Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / Waxing Poetic: The Zymöl Story with Chuck Bennett

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Waxing Poetic: The Zymöl Story with Chuck Bennett · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

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BreakFix podcast is all about capturing the living history of people from
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all over the autosphere, from wrench turners and racers to artists, authors,
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designers, and everything in between.
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Our goal is to inspire a new generation of petrolheads that wonder How did they
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get that job or become that person?
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The road to success is paved by all of us because everyone has a story.
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Sometimes it's not the car you need.
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It's the car that needs you.
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That's the motto that has fueled 40 years of love and passion in the
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world of automobiles, aircraft, boats, horses, and even musical instruments.
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Using natural ingredients, oils, and waxes, Zymol products enhance any finish
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without harsh chemicals or abrasives.
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And with us tonight to tell the Zymol story, educate us on proper car
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care, and recount some great stories is the founder and CEO of Zymol.
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Chuck Bennett and co hosting with me tonight from the drive through is Tanya.
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So I want to welcome both Tanya and Chuck to the show and let's get into it.
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Great.
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So I got to say, I have been preaching about Zymol for many, many years.
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I got exposed to it because we were trying products a long time ago.
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On a car that was very difficult to wax, you know, an unclear coded
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red Volkswagen Audi product, trying all sorts of different things.
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And I kind of fell in love with the whole Zymol series of products.
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This is already 20 years ago, and I've been using it ever since.
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So I'm really excited to do this episode with you, Chuck.
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So let's start off and talk about how you got into waxes
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and 40 years in this industry.
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How did you get started?
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It's interesting how I got started and how the company started back in the late 70s.
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I had gone to Germany.
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And the idea was, I had seen a movie that was on television, like a miniseries
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called Roots, and it really impressed me.
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It impressed me with finding your ancestry, getting in
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touch with where you came from.
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My great grandmother, who was, by the way, disowned from her
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family for marrying outside of her station, she married a Dane.
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And her actual name was, Her last name was Rothschild.
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She was one of the Rothschild babies.
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Where she grew up was a place called Bischofsheim, Germany.
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So I decided to go to Bischofsheim and sort of get the feeling for
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where my great grandmother came from.
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That's about as far back as I could touch with our family.
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In Bishop time, it's, it's on the Tal River.
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It's a wonderful, beautiful place.
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They're known for a few things.
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One of the things they're known for is wine.
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They've got great wines.
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They're known for great food.
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They're also known for restoring horse-drawn carriages.
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Okay?
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The original like Landau kind of carriage in Germany at that time, they kept up the
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approach and the technique of restoring a carriage with the materials that
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were used originally on that carriage.
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As an example, wood was sanded to an almost perfection, and
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then it was covered with clay.
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That clay was sanded.
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Then they used an enamel paint on these beautiful horse drawn carriages.
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The black carriages looked like light came in near it and bent around corners.
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To get into the carriage like they were metal.
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They were incredible.
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I noticed when they were done restoring these carriages when they were done
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rubbing them out and doing what they were doing that they applied this God awful
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product on the side of the carriage.
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I will tell you right now that if I went to a football stadium
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and I had a container of it and I opened it up, I'd probably clear
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out half of the stadium odor.
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The odor was just the worst you possibly could imagine.
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Well, what it was was animal fats that had become rancid.
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There was lards, there was suet.
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It was the worst thing you could possibly smell.
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But the results were phenomenal.
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At that point I had had a Nivea container.
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I always liked to do a little moisturizing.
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I hate to say it, but I do still trying to look good at almost 75 years old.
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What I did was I dumped out my Nivea and I got some of their product
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and I put it in the container.
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It reminded me a lot of that Lederkrantz cheese.
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Okay, mixed up with that fish that that goes bad in Norway that
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they want to put, uh, they have a plan to camp that fish fish.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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Now, the scariest part was coming back to the United States and I'm
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saying to myself, What happens if, you know, like a dog gets a whiff of this
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container because stuff was coming through the container and I've got
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to open this container up and then explain to somebody that it's not Nivea.
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It stinks this bad and they want me to put it on my skin.
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So I was lucky.
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I went through customs.
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It was no problem.
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I got back here to the States and being a vegetarian, by the way, I am a vegetarian.
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I've been one since I was 24 years old.
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This is all for myself.
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I was not interested in making a company.
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This is for myself.
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Being a vegetarian, I can't make a product for myself that
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contains these animal fats.
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I decided to look at different kinds of plant fats that had fatty
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esters that were pretty close to what these animal fats were.
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Very hard to find.
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I was able to find an interesting plant fat that had an LDL count,
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which is one of the highest that I've ever seen, which is carnauba.
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Carnauba is a super LDL.
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Low density lipoprotein in its natural form, carnauba wax is
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harder than a concrete block.
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Wow.
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And we can get into that later on, we can explain all that stuff.
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So I had a friend of mine who was working at the time for a pharmaceutical
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company in New Haven, Connecticut.
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And she introduced me to an engineer and I sat down and I explained what
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I was trying to do and he said, okay, let's see what kind of oils
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and plant fats can combine and maybe we can break down this car now, Bob.
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And he decided that the best thing he could break the car now
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but down with was citric terpene.
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Tanya, you're familiar with terpenes?
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Uh, it's been a while.
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It's been a while.
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Citric terpene, it's the pressings from the skins of things like oranges
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and lemons and limes and tangerines.
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And they press the oil out, and then what they do is they go
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ahead and they distill the oils.
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So you've literally got an all natural solvent, which will help you
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dissolve, which will help you create an emulsion using the carnauba and
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your plant oils in this citric terpene.
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So we created a, if you will, a wax, in essence, a wax.
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And I tried it out and it was terrible, didn't work.
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It was like, I went ahead and rubbed Vaseline all over my car.
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I said, Oh, Jesus, what am I going to do?
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I went back to Mr.
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Patel and I said, we're going to do, we have a problem.
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He said, maybe it's because there's no biological activity.
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There's nothing that's making this want to become a wax again.
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You've got a pomade.
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You don't have a wax.
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We need some bioactivity in there.
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He said, do you know, there is an animal.
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That converts plant oils to a wax, and really what he meant was an insect.
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What we were able to find was the reagent through a company in Chicago
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called Signal, even though it was, it was synthetic because we didn't
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want to kill bees that bees use to convert plant oils to waxes.
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So we applied the reagent to our mix.
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Still at this point, no interest in starting a company.
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This was for me.
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Let me tell you about my car and the reason why I wanted to do this.
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I had a 1977 BMW 530i in Topaz, gorgeous color.
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And I was using the commoditable products that are on the market.
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When I waxed that car and I looked at my applicator cloth and I said, wait a
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minute, that's the same color as my car.
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That can't be good.
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If I'm trying to wax my car, why am I all of a sudden noticing the color
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of my paint on my applicator clothes?
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And it's simple.
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It's because the kinds of braces and the kinds of solvents that were
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being used, we're doing a very nice job and dissolving my paint surface.
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So I said, okay, I've got to make myself something that's not going to do that.
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So I made the product in my kitchen.
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Oh.
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The interesting part of this is, is that I belong to the BMW car club of America.
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A few of the members of the BMW car club, when I would go to a monthly
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meeting, had seen how nice my car looked and they made comment about it.
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And I said, well, I've got this sort of wax that I've made.
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And of course, everybody said, Can I have some?
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And I started giving these products away.
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Well, I was giving a lot of those products away and I was using
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canning jars to put the products in.
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About a year and a half after I was doing this, it got to a point where my wife
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looked at me and said, we need to talk.
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I just want you to know that last month you gave close to 1, 500 of
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our money away making these products.
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I said, how is that possible?
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You bought these raw materials.
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You bought two 50 cup coffee urns as you're making the products in.
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You've been buying all these canning jars.
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This has to stop.
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She says, either you stop doing it or you sell it.
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So in Connecticut, there was a wonderful restaurant called the, uh, Silver Inn.
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And it was located in Wallingford, Connecticut.
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That's where we had BMW Car Club meeting.
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And I had talked to Mark Luckman.
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At that point, he was the director of the BMW Car Club.
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He was coming in to say hello.
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He granted me 15 minutes up in front of everybody.
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I got up and said, everyone, you know who I am?
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And applause.
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Yes, yes, yes.
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You know who you are?
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You got this great stuff.
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And I said, well, I can't give it away anymore.
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Cause it was like somebody who had gone out and keyed every one of
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their BMWs got to see their faces.
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So I said, uh, well, I don't know what to do.
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I just can't give you these products anymore.
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And somebody in the back, in fact, I remember his name, Rick Oviatt
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raises his hand and he says, uh, why don't you sell us the product?
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And I'm thinking about money,
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sending the products.
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Okay.
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Well, I could do that, but I have to figure out what it's going to cost.
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So I go back and I'm trying to figure out what it's going to
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cost me to sell this product.
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The scary part, the scary part was that it was probably going to cost
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me per container around 12 to 13 to make up a container of that product.
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And this is a 1980s dollars, right?
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So this is 1980s dollars.
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Yeah.
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And I said, okay, I could sell it, but I need to make a profit because
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I'm going to take some of that money and plug that back into the
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business so I can buy more materials.
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What am I going to do to figure out what I should write says that.
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And at that point I had talked to my brother and my brother
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says, look, he said, it's costing a 12 to 13 bucks to make it.
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Are you including your labor in there?
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He said, no, what labor?
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He's well, somebody has got to be making it.
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I said, yeah.
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He says, Look, why don't you price it at 19?
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Okay.
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He says, Yeah.
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He says to me, he says, everybody's got a 20 bill in
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their wallet, especially car guys.
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They're going to want to buy it.
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I said, okay.
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So I contact Mark Luckman for the BMW car club.
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And I said, Mark, I would like to advertise my product.
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In the roundel magazine, they said, okay, so I came up with an ad and the ad was
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the container of our products and the title of the ad was, this is the first
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car wax and you should not gloss over.
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That's good.
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I like that.
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I have to tell you, I had a friend of mine helped me create the ad.
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When I talked to the people at the BMW car club.
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The money they wanted for me to do an ad in there was like insanity.
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I said, Oh Jesus, what am I going to do?
