Most any car enthusiast has experienced the feeling of having tired, achy hands from sanding and polishing. Elbow grease is a inevitable, necessary evil of working on anything. I am a huge fan of the look of polished aluminum wheels, nothing beats the shine of a mirror polished wheel. Unfortunately the time and effort taken to get a wheel to that stage is quite extensive. What makes it worse, is the first time it rains, or you take the car on a drive.. a little bit of that shine is lost. I dread the task of repolishing my alloys before a show or cruise. Here at Eastwood we came up with a product that is meant to greatly reduce the need to resand or repolish a bare metal part.
This new product is our “Metal Protect”. With this product you simply spray a thin film on the part (for me it is the polished lips of my wheels), and let it dry. Once dried, it now becomes a protective barrier from most anything mother nature can throw at it. When designing and testing this product, our R&D team took a couple different parts and sprayed them with the Metal Protect. They then left the parts sit outside for MONTHS (about 3.5-4 months) uncovered, and naked to the weather conditions thrown at us over late winter/early spring (including record breaking snow accumulation we received this winter). We found that the amount of corrosion and flash rust that occurred on these parts was stopped dead in its tracks! The brake rotors below both were removed from a car at the same time. Check out the amount of rust built up on the non-treated rotor!
Next we took a test panel (brass) and taped off one section while spraying the other half with Metal Protect. Even now, months later there is a definite line as to where we had taped off the untreated section.
This brings some great ideas to mind for the alternative ways this product could be used. One I thought of, is whenever I am doing body work or metal repair on a vehicle, I always have to fight flash rust. Normally your options are slim when dealing with flash rust. You have the option of simply spending the time sanding the panel before beginning work on it again (to remove the flash rust), or to prime the area.. only to then sand it off later when you want to begin working on it again. This is where the achy hands come into play, not only is it tiring enough that you have to sand body filler, welds, old paint, etc. But to have to go around and do that process each time you want to work on the project.. well, that just gets quite annoying (and painful too!). What I suggest you do, is to spray the bare metal generously with Metal Protect. This will stop flash rust and corrosion (Even if the part is sitting outside for a short period of time). Then once you want to work on the product again, or before you top coat the part, simply wipe the treated area with PRE Cleaner. The PRE takes the Metal Protect off quite easily, and allows you to get right back to work.
Currently, we are also testing this product on rubber window seals, as well as plastic headlight lenses. How great would it be to preserve those rubber seals or keep those plastic lights from hazing? Currently we have tested, and found that the Metal Protect is “Rubber safe”. This means your rubber wouldn’t turn white or discolor as some other protectants tend to do. The jury is still out on how long the formula will hold up when on the windshield seal or any other seal that sees tons of extreme conditions, but we know it will give a good barrier that is much better than leaving them untreated!
We’d love to hear you experiences and interesting uses for this product! Drop us a line, or add a review to the product once you have tried it out!
-Regards,
Matt M.