Area47

in short, usless. in my 10 years of professional detailing history, i have never seen a product fail so miserably. washed the car blah blah blah. did half the hood with the liquid stuff. went on easy, came off easy. no big deal. the other half with the good old fashion clay bar and water. the visible difference from one to the other is interesting. the liquid claybar had a deeper look to it. hmmmmmm clay bar is not supposed to do this. the other side, what im used to seeing. looks like crap. sprayed both sides down with water, dried it off.

ran the back side of my hand over the liquid side. ack, can STILL feel the dirt in the paint. i did this three times. same result. it never got the dirt out of the paint. the real clay bar side, one time did it. no dirt in the paint, nice and smooth ready for a coat of "primer" or base wax.

i was running short on time, so i couldn't do the rest of the car the way im used to. so i sucked it up and liquid clay bared the rest of the car.

now onto this invention called "ice"

goes on like baby oil. just leaves a faint glaze look to it. not impressed at all with this stuff. it leaves the paint feeling oily, and just down right weird. it doesn't give the car that clean smooth look and feel that im used too.

not a fan of either one, wasted my money.

if someone is looking for the easy way out, go for it. i'll stick to doing the claybar by hand, then a three step wax, polish, sealant style job with my high speed buffer.

bigrroberto

Hmm interesting review. Not to say that you're right or wrong, but you'd be one of the first people I've heard say that the stuff wasnt amazing.

Tr1p1ng

Maybe because he knows wtf he's talking about? Ive used the ice wax bs, it looks alright when your done, but the first time you drive it, it will have dirt all over the paint. You cant see where the wax is at until then, it may look like you get it all off, but im telling you, you will see it after you drive it.
I'll stick to the NXT Tech wax, that ****'s badass! :
btw, good write up.

twofknloud

well i can say that yes he is right on the money, i too been detailing car's for many many years, and there is no miracle product out there

claybar by hand the only way to go, wax i use gold class

look at the finish on my own car, notice reflection in the hood

Codyak Supercharged

well written

solid clay > Liquid

just as carnuba > Synthetics wax...

Thing is this cheap crap sells well because it has stuff in it to make it shine, so it might look impressive, but your not protecting and finishing the car as well as you can..

goood review

denn454

iTrader: (1)

I don't know if carnuba is necessarily better than synthetic wax, There are a lot of good products out there. I am a big fan of the dupont teflon wax. goes on easy, comes off fairly easy, and lasts a long time. The shine isn't as good as carnuba, but it will last twice as long. So which is really better?

I saw liquid clay bar at the store a few days ago, I had to laugh a little figuring there is no way it can possibly work like a real clay bar, its like using a garden hose to wash your car rather than a rag, its better than nothing, but in the end just isn't going to get the job done.

good write up!

JimmiLS05

ICE is terrible, in a pinch it will work but otherwise I'll never use it again. The wax does not last as long as an actual paste wax. And I haven't tried the liquid lay bar yet but just got into using Clay Magic and love it.

D4u2s0t

haha, pretty much!

old school meguirs for me. on by hand, off by hand. start with a wash, sponge & car soap, dry, wax. polish.

Area47

im seriously used to using professional stuff, ardex, auto-magic. i ran out of this stuff. so im forced to use off the shelf stuff. the only off the shelf stuff i will use now is 3M. i thought id try it to see what the hype was about. i seriously wasted damn near 30 bucks and 2 hours of my time. you will get better results from using a liquid compound with a microfiber applicator {big key here, microfiber} as compared to the liquid claybar stuff.

there is a couple people on here that can attest to the way it feels. jeremie, and m-dub.

dragonslayer27

ok so let me ask you what kind of products and/or brands do u recommend

Area47

when i had access to it, i used ardex, and auto magic stuff. basically what your pro's use in a massive scale.

now, since i don't get to have that luxury anymore, i use 3M stuff. it can be found at oreily's in the sandpaper/bondo/body repair section.

i will probably be redoing the car this weekend, dependant on weather.

IMADreamer

It's funny you made this thread, I was actually going to post a side by side comparison that I did over the last couple weeks of ICE and Meqs claybar. Maybe I won't now since you just did something similar.