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So my brother said, why don't you contact the Mercedes Benz
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club and see what they charge for advertising in the star magazine?
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I said, okay.
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So I contacted the star magazine and they said, yeah, well, let's place.
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The ad is going to be 800.
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If we do it in color.
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And if you do it in black and white, it's 350.
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I said, well, I'll do it in black and white.
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So it was a great ad that had a little coupon thing at the bottom
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where someone could cut that out and do a coupon and add an address.
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I had to get a post office box.
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So I went down to Brantford, Connecticut and got post office box,
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seven 20 little post office box.
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So the ad ran, nothing.
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I don't hear anything.
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I'm not getting any letters coming in, nothing.
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I go to the post office box, like every other day, I hear crickets and there's
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moths that have come flying out of it.
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I said, okay, this was one of those ventures on my part that I'm
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going to stick to what I was doing.
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And by the way, what I was doing at that point, for a living, is that I was
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a computer hardware engineer that was working for a whole bunch of different
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companies, helping those companies move.
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Computer engineering into robotics.
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That was my job.
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Wife still couldn't figure out what the hell am I doing playing with this stuff.
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So I get a phone call at my office.
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At that point, I was working for Wang labs.
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I don't know if anybody knows who Wang labs was up in low mass.
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I worked for a derivative of Wang.
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So I I'm with you.
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In fact, my office was down the hall.
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From Fred Wang, who is Dr.
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Wang's son, right?
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I get a phone call.
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The phone call is from the postmaster in Brantford.
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And he says to me, I'm going to try and do the voice.
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He says, Mr.
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Bennett.
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I says, yeah?
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He says, I need to see you in my office tomorrow.
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Jesus.
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Yes, sir.
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Can you tell me what's wrong?
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He says, no, I'll talk to you when you get here.
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I called the wife and I said, listen, I don't know what I, you know, maybe
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there's some, some laws that I've broken by advertising products in a
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magazine, or maybe we need to have a federal license to do this stuff.
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Or maybe the federal trade commission doesn't like the fact that
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everybody else is wax on the market.
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It's like 2 a container.
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And here I am at 19, obviously something's wrong.
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So I get up that morning, I had a cup of coffee and it was like shaking all over
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the place, get in the car and I drive down there and walk in, there's like
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a window, right, knock on the little shelf on the, on the window, and it
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opens up and I said, I'm here to see, I don't remember what the postmaster's
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name is, but I'm here to see him.
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He says, hang on.
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So I said, okay, next thing I know, the window opens up and there's bags, mailbags
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being thrown at me through the window.
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There's about six mailbags.
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Whoa.
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And the postmaster pieces his head out and he says, It really aggravates me
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when people get a small post office box and they know they're going to get this
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kind of reception coming in the door from doing some marketing or advertising.
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He said, you need a bigger post office box.
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Mr.
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Bennett.
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I said, what is all this?
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He said, it's a response to whatever you've done.
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So here I am.
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I'm down there.
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It's in the morning.
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I'm trying to carry out these bags and get them into the car.
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It wouldn't all fit in the trunk.
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They got some in the back seat.
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I drive home.
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The wife at that point was working.
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I call her up.
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I said, you need to come home.
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We got a situation.
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It's okay.
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She comes home.
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We open up the bags and it was orders.
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There were orders after orders after orders.
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There were people that were sending not only checks, but they were sending cash.
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Wow.
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And little notes to say, like, here's a 20 bill.
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Keep the dollar for the future.
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Thank you.
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And this is crazy.
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Our first ad netted about 40, 000 in sales.
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So I sat back at that point and I said, wow, let me see computers
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that make me crazy, right?
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Spending my life, trying to figure out what operating system failure
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is going to, is going to determine what my life is like over the next.
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30, 60 days, or maybe doing this.
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I decided at that point to get ahold of a couple of really great
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people, some engineers that were in the packaging business, you know,
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I decided I was going to go ahead and rent a garage and I'd move.
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Manufacturing from my kitchen into a garage, and I did.
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We started manufacturing product.
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I designed a container, which is design all wax container.
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That's patented.
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By the way, it's a patented container.
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Oh, and there's there's all kinds of things.
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Strange things about that container.
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We'll tell you about it as well.
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The company has grown from this I'm working in my kitchen
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to a worldwide company.
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I mean, if we sell in just about every single country on the planet,
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except for ones we can't sell to, I wish I could like Cuba, there's a few
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Asian countries I'd like to sell to.
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One of which is a got this little guy who's got a funny haircut.
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It's got lots of nice cars.
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I'd like to sell everywhere.
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I'd like to be.
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I have people take care of their cars, love their cars.
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And you're right.
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It's sometimes it's not the car that you need.
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In most cases, it's the car that needs you.
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And there are lots of people who have got wonderful cars.
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There's people that have got 1970s, you know, seventies Pintos in the garage
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that they're massaging, that they love.
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Why would anybody own?
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Why?
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Because they love the car.
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There's all kinds of.
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Wonderful automobiles in the hands of wonderful people that
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need to keep the dream alive.
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That's our goal.
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Helping people keep the dream alive.
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We've done some pretty incredible things.
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We've branched out and created some other products.
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One of the hottest products that we've got.
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Is our HD cleanse.
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I don't know if you've ever used bleach g cleanse.
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I, I ha I own it.
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I, I have an assortment of zy products.
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Yeah.
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And HD cleanse.
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HD cleanse is like an exfoliate for paint.
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And the interesting thing about HD cleanses, it removes
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hairline scratches in paint.
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And the more you use it, the more hairline scratches are going to be relieved from
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the paint without abrading the paint.
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You're not using a polishing agent that can strip clear
18:41
coat or strip paint off a car.
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And especially today, when the average paint on a car today is anywhere between
18:47
four to six mils, that's all there is.
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So you've got to be very careful what you use on, on a car today.
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The older cars have got 20, 30 mils paint.
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You can scrub like crazy with those cars.
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But you still have to be gentle with paint.
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Waxing a car, treating the finish of a car, is very much like either
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baking, or it's like making love, or it's any of those things.
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You've got to be gentle.
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You've got to have a little finesse.
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You've got to work, you've got to be mentally in tune with the automobile
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and you've got to care about it because you're responsible for it.
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So HD cleanse became a instant hit with people that wanted to resurrect their
19:26
paint and get their paint to a point where they could apply a wax to it.
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Because for years, people had believed that all they had to do was wash the car.
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And wax it.
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That doesn't work.
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I will get into that in a little bit, but Chuck, I got to pause you here because
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wow, I think this is the most epic origin story we've ever had on break fix.
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So I want people to kind of digest everything you've said, but there's
19:48
some important fallout here.
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Number one, I made a really interesting connection.
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Finally, I understand why Zymol has been the number one recommended
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wax for BMW and the BMW club.
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I never realized that until now, but also I think a question falls out of this.
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Where did the name come from?
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Oh, well, I was sitting there and trying to come up with a name.
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You know, there's all kinds of things that were in my head, regal
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wax, and just stupid, stupid things.
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I like names that sort of name what the product is to
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sort of tell you what it does.
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Now, the waxes we make are enzymatic emollients.
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They're zymes.
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They have a reagent in them.
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It's like beer.
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It's like sourdough bread.
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There's, there's a live culture inside those containers.
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You know, that culture gets added after we blend everything and we've got the
20:38
temperature to drop in those containers.
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And that's when we add the culture to it.
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So enzymatic emollients.
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So I'm looking at this word, two words, actually.
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I said enzymatic emollient.
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There's a sign there and it's oil.
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We've got plant oils.
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What's the German word for oil?
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O with an umlau, L.
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O E L is a German word for oil.
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Seim, oil.
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Put the two of them together.
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Seimel.
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That created Seimel.
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And I've got the original press type lettering.
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You know what press type lettering was?
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Back in the 70s and in the 80s there were these letters you could buy
21:12
sheets and you'd put the sheet down on a piece of paper and you'd rub
21:16
it and it would transfer the letter onto the sheet you're working with.
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I have the original press type lettering of the logo, Zymol.
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And the only thing that's changed since then was the original logo
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was just the word, and now the logo is the word with double rules.
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Two rules above, two rules below.
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That's the Zymol logo.
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That's where the name came from.
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It is an explanation of what the product is, an enzymatic emollient.
21:40
Coming out of the computer and computer hardware world, now you're
21:43
a chemist, chemical engineer.
21:45
What do you consider yourself after 40 years of doing this?
21:49
A frustrated entrepreneurial scientist who has absolutely made
21:54
every possible mistake Right.
21:58
All I can tell you is, is that if my mistakes were cow manure, you'd
22:03
have no place to walk I made every possible mistake you could make.
22:09
There was mistakes in packaging, mistakes in blending, mistakes
22:12
in raw materials that we bought.
22:15
It was really crazy.
22:16
And one of the things that I was able to do is to solicit help from the vendors
22:21
that supplied Me raw materials, people that supplied me, coconut oil, people
22:26
that supplied me, Carnauba people that supplied me things like banana oil.
22:31
A lot of these companies have got biochemists that work for them.
22:36
And you can get a lot of help from these companies because they
22:39
have those people working there.
22:41
And of course, the more help they give you, the more that they can get
22:45
their product embedded inside yours.
22:48
Carnauba as an example.
22:50
Carnival comes from a palm tree called the Copernicus Seraphira.
22:54
That palm tree grows in three places in the world, actually four now.
22:59
It grows in Brazil.
23:01
Brazilians are well known for their carnival.
23:03
It grows in Egypt.
23:05
It grows in Africa, but it grows in South Africa.
23:10
And it grows in Brooksville, Florida.
23:12
You were equatorial until that point.
23:14
Yeah.
23:14
We have our own Carnauba orchard.
23:17
Is that specifically for Xymo?
23:19
You have your own?
23:19
We have our own Carnauba plants.
23:21
We treat them differently than everybody else.
23:23
Let's go back to Carnauba from the world.
23:25
Brazilian Carnauba is used in almost everything.
23:28
It's used in candies, cosmetics.
23:31
It's used everywhere.
23:32
If you're, have you ever eaten an M& M?
23:34
If you've eaten a Tic Tac?
23:36
They contain car now.
