Collinite 845 Review Liquid Insulator Wax Layering
Oftentimes, it’s the lesser advertised products that are the best. For this reason I’ve put together this Collinite 845 review. The case in point seems to be true with Collinite 845 Liquid Insulator Wax 845 – little advertising, but tons of word of mouth.
I decided to write my own Collinite 845 review given I recently started using the wax due to all the enticing word of mouth comments and raving reviews on the web. Collinite Liquid Insulator Wax 845 is very popular, but mostly in the online car detailer’s top secret cult of shine. Is it really that good? Let’s find out.
I made brief mention of Collinite 845 in the Awesome Bunch of the Best Car Detailing Products article. My first experience with the product would be layering the wax over a polymer-sealed new white Toyota Tacoma. Collinite Liquid Insulator Wax 845 beat Finish Kare 1000P Hi-Temp Paste Wax last minute as I was making my final decision on what to layer over the paint sealer on the truck.
Collinite 845 Review – The product
Collinite 845’s packaging looks as old fashioned as the Wendy’s logo. It comes in a clear plastic bottle with single-color screen printed red lettering and no fancy decorations or photos of super cars on the label. It just tells you clearly what it is. After removing the cap I do exactly as any other detailer would and smell the stuff. Smells awful. Not crap awful, but more like chemical awful. Clearly no fancy new-car smell perfumes are added to this stuff. Well, this is not ice cream or salad dressing. Who cares what it smells like? Let’s put it to work.
Application process
My first experience with Collinite 845 would be layering it over an already cured layer of Wolfgang Deep Gloss Paint Sealant 3.0. The plan was to layer it on following the instructions on the bottle and after removing the residue, let it cure for 12 hours before layering again. Yes, it was an ambitious detailing project.
Off comes the cap and I realize this stuff is quite concentrated and pasty. The bottle is full to the brim, so shaking it to mix would be no use. Smacking the stuff out like a bottle of Heinz ketchup didn’t seem like a good idea either. A squeeze of the bottle yielded a lump of wax on my applicator pad about the size of a hazelnut. I also noticed it was clumpy with some creamy areas surrounding clumped bits of wax. Keep reading, more on this further down.
OK then. I spread it out over the applicator with my gloved fingers and proceed to apply over, you guessed it, the hood. (The bonnet, for my British friends).
I noticed it spreads incredibly easy. Maybe too easy. However, I’m waxing a slick surface that has already been treated with sealant, so it is to be expected. I did half of the hood and then waited for it to haze over before buffing off the residue with a clean and fluffy towel from a brand new batch of microfiber towels. That’s when I realized I needed to wait a little longer. The stuff wasn’t completely hazed yet and it streaked a bit over the paint. Not to worry, I’ll wait longer.
When working with a wax like Collinite 845, review or not, surface prep and weather conditions are extremely important. If one of those is off, the results can vary greatly. This is SoCal, where the air is dry and the temps are warm. Waxes usually dry pretty fast here and application is quick. However, I chose the worst weekend in car detailing history to work on this project. I’m spoiled, so I never did check the weather. Unfortunately, moisture had been building up in the air and was getting ready to dump rain all over San Diego the following two days. Even so, these are still better conditions that what many people have to work with. I ended up doing most of the work inside the garage, using heat lamps and talking a good 4 days to finish and let it all cure nicely.
When the product finally hazed over well (about 15 minutes), I removed all the residue. I noticed the residue was little harder to remove than the residue of the Wolfgang sealer. My arms don’t like that, but I do. Means it dries pretty tough. Good. The reason I chose this wax for the truck in the first place was for the durability. The RallyWays Taco doesn’t get detailed every week like the Miatas so durability is key. I could compare the ease of residue removal to that of Rejex.
Collinite 845 review – On with the layering…
I shook that bottle like a Mexican margarita turning it from a paste to a creamy liquid.
