"meguiars is gonna wash that wax right off-a your car" ... PH tests on popular carwashes...
 

Ok, so for people who dont know about PH. its a measure of acidity to alkaline. a PH of 7 is neutral, below 7 is acidic, above 7 is alkaline. Each point difference, is 100x more alkaline or acidic. (for example, if solution A has a PH of 7, and solution B has a PH of 8, solution B is 100x more alkaline than solution A)

Its no secret that alkaline solutions remove polish and wax. So, with my trusty digital PH test meter. (extremely accurate) I measured some popular car washes. All were mixed based on the manufacturs directions on the bottles. As a baseline, I also measured plain tap-water as well as a bucket of Dawn wash.

Water - ph 7.15 (may vary slightly in different cities)
Dawn wash - ph 8.46
Meguiars NXT - ph 7.96
Mequiars Gold Class - ph 7.96
Zaino Z-7 - ph 7.16

there is a very clear winner here, and im not too suprised at the Megiuars, since i wash my car once or twece a week, and can tell by touch that polish isnt holding up as well as before when i just used Z-7. Funny cause Meguiars advertised "ph-balanced" on their washes.

now who wants to keep using Megiuars? :)

great post. do you happen to have any einszett to test?

no, but if anyone wants their favorite wash tested, ill be happy to do so, but ud have to ...
 

send an once or whatever the directions list using..

wow! I wonder what pH P21 shows.

My well water is very slightly acidic. How's that affect the conclusion?
 

I'm assuming acidic is no better (perhaps worse) than alkaline when it comes to preserving wax. So if my water is slightly acidic, whatever soap would bring it closest to a neutral 7.0 would be best, right? If I used Zaino, it would still be acidic. So Meguiar's would be better in that circumstance?

that I can test. i will lower the PH of my tap water to 6 and test. altho, i doubt anyones water....
 

be that low. but it will be a great test. i would imagine the results would still be close to the same tho.. Ill test in a few minutes as soon as I find my "ph-down" solution.

My tap water is 6.8. 6.0 would be pretty extreme

ok, i adjusted my water to 6.8 first, and the meguiars gave me ph 7.54
 

so it looks like it raises the PH by .75-.80

I will need to carry a small pack of litmus in the future and do a titration everytime I wash
 

Too many of us believe the manufactures claims for their products. Meguiars always touted ph neutral. I used nxt, but I switched to eagle one wet about a month ago. Any idea what that one is?

pH of 7
 

Been using the new DP Auto bath- it has the Tuff SudsII and pH of 7, I dont notice it washing away any of my sealant or waxes.