23:37
You get back, you can look at the package and it says it right up.
23:39
That's what gives it the glossy quote unquote candy coating, right?
23:43
Well, it's, it's, it's, it's the binder that binds the sugar together.
23:47
Remember that when you mix low density lipoproteins or even high
23:51
density lipoproteins with sugar, you get some monstrous triglycerides.
23:56
You've got too much in your body.
23:57
It's a bad thing.
23:59
If you've got too much, if you're trying, if your triglyceride level is too high.
24:03
There's a good chance your cholesterol level is going to be totally out of whack.
24:07
They use that.
24:07
In Egypt, they use the carnauba there to wax thread.
24:11
Okay.
24:12
They wax thread in Egypt because when they're making wonderful cotton
24:17
sheets and all those things, they need to wax the thread so it doesn't get
24:21
burned out while it's in the loom.
24:23
It has to flow smoothly through the loom.
24:25
So they wax the threading with the car now in South Africa, they use the car
24:29
now, but for jewelry molds, it melts in about 180 degrees and it's very solid.
24:35
Once it becomes because it gets back down to to ambient room temperature.
24:40
And in our car now, but here in Florida, we actually Treat the plants
24:45
like maple trees and we sapped them.
24:48
We don't just, they don't take, we don't take the car now, but from the fronds.
24:52
Now the rest of the world takes the car now, but from the fronts, they send
24:56
person up to the tree and they take the fronds off and they drop them down.
25:00
Somebody down below chops them all up.
25:02
Puts them in a 55 gallon tank of warm ether, and what happens is all the fats
25:07
come to the top, they pour the fats off onto a mold, which is sitting on
25:11
the ground, and the dirt, they pour the fats off onto that, it hardens up, they
25:15
take the bricks and they shift them up.
25:17
There's a few companies that you can get Carnauba from.
25:19
The leading Carnauba purveyor in the United States is a
25:23
company called Koster Kunin.
25:24
And Koster Kunin is located in two different locations, uh, well three.
25:29
There's, they've got one in Holland.
25:30
They've got one in St.
25:32
Louis, New York, and they've got one in Connecticut.
25:34
They have the ability to process carnauba.
25:37
And I've been in a plant where they process carnauba.
25:40
They have to use a steam turbine to do it.
25:42
And they drop these bricks into this one and a half ton bladed system
25:48
that spins at about 26, 000 rpm.
25:51
In an explosion proof room.
25:53
And what happens is it chops the carnauba up.
25:55
And the carnauba becomes a powder.
25:58
And it floats inside the vessel.
26:00
And they suck the powder off.
26:02
While the dirt and sand and everything else and insects fall to the bottom.
26:05
Wow.
26:06
That's how they process carnauba.
26:08
There's different types of carnauba.
26:09
There's brown carnauba, which is from the oldest of the fronds.
26:13
There's yellow carnauba, and then there's different grades of yellow
26:16
carnauba, and there's white carnauba.
26:18
And white carnauba is most expensive because it comes from the upper fronds.
26:22
Carnauba back in the 80s was going for around 15 a pound.
26:29
Today it's in the neighborhood of about 150 a pound.
26:33
It's pretty expensive material, and it's very hard to get that,
26:36
because if you're getting Brazilian carnauba, it's coming in by boat.
26:40
We all know what the supply chain crisis looks like.
26:43
It's pretty crazy trying to get raw materials.
26:45
It's one of the biggest challenges that my team has is getting raw materials.
26:49
So we use Carnauba in almost everything we make.
26:53
It is the wax of choice.
26:56
And we've gone from using micro fine Carnauba to today's
27:00
marketplace where we use nano fine.
27:03
Car, ba.
27:04
And on top of that we use car, ba, sap, and car Ba.
27:07
SAP is one of the materials that's in, uh, as an example, a product
27:11
that we make called Field Glaze.
27:13
Field Glaze is used every day.
27:15
It's used at the Aston Martin factory.
27:17
Every single day.
27:18
They shoot the cars with field glaze.
27:21
as they're moving them from one section of the factory to the next,
27:25
just to prevent scratches from happening and abrasions to the paint.
27:29
Also, our spray glaze is using liquid Carnauba.
27:32
We've gone through different suppliers of Carnauba, but we're
27:36
sticking with the guys that we know.
27:38
Make the best of the products that are out there.
27:41
Raw materials that are out there.
27:42
As the company progressed, we got tapped on the shoulder by lots
27:46
of people who wanted us to help them in their endeavors to win at
27:52
different events all over the world.
27:54
So Chuck, you know, you alluded to a bunch of things as you were describing,
27:57
you know, the origin of the company and talking about natural products.
28:00
You know, we talked about carnauba wax and things like that.
28:02
So I've noticed, and I appreciate, and I kind of show off to other
28:06
folks, Hey, check out smell.
28:08
You got to smell this, right?
28:10
Especially the cleaner wax.
28:11
You smell that coconut, you smell the banana, the wheel wax has mints in it.
28:15
Like it's very prominent, the natural ingredients that are in Zymo.
28:19
You don't find that in pretty much anything else.
28:22
But I've also come to realize in talking to you outside of the show that Zymo
28:27
offers products, not just for cars.
28:30
So do you want to elaborate on that and how you got into developing
28:34
products for not just cars?
28:36
First, let's talk, we'll go back and talk about the aromas.
28:39
You know, we've gotten complaints about the aromas.
28:42
What?
28:42
Yeah.
28:43
One of the most pungent smells is banana tosafirols.
28:46
They are very, very strong.
28:48
We use the oil from something called a burrow banana.
28:51
Yeah.
28:51
The burro banana is a three sided banana.
28:53
It's a short, fat banana.
28:55
If I were to open one up in my factory, just open a banana up in my factory,
28:59
in fact, we had a young lady who was allergic to bananas that worked for us.
29:03
And we had to let her go home and spend the day at home
29:07
when we were making products.
29:08
that contained banana oil.
29:10
This stuff is just mind blowing how strong it is.
29:13
But we've gotten actually complaints from people that said, I hate that smell.
29:17
I mean, there are a lot of people that don't like the smell of coconut.
29:20
They don't like the smell of bananas.
29:22
We use spearmint oil.
29:24
in our wheel cleaner.
29:25
Yep.
29:25
They don't like the smell of spear metal.
29:27
We've had that happen.
29:28
Let's go and talk about one of the things that I think is, is really
29:31
fun is musical instruments, which turned out to be a bit of a disaster.
29:36
My son, who's a very, very good bass player, calls me up one day
29:40
and says, dad, you've got to go on.
29:42
I think it was either the Gretsch or Rickenbacker website.
29:45
He says, there's a bunch of guys on that site that are talking about
29:49
using your cleaner wax on their guitars and their basses, he says,
29:53
and they're all excited about it.
29:54
I said, not good.
29:56
What do you mean?
29:56
Not good.
29:57
I said, the wax matrix in our cleaner wax is too heavy.
30:02
If you have an acoustic instrument and you're putting that wax on
30:06
an acoustic instrument, you're insulating the tonality of the wood.
30:10
You are taking that wood and you're dampening it by putting wax out.
30:14
He said, well, some of these are solid bodies.
30:16
I said, well, the solid bodies.
30:18
That is not my, not my worry.
30:20
I said, your hollow bodies and your semi hollow bodies.
30:23
That's my worry.
30:24
I log into that website.
30:26
It's a, like a factory website.
30:28
Tell people who I am.
30:29
Got a whole bunch of responses from people.
30:31
I said, wow, you're, you're, you're really, do you play?
30:34
Yeah, I play, I play bass, all that stuff.
30:36
And I said, well, why are you, why did you get on board?
30:38
What prompted you to get on board?
30:40
I was very, very upfront.
30:41
I said, because I want you to stop using my cleaner wax on your instruments.
30:47
Boom, that tight.
30:49
Why?
30:49
I explained.
30:50
And of course I got like Rick Troviat.
30:52
Why don't you sell us the product?
30:54
I got one guy who sent me up, uh, sent a message to me that
30:57
said, why don't you create some products for musical instruments?
31:00
I said, wow, that's a whole different animal.
31:02
That's a different kind of wax matrix.
31:04
I contacted my son.
31:05
I said, would you be willing to let me send you some products and
31:08
you can test it on your collection?
31:10
He says, not a problem.
31:11
Dad is I've got some instruments here.
31:13
I didn't have a question.
31:14
This big up at the time.
31:16
I said, we'll test it out.
31:17
So over the course of about 18 months.
31:19
We created product, tested it, threw it away, just finally got ourselves
31:23
to a point where we're able to create some very interesting products.
31:27
We decided to do a show that's called the NAMM show, N A M M.
31:32
The NAMM show happens in Anaheim, California during January, and then
31:37
in July it happens in Nashville.
31:39
The one in Nashville is called the Guitar Show.
31:41
The one in Anaheim is the big major NAMM show and the NAMM stands for
31:45
National Association of Music Merchants.
31:49
It's a misnomer because it's international.
31:51
So sort of like SEMA for the car guys, right?
31:54
Right.
31:54
So I'm at the NAMM show and I'm displaying some of our products,
31:58
talking to people about them.
31:59
We had a booth, we had 50 inch screens.
32:03
We did s going to do it.
32:04
We're gonn felt somebody tapping me I turn around and it was Martin guitar company.
32:12
An he says, I just want to t Forever.
32:19
He says, and I love your product.
32:21
He says, what is this?
32:23
I explained the situation that we've gotten involved in creating
32:26
products for musical instruments.
32:28
What I can tell you now is there isn't a single guitar that
32:31
leaves the Martin factory that doesn't have Zymol all over it.
32:34
Wow.
32:35
They use our products on their fretboard.
32:37
They use our products on their pickups.
32:38
body of the guitar.
32:39
Even some of our products are used to polish the finish on the guitar.
32:43
I've got to tell you about the motorcycle world.
32:46
Oh, right.
32:47
Two wheeled friends.
32:47
Yeah.
32:48
Got two wheeled friends.
32:49
Remember I mentioned Bob Sinclair?
32:51
He did.
32:52
And actually I was going to lead into that because we got to talk
32:54
about motorsport at some time.
32:56
Okay.
