed as being "pure protectant" with no water added.
 
I remember back in the 70's Dupont #7 was about the only polish you could buy off the shelf at most auto parts stores around here. The first wax I remember using was Rain Dance.
 
In my teens I used Kit , Nu Finish and Rain Dance for interior Armo All. I had a 1982 Corolla liftback.
 
when I first started to wax my car I used TW hard shell wax, then I discovered TR-3 Resin Glaze and used that for a good bit. ( I liked the idea it was a liquid) for interior the only product that was avail. was Armor All (man I used that stuff on everything vinyl & leather top to bottom, engine, inside & out)I would use 1 bottle per wash and wax, and that Wesleys bleach white for cleaning my RWL tires.

looking back at how I use to detail my car puts chill bumps on me now. thank god I survived and found Autopia
 
Turtle Wax and ...g*d forbid...armor all. Of yeah I used to use dish detergent for washing...those were the days!
 
I remember using the real DuPont #7 that my older brother probably left around, but I remember waxing my father's car with Kit when it was new (the first softened paste wax, IIRC). After that, when I got closer to actually being old enough to drive, it was Classic and Collinite products that I got from a now-defunct catalog place in PA called Auto World. When clearcoats became common, I started using what Meguiar's was calling Hi-Tech products (clearcoat safe) in the Mirror Glaze line (#2, #9, #7, #26), which I had to travel far and wide to auto paint stores to buy. I continued to use them along with some of the #6 and A12 cleaner wax, until I found this place.







GearHead_1 said:
We put Blue Coral on like icing on a cake one guy on each side of the car swirling it on thick enough that you couldn't tell what color the paint was. Then we spent the next 3 hours getting it off. I'm sure a can of it would last all of several weeks. :grinno:
Click to expand...

LOL--when I first came here I was reminded about all that Collinite stuff I had and wondered how I used it up...then I remembered how thick I used to put it on! I guess that's also what happened to most of my can of #16 that I stopped using 'cause it was too darn hard to get off...there was the time I washed my car after work and wound up waxing it but it was too dark or I was too tired to buff it off...so I decided I would buff it at work during lunch...after sitting in the hot sun all morning! Not sure if it was #16 or Collinite Super Doublecoat, but I'm not entirely sure there wasn't some still on the car when I junked it 17 years later :o. I have previously recounted my pristine Blue Coral Kit circa 1980 or so which I was saving for a "good" car...don't know when that will be ;).







Accumulator said:
The Meg's consumer line cleaner wax (A12) is basically the same stuff it's been since the early '70s
Click to expand...

Actually I thought they recently reformulated the A12, something about making it bead more.
 
When I started to drive I used a lot of Vista wax in the gold can. It was a very good wax and was very popular. Before that on my dads car I used Simonize Paste wax.
 
my personal first bottle of wax was TW hard shell( a little over a year ago), my first good wax was Megs Gold Class paste. I still use GC, applied it yesterday :p
 
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