By the time I was going to apply the second layer of Collinite #845 Liquid Insulator Wax on the third day of the project I had already used about 10% of the bottle. That little air gap at the top gave me the idea of shaking it well. Well, that I did. I shook that bottle like a Mexican margarita turning it from a paste to a creamy liquid. When I removed the cap I could very easily pour it out like a thick liquid. The clumps were mostly gone and the stuff was much easier to work with. The wax is not completely white. It has a very slight tinge of yellow, like unprocessed milk straight from the cow. Add the pastiness and the slight lumpiness and I could swear it looks like whale sperm.
In hindsight, when I opened the bottle the very first time I should have taken out some of the contents to make space in the bottle to shake it well. The Collinite wax was much easier to work with after being shaken and it also made a heck of a lot more sense. Maybe dropping a ball bearing in there with the bottle full might do the trick for mixing it up and breaking down the clumps.
I’m very careful not to contaminate plastic and rubber trim with wax – so much that I often apply masking tape to the trim to help keep wax off. However, you always have an accident or two. I noticed the Collinite 845 did not make the trim chalky and cloudy where I screwed up and touched the plastic. Nonetheless, I wouldn’t recommend you carelessly spread it over everything. It’s not sun tan lotion.
The looks
No car wax test would be complete without taking into account the final looks. It’s no different with this Collinite 845 review. Having said that, keep in mind I’m applying the wax on perfectly plain white paint – no mica, flakes or pearl white. It’s kind of hard to get good depth with white like you can with darker, deeper colors. Nonetheless, Collinite Insulator Wax 845 did help achieve more luster and shimmer than the Wolfgang paint sealer alone could. Polymer sealers are notorious for protection and durability but usually don’t look as good as carnauba wax. Collinite’s carnuaba definitely added depth. This wax however is not a strict show car type carnauba where the ultimate goal is looks. Collinite 845 is aimed to strike a balance between good looks and protection.
Durability
The true test now is durability. I expect great results based on all the positive reviews I’ve read about Collinite 845. I’m hoping it will resist SoCal sun and last slick for at least 2 months and 3 washes. Of course, the actual protection should be at least 4 months and 6 washes or so, but in general that’s quite optimistic with any product, specially on a daily driver. The cool thing is that it’s very easy to apply. I don’t really need to wait until it’s all off and I can easily reapply it when I have a good 4 hour window for wash and wax on a weekend. If I reapply often enough it should also help preserve the polymer sealant under it.
One note however, given the Collinite 845 wax was applied over a slick sealant I don’t expect the bond to be as strong as it would be straight over bare paint. But that’s fine. Even if the wax falls off the layer of sealant within a month, the wax is very affordable. My bottle of Collinite cost me $17, where the Wolfgang Deep Gloss Paint Sealant 3.0 is about $40. If the Collinite needs to be applied more often to help keep the expensive sealant on there, that’s absolutely fine and it won’t break the bank. I do intend to try out the wax on a car with no polymer sealer as well.
Update: 2 weeks after finishing this detail project, the paint is still ultra slick and the truck looks amazing and clean. This, after at least one rain. I’m very happy with the results of applying this wax, so Collinite 845 reviews positive.
Conclusion
To conclude the RallyWays Collinite 845 review – The bottom line is the wax is good and I highly recommend it. I would definitely buy it again. Not to mention, the price is right. The wax does not smell fun, is clumpy and takes a lot of mixing to smooth out. But, once you get past that, it’s really easy to apply and actually pleasant to work with. The fact that it spreads really easily also means you need to use less of it and therefore one bottle will last you longer than other waxes. Removing the residue is a straightforward process with a good balance of toughness and ease. It’s also pretty safe on non-painted areas if you screw up and touch them. That pretty much sums it up. I’d recommend you give it a try too.
Where to buy
Lately I’ve been buying many of my detailing products from Amazon. As is to be expected, they have Collinite 845 there and the reviews are very much in line with my experience portrayed here.
You can buy your bottle of Collinite 845 Insulator Wax using the link below:
Note that when you buy any of our recommended product using one of our links (such as the one above) you help RallyWays continue to do what we do, as we get a small commission. Note however, this does not make us biased. We only write stories and recommend products that we like and use ourselves.