32:56
Bob Sinclair was the avid motorsport king, if you will.
33:00
He was a crazy, crazy guy.
33:03
I've spent hours with Bob Sinclair and Mario Andretti and all these
33:08
guys, all these race car drivers.
33:10
We've been out to Baja Cantina out in California, 2 a.
33:14
m.
33:14
in the morning, drinking Negro Modellas and getting totally toasted.
33:17
Great, great times, right?
33:19
After a pebble event that Bob was out there, which happens in August,
33:23
then we go back home and the fall sets in and the winter sets in.
33:27
And Bob lived in Connecticut as well.
33:29
Bob was the, the CEO for Saab, Saab Cars.
33:32
You know, mid November, Bob calls me up and he says, Bennett,
33:35
we're going to Milwaukee.
33:37
I said, when do you want to go?
33:38
He says, tomorrow.
33:40
It's snowing to beat the band out in Milwaukee.
33:42
I said, it's colder than Connecticut.
33:44
They've got dogs frozen to fire hydrants out there.
33:47
I don't want to go to Milwaukee.
33:49
He said, we're going to Milwaukee.
33:50
I said, okay, I said, what are we going, what are we going to do in Milwaukee?
33:53
He said, we're going out to see a friend of mine, Willie G.
33:55
Davis.
33:56
He said, we're going out to see Clyde Fessler.
33:58
You're going out to see the guys that run Harley Davidson.
34:00
I said, okay, you still have that wax, he says to me, that rebels gasoline, right?
34:05
I says, yeah, I gave you some, Bob.
34:07
He says, yeah, I used it.
34:08
It's incredible.
34:09
They were going out to show it to him.
34:10
He said, make sure you bring some.
34:11
I've already taken care of the flight.
34:13
He says, you got to meet me, he says, at the Hartford airport.
34:15
Gonna meet you there, he says, at about nine o'clock in the morning.
34:19
He called me at eight o'clock at night.
34:20
Now I've got to go back down to the shop.
34:22
I've got to get some product, get a whole kit together.
34:24
Sure enough, we get on a plane, go out to Milwaukee and we meet everybody.
34:28
I meet Willie G and I meet Clive Fessler.
34:31
The guy said, you've got to wax your refills gasoline, right?
34:34
I said, yeah.
34:35
He says, we're going to test it.
34:36
We go out on a loading dock and I'm freezing my butt off and they bring
34:41
out a brand new black, full dresser.
34:44
And he says, wax that tank.
34:46
I better do it quick.
34:47
I said, there's a temperature out here.
34:49
He said, No, it's, it's, it's okay.
34:51
He says, it's okay.
34:51
He said, Nick, it's about 26 degrees.
34:53
We're good.
34:55
The paint was fresh.
34:56
I take the wax and I rubbed it in between my hands to get the carnauba soft enough.
35:01
And I rubbed this wax all over the tank.
35:03
He says, what are you going to do now?
35:05
I said, well, I'm going to wait a few minutes and I'm going to buff it.
35:07
Okay.
35:08
So I waited a few minutes.
35:09
It was a little tough, but I was able to buff it.
35:11
The tank looked beautiful.
35:12
He says, okay, we're going to get it to test.
35:14
So the guy comes out with a bucket of gasoline and a rag, rag in the bucket.
35:19
Willie G takes the rag, drapes it over the tank.
35:22
Gasoline's like pouring out of this rag out of the ground,
35:25
out of the floating duck.
35:27
He said, let's go to lunch.
35:28
I'm standing there and I could feel the blood draining out of my head.
35:32
Let's go to lunch.
35:33
We're going to leave this rag, soaked in gasoline on the tank.
35:36
Let's go to lunch.
35:37
We go to lunch.
35:38
Now I didn't eat a damn thing.
35:39
We go back, William G.
35:41
takes the rag off, it's still damp, and the tank is cloudy.
35:45
He says, well, he says, that looks like a problem.
35:47
I knew exactly what had happened.
35:49
The carnauba in the wax is hygroscopic.
35:52
It loves moisture.
35:53
As the gasoline evaporated, the moisture in the air was getting to the carnauba.
35:58
So I said, leave it alone.
36:00
What do you mean?
36:01
Don't touch it.
36:01
So he stood there and watched it and all of the cloudiness went away.
36:06
It was bright and beautiful and deep black.
36:09
Willie G looks at me and says, so wow.
36:12
He said, I want 10, 000 kits delivered.
36:15
He says to us within the next 90 days.
36:18
So Bob and I get back on the airplane.
36:20
I said, Bob, I haven't got any way of making 10, 000.
36:23
He says, that was what Willie G said.
36:25
You turn it over to Clive Fessler.
36:27
Clive Fessler gets all the engineering people.
36:30
All the art design people, the label people involved.
36:33
He says, you're not going to have to ship them anything.
36:35
He says for a year, he says, don't worry.
36:37
So Harley Davidson with sold our Zymol talent was the name of the product.
36:43
T A L O N.
36:45
Of course we couldn't sell it.
36:47
We weren't allowed to sell it.
36:48
And just recently we've gotten a release from that exclusive.
36:52
That we can now sell the talent product.
36:54
So it's a wax that repels gas.
36:56
So this actually leads into another great story, but I want to preface this
37:00
with something really, really important.
37:02
Oftentimes, as I try to instill in people, Hey, you should try
37:06
out Xymo, you should do this.
37:07
I always get the, it's so difficult to work with this and that.
37:10
And I have to explain people, first of all, You should really read the
37:13
directions and number two, you basically brought up a good point, which was it
37:17
needs to react with the environment, with the ambient temperature has to
37:20
be the right temperature to work with.
37:22
It needs a lot of oxygen.
37:23
It reacts to that.
37:25
And that curing process is super important to the wax itself, especially
37:29
the cleaner wax and the carbon and some of the other ones, and we'll probably
37:33
expand upon that more when we talk about car care stuff, but I think it's, it's
37:36
funny the way you describe this and it's all based upon the way you built it.
37:40
Yeah.
37:41
In our other talks that it's not just oxygen that reacts with the wax.
37:45
There's another one of these specialty products that you came up with, which
37:49
is very different and it relates a hundred percent to the motorsport world.
37:53
So do we want to, do we want to talk about, we're talking about fast.
37:57
That's right.
37:57
Do you want to explain what fast means first before people get
38:00
like, what are we talking about?
38:02
Friction augmenting surface technology.
38:05
Bob Sinclair again had contacted me and said, listen, I've
38:09
got some friends of mine.
38:10
One of them is named Bob Snodgrass, and he runs this race team called Brumos Racing.
38:15
He's never heard of him.
38:16
I hadn't heard of him.
38:19
And he said, listen, he said, they really need something to help them go faster.
38:24
I said, what are they driving?
38:26
He said, you serious?
38:27
I said, yeah, what are they driving?
38:28
They drive Porsches.
38:29
They drive Porsches.
38:31
Okay.
38:32
So he said, what can you do to reduce the coefficiency of drag on the cars?
38:37
Well, you know, we use different reagents.
38:39
The reagent that we use really reacts with oxygen.
38:42
There are different kinds of materials that react to carbon
38:46
dioxide and react to water.
38:48
He said, okay, he said, well, why don't you come up with a product?
38:52
He says, we're going out to this place called Delmar up in California.
38:56
And he always did this to me.
38:57
He would talk to me on a Thursday and say, we're leaving tomorrow on a Friday.
39:00
I said, no, what do we go?
39:01
That's not, no, nevermind, Bob.
39:02
What time do I have to be at the airport tomorrow?
39:04
He says, well, we're going to head out to California tomorrow.
39:06
He says, probably fly out somewhere 30, 10 o'clock.
39:10
So we fly out to California, go to the Del Mar race.
39:13
And that's where I meet Hans Stuck and Hurley Haywood.
39:15
Two of my heroes.
39:16
We go out there and Hans Stuck, you know, he's, he's like Lurch.
39:20
Do you ever meet Hans Stuck?
39:22
Not in person, no.
39:23
The guy's like 6'10 He's like, how he can fit into that portion was beyond me.
39:29
In fact, he's had them modify the portion.
39:33
We're able to take the seat and move the seat back far enough that he
39:37
could get his legs stretched out.
39:39
At that point, he says, my leg is in comfortable position to have the
39:42
gas pedal all the way to the floor.
39:44
So I said to Hans, I says, Hans, what about the break?
39:47
He says, what's that?
39:51
Awesome.
39:53
Nevermind Hans.
39:54
I got, I got the picture.
39:56
We took this product.
39:57
Now we're there.
39:58
We had gotten some containers of CO2.
40:00
We put the wax on the cars and we shot the cars with CO2.
40:04
We shot them to a point where we ended up with ice forming
40:07
on the outside of the cars.
40:08
That alone psyched up everybody or psyched out everybody that was
40:12
standing around the competition wanting to know what we were working on.
40:16
In fact, one of the officials came over and said, you know,
40:18
what are you guys doing?
40:19
Just preparing the surface for racing.
40:21
As I told Hans, I said, Hans, we've waxed parts of the car that we should wax.
40:26
And there are parts of the car that you need to have drag.
40:29
You need some downforce in certain areas.
40:32
We've got it nailed down.
40:34
I said, but be careful because the car is not going to feel like it's
40:38
going through the wind anymore.
40:40
You're not going to get the resistance that the car Normally
40:43
feels that day that we were out there was time trials and stuff.
40:47
Hans takes his car out times.
40:49
There's about four laps and he comes back.
40:51
He jumps out of the car.
40:52
God's honest truth runs over to me, grabs me and picks me
40:56
up like I'm a sack of potatoes.
40:58
And he's hugging me.
40:59
And he says, This is fabulous.
41:02
He says, This is just fabulous.
41:03
I said, Okay, Hans.
41:05
I said, I guess you'll like it.
41:07
He says, Oh, he's, I'm never going to just drive a car again
41:11
without your product on the car.
41:13
So Bruno's team used our product.
41:15
Then at that point, Bob Snodgrass knew one of the people from the America's cup.
41:21
And we sent our guys to put fast America's cup racer.
41:25
We've got the pictures of it when it was at Rockefeller center.
41:28
It was on display at Rockefeller center in New York.