I'll give the short version of my comparison.

So as I was saying I decided to compare these side by side. I thought I would use the ICE liquid claybar and paste wax on half my hood and the Meqs real claybar and gold class wax. IMO Meqs is the best "over the counter" stuff you can buy, but I'm no pro. Granted mail order products like Zaino and Zymol Concours are clearly superior but I don't consider those "over the counter" waxes.

So as I was saying after seeing all this speculation on this site and tons of people saying how great ICE was I wanted a real comparo. I suspected that most people that used ICE had never used a real claybar before and as I asked various people I found this to be true with many of the ICE believers.

The day I used both products the first thing I noticed that I didn't like was ICE did not have the feel of real clay bar. No surprise there, but I really like feeling the claybar do it's thing as you work it over the car. There is no feel with ICE and I think you just assume it's working. My conclusion is that ICE is simply covering up the imperections where as the real clay bar removes them. This is clearly evident if you look at the ICE applicator pad vs the claybar. After both sides were finished and rinsed, upon closer inspection it was clear the ICE was not removing the micro scratches or the little paint spots. The side done with Meqs was flawless. Another odd thing is the the ICE side had a deep almost waxed look, while the Meqs side looked as I would expect a recently claybared car to look. It had a more natural look to it.

After the rinse and inspection I then applied the ICE paste wax to the ICE side and Meqs gold glass to the Meqs side. This closed the gap and both sides look great from a few feet back. However, up close the ICE side had streaking and blemishes. The wax also dried MUCH quicker then the Meqs which made it tougher to remove.

The final straw came tonight on my third washing after starting this experiment it was clear the ice was not holding up. It wasn't beading like the Meqs and the deep wet look was gone. Meqs held up like a champ and looked as if it was just waxed today.

In conclusion, ICE is just another hyped up pretender. For the same price you can get Meqs which does far better, holds up longer, and actually removes contaminents from the paint rather then the ICE claybar which just seems to cover them.

E-Town SS

Woah, I have never seen this clay bar stuff before. Looks neat.

Now, what are people's opinion on liquid waxes versus paste waxes? My dad uses Mothers paste wax, while I use Meguiars liquid wax. I was told by a guy who works for an automotive paint supply store where we used to purchase our paint guns that on newer clear coat paints, liquid is better than paste.

Is it true or is this more of a personal preference thing? I would assume he knows what he's talking about seeing how he's in the industry. Just curious.

Coblt ss super

i like my real claybar over the liquid the liquid sucks, and then my nice polish, forget waxes

wdsoccer

where can i get a clay bar besides walmart?

zsk8er16

I would also like to know what more people prefer. Ive only heard the paste lasts longer than the liquid, but takes longer to put on.

U can get all kinds of clay bars at autozone.

wdsoccer

http://magicgarage.biz/dnn/Default.aspx?tabid=70
is that a good one? the first one

SwingBig14

So it's not just me. I heard all this great stuff about this ice stuff, I thought I must have done something wrong when it looked terrible after 1 drive to the store. Oh well, I'll keep it around if I ever need to shine it up quick for a short period of time.

zsk8er16

I seen that one at autozone today when i went up there and looked. I have the meguiars clay bar set, havent tried ne other clay bars yet. But im sure all the claybar sets r pretty much the same ne way so its just whatever brand u wanna get.

wdsoccer

ill go check at advance autoparts tomorrow

denn454

iTrader: (1)

Thats the one i'm using now. I used a mequires one before. more or less they are the same. I think the mequires was a little more effective, it seemed like it didn't take as much effort to get the same results. thats really splitting hairs though, and its only my impression so take it with a grain of salt. Both are good products.

whats this polish you're using? and why would you use that insted of wax? I can see it for going to a show or something like that, but the point of a wax is to protect the paint, a nice little perk to wax is it looks good.

Area47

thats what im doing with it. if im in a hurry for a car show or cruise night or something like this. it works fine for this. nothing more.

xspyder85x

the stuff it good, just not copared to the real claybar. the polish is nice though.

Area47

the polish sucks, pure and simple. it's like putting baby oil on a car.