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Old 07-02-2008, 11:12 AM
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Mike-in-Orange
Mike-in-Orange is offline
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Default Re: 303 Protectant VS Armor All

As many of your know, I work for Meguiar's. Of course we test and compare all the competitors products, even to the point of having our chemists literally take the stuff apart.

Armor All is, without a doubt, the single most maligned product in the automotive finish care world. Back in the day it was just about the ONLY product of it's kind on the market, and it was being used on plastics and vinyls of the time (think back to the great quality of domestic car interiors back in 1975 - yeah, junk). Now consider that most people did NOTHING to the dash in their cars and over time the material would just dry out horribly. So Armor All hit the market and people jumped on it. Spray some on that badly weathered dash and the material would often swell and split, so everyone blamed Armor All - after all, the dash appeared fine before applying the stuff. Truth is, if the dash is that badly dried out it will have a tendancy to swell and split if you appy almost anything to it - even plain water. But since Armor All had virtually no competition at the time, it took the blame.

Armor All was reforumlated several years ago, mostly due to changing VOC regulations that they, us and all of our competitors face on an ongoing basis, and it's now basically just a water based dressing not terribly unlike 303, or several of our own dressings. It does tend to impart a pretty high shine still, which I personally don't care for (but then again we make a product or two who's appearance I don't care for, but some folks like that look so we make 'em). Of course, just because many of these are water based doesn't mean their all identical - far from it. 303 is an excellent product, but I'd put our M40 Vinyl & Rubber Cleaner/Conditioner or Hyper Dressing up against it any day.

Otherwise Armor All is fine to use on the interior, tires, etc. If you don't mind the look .