41:31
So we put our wax on that.
41:33
We have different boat race teams that have used it.
41:35
Do you ever hear of Sutphin Marine?
41:37
Sutphin Marine, they're power boat racers.
41:39
They don't know if they still race at all, but they wouldn't drop
41:42
their boat in the water without Simon Fass being on the boat.
41:44
The interesting part of it is, is that the wax, when it gets near water, it'll
41:49
cause a bubbling effect in the water.
41:52
So you've got less drag on the water.
41:54
Really interesting stuff.
41:55
We got caught putting this product on The America's team boat, and they
41:59
told us that we had to remove it.
42:01
So I built a wash and the wash contained more fast.
42:06
Just watched it right.
42:08
And added more fast to it.
42:09
Now I get a call from BMW and they said, we need you to come to Rhode Island.
42:15
It was the petite Lamont.
42:17
So we need to have you apply fast because he had heard about it to our cars.
42:22
Me and a good friend of mine.
42:25
Marty Sals, he's a great guy.
42:27
He's a terrible lawyer and a wonderful motorhead.
42:30
We go out, coat the cars, you know, wearing our jumpsuits.
42:33
We've got tanks on our back.
42:35
We shoot the cars.
42:36
I kept telling the guy from BMW, I need to talk to your drivers.
42:41
I need to talk to them.
42:42
And I finally got a chance to talk to them.
42:44
And you know, the funny thing about race drivers is that some of them will
42:47
listen and some of them don't talk to me.
42:50
You're an engineering lowlife.
42:52
Please don't talk to me.
42:53
So I went ahead and I said, guys, these cars are not going to react the
42:59
way you have had them react before.
43:02
The coefficiency of drag is severely reduced.
43:05
That kind of feeling you've got when you are up against the air.
43:10
And you're in a turn is not going to be the same.
43:13
It didn't listen.
43:14
They didn't make it to the third turn.
43:15
Both of them went into the wall.
43:17
We had other people try this technology.
43:20
Do you guys still make fast?
43:22
We still make fast.
43:23
In fact, one of the things that we did, we took fast and we packaged
43:27
it small and gave it to the U S ski team to try it out on their skis.
43:33
I've been wondering about skis this whole time.
43:35
All right.
43:35
Here's the best part of this.
43:37
One of the people of the U S ski team decided to wax one ski with
43:42
our fast technology product.
43:44
That sounds like a terrible idea.
43:46
Went down a Hill and immediately corkscrew it into a tree.
43:51
I don't think I should probably sell this stuff.
43:53
We did.
43:54
We haven't sold it because what happened was.
43:57
The report came back, somehow, one of our attorneys, Paul Belling is his
44:02
name, uh, he's now living in Germany.
44:04
He's got a great life there.
44:07
I loved doing his voice.
44:08
He said, uh, Chuck, now you can't sell this stuff.
44:12
He said, you're going to kill people.
44:13
I said, if people are brave enough to put wooden boards on their feet and go down
44:18
a mountain full of ice, I mean, how am I, how is what I'm doing going to kill them?
44:25
Come on, you can't do it.
44:25
Liability, liability.
44:27
You should never listen to lawyers.
44:29
I probably should have taken this stuff out and sold it.
44:31
And then we may do it again anyway.
44:32
We may, we may bring out that ski wax anyway.
44:35
It's awesome.
44:36
We've supplied the U.
44:38
S.
44:38
Olympic luge team with some of our fast technology years and years ago.
44:44
And of course, our logo has appeared on all these, our logos
44:46
appeared on the Brumos race cars.
44:48
The logos were on the, uh, Seffen Marine.
44:52
Then, my wife is an avid horse lover, and we woke up one morning and she said, you
44:58
know, we make all these great products.
45:01
Why don't we make something for the horses?
45:03
So you're talking saddle waxes and other things?
45:05
Oh, we already had those products.
45:07
We already had leather cleaners, leather conditioners.
45:10
She was more interested in hoof care.
45:13
She was interested in shampoos.
45:17
She was interested in conditioners, coat conditioners, mane and tail
45:21
detanglers, those kinds of things.
45:23
So I said, yeah, we could look at that.
45:25
I said, what's the main goal here?
45:27
She says we need to stop flies from getting at them.
45:30
We had moved to Florida in 2009.
45:33
There's a big difference between the fly community in Florida and
45:37
the fly community up in Connecticut.
45:39
Down here, the flies got their own council.
45:42
They park themselves on horses here.
45:46
I mean, it's crazy.
45:47
And then, of course, you've got cows everywhere.
45:50
Cows breed flies.
45:52
It's incredible.
45:53
We found out very quickly that we couldn't actually make any
45:56
products that would repel flies.
45:59
You know, there are some products that will.
46:02
We've got a natural extract from chrysanthemums in our soap, or horses.
46:08
If you take the extract from a chrysanthemum and you go ahead and
46:12
process it by squeezing out the essence of, uh, in the chrysanthemums, And
46:18
then go ahead and distill that you end up with something called pyrethrins
46:22
when the majority of pyrethrins are garnered from chrysanthemums
46:27
and the flowers of chrysanthemums.
46:29
And what they're for is that they cause insects to stop breathing.
46:34
It's a very interesting material.
46:36
It causes the insect to literally suffocate, but we don't have pyrethrins,
46:40
but we do have extract of chrysanthemum in our shampoo and in our conditioner.
46:46
So we created some products and they're very, very popular.
46:50
The horse care people love our products.
46:52
And what's interesting about that marketplace is that, you know, when
46:56
somebody waxes their car, you know, the car doesn't decide that after it's done
47:00
getting waxed, it wants to roll over on its back in the nearest mud puddle.
47:04
Which is what it's supposed to go.
47:06
And we've tried our products on different horses and different parts of the world.
47:11
In fact, we brought some product with us to London.
47:14
We brought some products that they, they tried it on some of
47:16
the, the Bobby's police horses.
47:19
And then we brought it over to Ireland to, um, uh, Ben and
47:23
breakfast there called Puddin Hill.
47:25
And they had a great stable.
47:26
And we tried some of our products on.
47:28
on their horses.
47:29
And then everybody was very, very pleased.
47:31
We're doing very well with our, with our horse care products.
47:34
Our horse care products are called equine skies.
47:36
Oh, interesting.
47:37
Yeah.
47:37
It's, uh, in fact, we've just been notified by Amazon.
47:41
They'd like us to put a store up on Amazon of our horse care products.
47:44
We're trying to keep up with all the different dirty and need to
47:48
be shiny surfaces on the planet.
47:50
I'll never be able to go after all, which is actually a great segue
47:54
into talking about some car care.
47:57
And I know you've got some interesting techniques, which we'll, we'll
47:59
get into, but I want to start with a quote you gave me when we were
48:03
talking before the show, which is the wash is as important as the wax.
48:08
Let's start with that idea and build from there.
48:11
Why is the is important as the wax.
48:14
And what's The best or proper way to really wash a car when you're prepping
48:18
it for, you know, a car show or even just for yourself or, or you know, just
48:22
getting it ready, getting it shined up.
48:23
We were sponsor of the two thousands.
48:26
It's either 13 or 15 Ferrari national events here in the United States.
48:31
We were the sponsors.
48:31
I'm always, we have an event that we've always done at different
48:34
events like Porsche Parade at the BM bmw, October Fest.
48:38
Anytime we've gone to a car club.
48:40
We've done an event, StarFest.
48:42
There's an event that we've always done, which I know Tonya would love.
48:45
It's called Suds and Sugar.
48:48
And what it is, is that we have a demonstration, and hopefully
48:52
they've got their kids with them.
48:54
We teach people how to wash their car properly.
48:57
And we have a company come in and make ice cream sundaes for everybody.
49:01
I'm digging this.
49:02
Yeah, so everyone's sitting there with these ice cream sundaes.
49:05
Big.
49:06
I mean, big ice cream sundaes, right?
49:08
They're watching what's going on.
49:09
And the reason why I like the whole idea of the ice cream sundae is
49:14
that I want to kick everybody's endorphins through the roof.
49:16
Don't put in that elbow grease, right?
49:18
Yeah.
49:18
I want them to, I want them to see, to be, you know, right there with
49:22
us when we're working on the car.
49:23
The first thing that people should realize when they wash a car is
49:26
it has to be a top down effect.
49:29
You always start from the top of the car and work down.
49:31
And you need to be able to wash your car with a good sponge, not the kind of
49:37
sponge that, like a sea sponge, which traps dead sea animals and shells in it,
49:42
which will put all kinds of interesting patterns on your car, that within, um,
49:46
A few thousand years when they find that body panel, they'll try and figure out
49:50
what you were trying to write, right?
49:53
Okay, so you want to have a closed cell sponge that holds a
49:57
lot of water and a lot of suds.
49:59
You need a good car wash product that doesn't try and shine the car.
50:04
at the same time.
50:06
Products that are out there to try and shine a car at the same time.
50:09
Generally have anywhere between a 20, 000 centistoke to a 50, 000 centistoke
50:14
silicone blended into the soap.
50:17
You don't need to have, be putting that on your car.
50:19
That's not what we're trying to do here.
50:21
We're trying to Wash the car.
50:23
You need to have a five gallon bucket.
50:25
That bucket needs to be filled with lukewarm water, lots of
50:29
good soap in there, a good soap.
50:31
If you can't buy a good car wash soap, then what you need to do is you need
50:36
to get some ivory soap in the bar form.
50:39
You need to take that ivory soap in the bar form, I need to find a way to
50:42
grind it all up and use some of that soap with a couple of tablespoons
50:47
of salad oil in the wash water.
50:49
Interesting.
50:50
So cheese grater and some olive oil here.
50:52
We're making olive oil.
50:54
Ivory just came out recently, a liquid form of ivory soap.
50:58
I know we've got it, but it's not the original ivory.
51:01
The original ivory soap is tallow based.
51:04
Tallow is animal fats.
51:06
That's why the ivory bar would float 99, 100 percent pure.
51:12
That's why the ivory bar would float in water is that it was pure tallow.
51:16
And they got it to become a soap by using lye in the mix with
51:21
the tallow, the liquid ivory.
51:22
In fact, I've got some here in the house.
51:24
I happen to like it a lot.
51:25
I shower with it.
51:26
But it's not the original towel.
51:28
So you shave it, you take your salad oil and you drop some
51:31
salad oil in the wash water.
51:33
It may be advisable, no matter what you're using for a car wash,
51:36
to take a tablespoon of salad oil and put it in your wash water.
51:39
Would you recommend that even for the Zymo Auto Wash?
51:42
I would.
51:43
I would.
51:43
And the reason why?
51:45
Is it breaks up into millions of tiny beadlets that adhere to the silt on the
51:51
car and help you slide it off the car instead of you dragging it off the car.
51:56
So I've heard the same thing from detailers saying that
51:59
if you use the old tide.
52:02
Powdered detergent.
52:03
It does the same thing.
52:04
It's supposed to lift and shift the dirt, but it's a bit of a clarifier.
52:08
It strips the paint.
52:09
No.
52:09
Tide should be used as a silicone cracker to get silicone or sealant,
52:14
paint sealants off the car.
52:16
In fact, I went ahead and answered it to the young fellow today who
52:18
wanted to know how to get the sealant.
52:20
He had gotten one of these ceramic sealants, which really aren't ceramic.
52:24
I had it done to his car.
52:25
And now he's got, you know, what he calls cobwebbing all over the car.
52:29
I told him, I said, you need to First things first, you need to
52:31
get that sealant off the car.
52:33
You go to your laundromat, buy a couple boxes of Tide soap from the laundromat.
52:38
The small boxes, you take the two boxes, mix them in a five gallon pail
52:42
of water and wash the car with Tide.
52:44
Tide is extremely strong.
52:46
And it has a lot of phosphates, so it'll crack silicone, you'll get it off the car.
52:50
But let's go back to using a regular car wash.
52:52
Try and get a good car wash.
52:53
We make a good car wash.
52:55
There are lots of companies that make good car washes.
52:57
Love the smell of it, by the way.
52:58
It's fantastic.
52:59
It has coconut oil, it has banana oil in it.
53:02
We've gone ahead.
53:03
and try to to create a product that's pleasing to use and that doesn't dry
53:09
out your hands to a point where you feel like you've got to moisturize
53:13
your hands for the next three weeks.
53:14
There's a lot of car washes that'll do that.
53:16
It's the pH of our car wash is somewhere around A six and a half, considering
53:23
that your water in most towns, most cities is anywhere near an eight
53:29
is made on the scale of the PHQ is a little bit on the alkaline side,
53:33
you're going to balance that out and hopefully get you close to a seven.
53:35
Alright, so now we've got the salad on there.
53:38
Next thing you should do is that you need to wash the car with both hands,
53:43
one hand empty, one hand with the sponge, you take your soap water, you squeeze
53:48
it off onto the top of the car, or a fender, if you move to that part, or a
53:53
hood, and you use your bare hand and you run your bare hand over the car first.
53:58
Touch the car with the sponge.
54:00
Use your bare hand.
54:01
But you want to find if things stuck to the paint.
54:04
That bug protein is a wonderful glue for taking a small stone and gluing it to the
54:10
top of your car or a fender on your car.
54:13
And there you go, giving archaeologists a time again, trying to figure out
54:18
what the hell you wrote on your car.
54:19
2000 years ago.
54:21
Because you've scraped this stone again all over your car.
54:23
So hand first, hand first.
54:26
Once you are satisfied, there's nothing stuck to the paint.
54:30
Also gives you an opportunity to be one with your car.
54:33
To understand whether or not you've picked up some stone damage or whatever.
54:36
And you do that, then you use your sponge.
54:39
Let's say that I did half the roof of the car.
54:41
I rinsed the entire car.
54:43
I don't just rinse the roof.
54:44
I don't rinse the half of the roof.
54:46
I rinse the entire car.
54:47
Now I do the second half of the roof.
54:50
I rinse the entire car again.
54:51
Then I move down, and I move down to the hood.
54:54
Do half the hood.
54:55
And I rinse the entire car.
54:57
You keep rinsing the entire car.
54:59
Every time you wash something on the car, rinse the entire car.
55:02
Remember that this hand, if you're left or right handed,
55:05
is the hands, the magic hand.
55:07
That's the hand that's going to tell you what's stuck to that paint surface,
55:11
or where you've got some damage, or where you have to be careful, or
55:13
what needs some special attention.
55:15
It's a simple way to wash a car.
55:17
It always top down.
55:18
And when you get to the belt line, that's the beginning of the rocker
55:21
panels, you get to the belt line.
55:24
At that point, you change your water.
55:27
You change your sponge.
55:28
And you go to a new water, new sponge, and a little more carwash mixed in.
55:35
It's got to be just a tad stronger.
55:37
What you're really trying to get off that paint surface, and you've got
55:40
to think about this for a moment, is not just road silt and bug proteins
55:46
and acid rain deposits and all that.
55:50
The biggest culprit that kills paint surface on the cars is the catalytic
55:55
converter of the car in front of you.
55:57
American cars are very interesting.
55:59
They use sulfur based cats and the operating time it takes for that cat
56:05
to get up to full operating temperature is five, zero minutes, 50 minutes.
56:12
The average commute for most people is 30.
56:15
So while you're sitting behind that Suburban and you're on the 405 or
56:20
wherever you are, whatever highway you're on, and you're trying to get to
56:24
work, that catalytic converter in that Suburban is spinning hydrochloric acid
56:28
at a pH of about two all over your car.
56:32
Nice.
56:33
You've got to get that stuff off of there because when it
56:35
dries, it's not active anymore.
56:37
The moment that it gets moist again, The moment you get some dew, the
56:42
moment it obtains any form of moisture, it becomes an active acid again.
56:47
So washing your car is probably the single, the most
56:50
important thing you can do.
56:51
And believe it or not, it's the place where most cars get damaged
56:56
by their owners, because they don't know how to wash a car.
56:58
So I'm hearing you're not a fan of car washes.
57:02
Well, I got in a lot of trouble.
57:03
I got in a lot of trouble.
57:04
I've been interviewed a lot on about different magazines.
57:07
I've been on air with different radio shows.
57:11
I could ask that question.
57:12
Chuck, what do you think of automated car washes?
57:15
I said, well, there's a lot of automated car washes that use different kinds
57:19
of soaps, different kinds of cleaners.
57:21
One that really, that really stands out in my mind is the car
57:25
wash that doesn't use any soap.
57:27
It's 100 percent environmentally correct.
57:30
And of course, the announcer went, wow, that's great, Chuck.
57:32
Tell us all about it.
57:33
I said, well, what happens is, is that it takes all the dirt from the car in front
57:38
of you or the 10 cars in front of you.
57:40
It runs it through a filtration process and it takes out the dirt in certain
57:45
micron size and then air blasts it with water at your car to clean your car.
57:51
So literally what they're doing is they're sandblasting your car.
57:54
And this guy was on air and he said, no shit.
57:57
I said, yeah, I'm telling you that's what they do.
58:00
And automated car washes.
58:02
There's ones with brushes, there's touchless, there's all of this.
58:05
You'll find that, that a lot of people stop going to an automated car wash when
58:09
they realize that it didn't do a good job, the ones that really do clean the car
58:15
are using different kinds of detergents.
58:18
that will strip the wax right off of a car.
58:20
Now, let's talk about the offense that a lot of guys and gals make
58:25
at home when they wash their car.
58:26
They go and they grab that stuff on the kitchen sink.
58:29
One safe for ducks.
58:31
One safe for ducks.
58:32
The blue, the blue stuff.
58:33
Yeah.
58:34
The blue stuff.
58:35
There's, what is it?
58:35
There's joy.
58:36
There's uh, gone.
58:39
Ajax.
58:39
Yeah.
58:40
All right.
58:41
It's interesting about Zymol Wax.
58:44
Zymol Wax is made from fats and oils.
58:48
Carnalba is a low density lipoprotein.
58:52
It is a fat.
58:53
It's a solid fat, but it's a fat.
58:55
Coconut oil, banana oil, orange oil, any of these oils.
58:59
These are fats and oils.
59:01
Now, that stuff that's sitting on your sink, what is it designed
59:05
to remove from your dishes?
59:07
Grease, fats, and oil.
59:09
So, wait a minute, if I take this stuff out to my car, if I've just spent all
59:13
that money on Zymo, and I wax the car, and I want to wash it, and I go grab
59:18
that Dawn, yeah, I'm not going to hurt any ducks, I'm going to grab the Dawn,
59:21
and I'm going to go out there, and I'm going to put that Dawn on my car,
59:24
and I'm going to wash it, and then I'm going to call Zymo and say, I got a
59:28
problem that it doesn't beat up anymore.
59:30
You know what our people have been trying to do?
59:32
What did you wash your car with?
59:34
First question out of our customer service.
59:37
What did you wash your car with?
59:38
That is the first question you asked me.
59:40
I had a problem as well.
59:42
And you're like, what did you wash your car with?
59:43
I'm like, uh, yeah, I mean, it's very interesting.
59:48
People sort of get disassociated with what the right thing to do is.
59:53
And that's, I don't know why that happens, but You know, maybe it's just
59:56
that they're expecting miracles to happen all at one time very quickly.
1:00:01
First of all, the W in wax means work.
1:00:08
That's what that W means.
1:00:10
Okay.
1:00:11
You've got to be ready to go and work on your car.
1:00:15
We have customers, many, many customers that will call up
1:00:19
and place an order on a Monday.
1:00:21
And they want us to get the product to them before the weekend,
1:00:24
because they're going to go spend time commuting with their car.
1:00:27
They're going to go into their garage, put on some music, they're going to
1:00:31
break open a bottle of Pinot Noir.
1:00:33
They're going to work on their car for four hours.
1:00:35
They're going to be with their automobile.
1:00:37
It's not a problem loving your car.
1:00:40
We've got this stigma that somehow socially has been pushed around.
1:00:45
Gee, uh, uh, do you like your car?
1:00:47
Yeah, I like this car.
1:00:48
Do you love your car?
1:00:49
Uh, I don't know.
1:00:51
People are nervous about saying, yeah, I love that car.
1:00:54
You know, I absolutely love it.
1:00:56
I've got a car that I love.
1:00:57
I've got a, a 1990 500 SL panoramic.
1:01:01
It's got a glass roof.
1:01:02
I bought it off of a friend of mine.
1:01:04
We bought the car brand new and his wife didn't want it.
1:01:07
And, uh, the car sat in his garage for shit, almost 10 years.
1:01:11
And I said, I'll take it.
1:01:13
We've slowly, but surely had to replace a whole lot of goodies on this car.
1:01:17
But I love that.
1:01:19
And that car loves me.
1:01:20
I know it.
1:01:20
And cars have personalities and some of them have quirks.
1:01:24
Some of them, hell I've got a 1984 Mercedes Benz, one 90 E 2.
1:01:30
3 16.
1:01:32
Oh, my wife can't start that car.
1:01:34
Won't start for her.
1:01:35
I walk out there, I talk to her, I rubber fend her.
1:01:39
I sit down, I tell her how beautiful she is and how I've missed her all
1:01:43
this while the fuel pump is priming.
1:01:45
But yeah, go ahead.
1:01:46
Yeah.
1:01:47
And I turned the key and I can hear the cold start valve clicking away
1:01:50
and I turned the key and fired her up.
1:01:53
There we go.
1:01:54
Going back to what we talked about, washing the car.
1:01:56
It's the simplest and the most important protection you can give
1:02:00
your car is to wash it correctly.
1:02:02
The next thing is, is cleaning the paint.
1:02:04
People tend to put all kinds of things on their cars, waxes.
1:02:08
They never clean the paint.
1:02:09
They never get the paint ready for wax.
1:02:11
You know, like when we brought out cleaner wax, there were a lot of people that
1:02:15
said, you guys are out of your mind.
1:02:17
You're going to make a wax that has no petrochemicals, that doesn't
1:02:20
have any petrol solvents at all.
1:02:23
No, we are going to make a cleaner wax that's water based.
1:02:26
At all.
1:02:26
You can't make a water based, what are you, out of your mind?
1:02:28
Well, we're not out of our mind.
1:02:30
We can make a water based cleaner wax.
1:02:32
In fact, we've just recently reformulated our cleaner wax to add SiO2 to it.
1:02:38
SiO2 is one of those magic, it's not a word, it's a, it's a, a naming
1:02:43
convention for, A product which is actually fused silica and the fused
1:02:49
silica has been ground to nano size.
1:02:51
Well, I will say this, I'm going to get a lot of people that
1:02:53
are going to react to this.
1:02:55
All of those so called ceramic coatings for cars are Yes, they're not real,
1:03:02
but they're just not real product.
1:03:04
And they claimed me to have the SIO two in the product.
1:03:07
And that was, that's what makes them ceramic.
1:03:09
SIO two is a polishing agent.
1:03:12
There's no way to make it stick to a car.
1:03:14
You couldn't make ceramics stick to a car.
1:03:17
If you've ever been to a ceramic studio and you've seen when they've taken
1:03:21
ceramic and they then put it into a, you know, a 9, 000 degree kiln, there's
1:03:27
no way to do that with a paint surface.
1:03:29
There's no chemicals you can make that will make SiO2 stick to a paint surface.
1:03:34
What you can do is you can take 60, 000 or 300, 000 centistokes silicone.
1:03:41
Which, by the way, is a hydraulic fluid for, uh, silicone hydraulic fluid.
1:03:46
And you can take that and put it on a paint surface and give
1:03:49
a detailer a high speed wool pad buffer and have them burnish that
1:03:54
stuff into your paint surface.
1:03:56
Not cool.
1:03:56
Because at that point, that silicone heats up enough, it causes that
1:04:01
silicone to permeate your clear coat.
1:04:03
And you can end up with little cloudy sort of marks that you think are
1:04:07
water spots that you never get out.
1:04:08
It's now it's silicone sitting in between your clear coat and your color coat.
1:04:12
There are a lot of people that swear up and down by these ceramic coatings.
1:04:17
We've never produced a ceramic coating.
1:04:19
We won't produce a ceramic coating because they're just not real.
1:04:22
What we have done though, is we now have SiO2 and HD cleanse, fabulous polishing
1:04:28
agent, and by the way, the particles are nano sized and it does an incredible job.
1:04:33
It's scary when you think about what companies do to create product.
1:04:38
We call it SSDC.
1:04:39
Same ship, different container.
1:04:43
SSDC.
1:04:44
There's a tremendous number of companies out there that are doing that.
1:04:47
They haven't changed the formulary of their products since the 60s.
1:04:52
Back when cars were getting waxed, cars were painted.
1:04:56
They didn't have enamel paints.
1:04:57
Cars back in the 30s and 40s and in the 50s.
1:05:01
They used lacquer paints, and they painted the cars with
1:05:04
26, 30, 35, 40 mils of paint.
1:05:07
So what people would do is that they would get some kerosene in a rag, and you'd
1:05:11
wipe the car down with kerosene in a rag.
1:05:13
It would take off a little bit of the paint.
1:05:15
The car would look great for about three or four days.
1:05:18
One of the first guys that came out with a commercial wax was Ben Hirsch
1:05:23
and Ben Hirsch started this little company up in Illinois called Turtle Wax.
1:05:27
We are good friends with the people at Turtle Wax.
1:05:29
We know them.
1:05:30
At one point, Turtle Wax was a distributor for our products.
1:05:34
They would distribute our products to the stores like AutoZone and
1:05:37
Pep Boys and all of those guys.
1:05:39
We didn't have any way of distributing those because we didn't have an EDI
1:05:43
computer system, didn't have sales people.
1:05:45
That was a whole foreign market to us.
1:05:47
They're probably one of the sharpest companies around.
1:05:50
They don't subscribe to SSDC, but there's a whole lot of 'em out there that do.
1:05:54
We've, for years have tried to get people to understand when they're
1:05:58
working on their cars, there's no magic.
1:06:01
It's good product, safe product, product that's safe for you and your kids to use.
1:06:07
We've never had anyone call us up and say, geez, you know.
1:06:11
I think the smell of your product or your fumes have made me sick
1:06:15
or any of that kind of stuff.
1:06:16
We've never had any of that, but primarily, uh, what we love to do is
1:06:19
build product, build great products.
1:06:21
That's what we like to do, and hear from customers that they love us and
1:06:24
that's what else could we hope for.
1:06:26
Right.
1:06:26
That's awesome.
1:06:27
One of the things you had said to me was, so when you're done waxing
1:06:31
your car, can you see the wax?
1:06:33
And that's actually a really important and yet loaded statement.
1:06:36
I know the answer, but I'm wondering if our listeners know.
1:06:39
We've done a lot of events.
1:06:40
We've gotten up and I've gotten up and I've shown people what
1:06:44
Carnauba bricks look like.
1:06:45
Try to tell people that you can't buy a product that says it's 100
1:06:49
percent Carnauba because you wouldn't be able to do anything with it
1:06:51
except maybe use it as a weapon.
1:06:54
I mean, yeah, I don't know.
1:06:56
The brick.
1:06:57
100 percent carnauba is solid as a rock.
1:07:00
I had a question come up, and I remember this question.
1:07:02
It was at a Miata Club event, and the people that belong to the
1:07:06
Miata Club really love their cars.
1:07:08
You talk about naming their cars.
1:07:10
It's, it's incredible.
1:07:12
I had this one customer say to me, how do I know when I'm supposed to wax my car?
1:07:16
I said, well, let's talk about this for a moment.
1:07:18
When you're done waxing your car, Can you see the wax on the car?
1:07:22
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:07:24
Really?
1:07:24
You can see the wax?
1:07:25
No, no, I guess I can see the shine.
1:07:27
Okay, so you can see the results of you waxing the car.
1:07:31
How do you know when the wax is?
1:07:32
Well, the car looks like it needs to be waxed.
1:07:34
So you need to realize when a car looks like it's begging to be waxed.
1:07:39
You're not seeing the loss of car wax.
1:07:41
You're seeing new paint damage.
1:07:43
You need to keep that in mind when your car is begging to be
1:07:46
waxed, it's doing it for a reason.
1:07:48
It's because the paint is being damaged.
1:07:51
I have to tell you, the crowd went silent when I said that.
1:07:54
It was like all the lights split and they all understood what we're talking about.
1:07:57
It goes back to that magic hand you were talking about.
1:08:00
We like very much to have people contact us and say, what's the proper methodology?
1:08:05
What's the proper products I should use, which products should I use in a row?
1:08:09
We try to help people understand that.
1:08:11
And we get a lot of phone calls from customers that say, geez, you know, I
1:08:15
bought X, Y, Z product and I put that on the car and then I put your product
1:08:19
over it and it doesn't seem to work.
1:08:21
Yeah, I would think that would happen.
1:08:23
That's like running into your kitchen, making up pancake batter
1:08:27
and putting turkey gravy in the pan.
1:08:30
And trying to make pancakes on top of turkey gravy.
1:08:33
It's not gonna happen.
1:08:34
We try and tell people that, you know, the Zymol products really are
1:08:38
engineered to work with each other.
1:08:40
There's a system there.
1:08:41
And if you follow the directions, and that's something that I want to
1:08:44
circle back and talk to you about.
1:08:46
You mentioned about Directions.
1:08:48
Tanya, it is your chance to try man.
1:08:50
Tell him real men don't need directions.
1:08:58
You know, it's like, you know, why, why Ikea doesn't have written directions and
1:09:04
they've got pictures on all their stuff.
1:09:07
Cause it saves them a lot of time and cost in those manuals.
1:09:12
And it doesn't give them any phone calls.
1:09:14
What do you mean?
1:09:15
Well, as an example, on the back of our waxes, it says, please
1:09:18
refrigerate after opening.
1:09:20
Yep.
1:09:21
We've had customers and we at least one or two a week will call
1:09:26
up and say, back of my container says to refrigerate after open.
1:09:29
Does that mean I should stick it in the refrigerator?
1:09:36
Well, yeah, that's an indication that we want you to put it into your refrigerator.
1:09:41
We've had customers do some of the darndest things.
1:09:44
We had a guy wax the seats of his, white seats of his Cadillac
1:09:48
Convertible with our Zymol carbon.
1:09:50
He figured that if it works on the paint, it's got to work on my seats.
1:09:53
We try to give people directions that are fairly simple.
1:09:56
A lot of people still don't follow the directions.
1:09:59
We've had people make Zymol tests on YouTube and not follow the directions.
1:10:05
So that's a really important point that you bring up because I
1:10:08
have baked off Xymo products with friends of mine's that do detailing.
1:10:12
It's like you said, you know, bust out the beer or the Pinot Noir.
1:10:16
It's a whole day affair.
1:10:17
And they're sitting there like, look how cool I am.
1:10:19
I can do this.
1:10:19
I got my buffer and I'm done in 20 minutes and I'm sitting there and I'm putting
1:10:22
things on, wait things for dry guys.
1:10:24
I'm going to go get a sandwich.
1:10:25
I'll be back.
1:10:26
They're like, what are you doing?
1:10:27
And then when it comes down to it, we actually get back to what we were
1:10:30
talking about before, which is the feel.
1:10:33
The finish.
1:10:33
You can't see.
1:10:34
Yeah, the car, their car looks shiny.
1:10:36
So does mine, but you rub your hand across it and the Zymol feels like butter
1:10:40
and their stuff just kind of feels like whatever, but I follow the directions.
1:10:45
I've been using this stuff for a long time.
1:10:48
You have to put the time and effort into your point, love into
1:10:51
the process to get out of it.
1:10:53
What you, what you want, but please continue.
1:10:55
That's right.
1:10:56
And Zymol products, by the way, are designed to be used by People call
1:11:01
up and say, jeez, you know, the Christmas or my birthday or whatever.
1:11:05
And I got a new buffer.
1:11:06
Can I use Xymo with a buffer?
1:11:08
Our customer service people ask the magic question.
1:11:10
Are you a technician that does this for a living?
1:11:13
Is it when the answer is no.
1:11:15
And we tell them, well, keep all the packaging, take that wonderful gift
1:11:19
back to the store that they bought it from and pick out something else.
1:11:23
I will not stand behind anybody using a buffer unless they do it for a living.
1:11:29
And by the way, you can show me where you've got some great restoration results.
1:11:35
You've done some great things using that buffer.
1:11:38
I'm interested.
1:11:39
I was at a place one time where a guy came up to me and said,
1:11:42
Well, what do you think of my car?
1:11:43
Just out of detail.
1:11:43
He was proud.
1:11:45
It was all scalloped.
1:11:46
I don't know what to tell the man.
1:11:47
Get your eyes checked lately.
1:11:49
I mean, I, I will say this.
1:11:51
I have used a buffer with Zymo once and I have regretted it.
1:11:55
I know better, but I was really struggling with this one car
1:11:59
in particular and this hood.
1:12:01
And I'm like, It didn't matter what kind of elbow grease I put into it.
1:12:04
I didn't seem to have just enough oomph.
1:12:06
I don't know what it was.
1:12:08
I used a buffer and I realized as I was doing it, at which point
1:12:11
it was the point of no return.
1:12:12
I was like, I'm heating this up too much and it's reacting to me doing this.
1:12:17
And I had to start all over again.
1:12:19
And I was like, now I've done this three times and I'm aggravated.
1:12:23
I don't know, again, it's one of those things, you know, RTFM, as we say in
1:12:27
my world, read the freaking manual.
1:12:29
So it's super important to follow those directions, but I got to use that.
1:12:36
I got, that is great.
1:12:37
Read the freaking manual.
1:12:38
Oh my God.
1:12:39
But yeah, so granted it takes me six times longer than anybody
1:12:43
else to get the job done, but.
1:12:45
At the end of the day, when you compare car for car for car, even
1:12:50
similar cars, you know, coming from the same factory, it's like, man, that
1:12:53
Zymolt feels really, really different.
1:12:55
And it's very buttery.
1:12:56
It's very smooth.
1:12:57
The scent is addicting.
1:12:59
Like we've been talking about, you have to put in the time and the effort to get
1:13:02
out the results that you really want.
1:13:04
There is no quick solution when it comes to detailing these cars at a high level.
1:13:08
No, there isn't a quick solution.
1:13:10
The difference between going to a five star restaurant or going to McDonald's.
1:13:14
Absolutely.
1:13:15
You can get it done.
1:13:16
Brick of McDonald's, but it's not going to be the same.
1:13:18
I want to touch on something before we kind of wrap up this entire thought.
1:13:22
You had some special techniques for detailing your car that I
1:13:26
thought were kind of interesting.
1:13:28
And I'm just going to lob this one up for you.
1:13:30
Let's start with black textured trim.
1:13:32
What's your hot take on dealing with things like that?
1:13:35
One of the problems that happens with black textured trim, if you use
1:13:39
a product that contains any kind of polishing agent, um, Even if you use
1:13:44
a product like our cleaner wax that has a polishing agent, the SiO2,
1:13:48
the SiO2 will stick to black trim.
1:13:50
People say to us, how do I get that black again?
1:13:53
How do I make that look good again?
1:13:55
There's lots of ways to do it.
1:13:56
One way to do it, which I don't recommend, is to use brake fluid.
1:14:00
on that black trim, which I know a lot of people have done.
1:14:03
And the moment you get brake fluid on a paint surface, it dissolves it.
1:14:07
You don't want to do that.
1:14:07
My favorite is either Jif or Skippy crunch peanut butter.
1:14:13
You need to go buy a medium toothbrush and take a little bit of that peanut
1:14:18
butter and put it in a And like a, a rambutan they call them, and you warm
1:14:23
it up in your microwave oven a little bit, and you go out there and you
1:14:26
spread the peanut butter over the trim, and you rub it with that toothbrush.
1:14:30
What that peanut butter does, the peanut oil gets underneath whatever
1:14:34
is sitting on that black trim, it's not supposed to be there, and starts
1:14:37
to lift it, and the crunchy peanuts themselves act as the abrasive.
1:14:42
And they break down before the plastic does, and you just wash it off.
1:14:46
And it does a wonderful job at cleaning up the black trim peanut butter.
1:14:50
That's awesome.
1:14:50
Listen, we've had one of the other secrets to Zymol is you can ice the surface.
1:14:56
Let's say that you have a car that you really want to get
1:14:58
an extremely deep finish on.
1:15:01
We did this with a Ferrari Dino and it was in yellow Ferrari Dino around California.
1:15:06
It was Bill Weiner's car.
1:15:07
He was showing it at Pebble, and his guys did a pretty decent
1:15:11
job of preparing the paint.
1:15:13
They didn't have it to my satisfaction.
1:15:16
So what we used was Zymol Concord Wax.
1:15:19
Put it on with your bare hands, spread it out, and before we buffed it, we took
1:15:24
bags of ice that were rolled in towels.
1:15:27
We placed them on the surface of the car, let it sit there for about
1:15:31
10 minutes, pulled them off, took some more Concord, rubbed it on the
1:15:34
current, Concord that was there.
1:15:36
And then we iced it again.
1:15:38
Then we went ahead and applied one more coat of Concord.
1:15:42
Let it sit, took on microwipes and very slowly worked the wax into the surface.
1:15:48
We stretched out Carnauba on the surface.
1:15:50
When the Carnauba got cold and started to warm up again, it
1:15:54
absorbed the moisture from the towel.
1:15:56
When we got done with the car, it looked like someone had shot
1:15:59
the car with about 20 coats of clear, great service, great finish.
1:16:03
And that's actually one of the questions I get a lot when, you know,
1:16:06
showing off Xymo products as well.
1:16:07
How do you know when it's ready?
1:16:09
And I say all the time, if you can run your finger across the
1:16:12
wax as it's curing and it doesn't leave a streak, then it's ready.
1:16:17
And at that point, it comes off as a powder.
1:16:19
It's actually super easy to remove because it's fully bonded at that point.
1:16:23
And you could just wipe it down, almost like you were
1:16:25
just, you know, kind of just.
1:16:26
Wiping the car off like you're investing.
1:16:28
Exactly.
1:16:28
It's super easy.
1:16:29
But if you have to work or put in a ton of elbow into that Zymol,
1:16:33
you haven't waited long enough.
1:16:35
People use too much of it.
1:16:36
That's the other thing.
1:16:37
If I had investors in my business, I would not make them very happy because
1:16:42
an eight ounce container of our wax.
1:16:45
Will last a motorsport enthusiast, like five years, you're going to get
1:16:49
at least 20, maybe even 24 full waxings out of that eight ounce container.
1:16:56
A little bit goes a long way with Simon.
1:16:58
That was the Braille cream model too, right?
1:17:01
Yeah.
1:17:01
A little dab will do.
1:17:03
A little dab will do.
1:17:05
Yeah.
1:17:05
Yeah.
1:17:06
Yeah.
1:17:06
That is, that's very interesting.
1:17:08
Wow.
1:17:09
So let's just quickly talk about some new products.
1:17:12
That are coming out or have just come out on the market.
1:17:15
I know you clued me in because we're talking about ceramics and SiO2, but
1:17:19
there's actually something cutting edge that Xymo is putting out there.
1:17:22
So do you want to expand on the graphene wax?
1:17:25
Yeah, we've got a couple of different products that we've played with.
1:17:29
We've been looking at the kinds of material that would provide someone who
1:17:34
loves their car, a finish on their car.
1:17:37
That was.
1:17:38
Almost permanent.
1:17:39
We're the first company to come out with a graphene based product.
1:17:42
We didn't invent graphene.
1:17:44
Graphene was found by a couple of engineers back around 19, I think it was
1:17:50
1991 at Manchester University in England.
1:17:52
They were actually able to separate graphene from graphene oxide,
1:17:57
which is what's in a pencil.
1:17:59
Graphene is a two dimensional material.
1:18:01
It's missing its third and fourth atoms.
1:18:04
The military has been Looking and working with graphene, they have made
1:18:08
some new tiles for spaceship re entry.
1:18:12
They've actually made a t shirt that's bulletproof.
1:18:15
It's a hundred times stronger than carbon steel and it's as flexible as water.
1:18:22
And this is what makes graphene so really interesting.
1:18:25
We contacted a couple of different companies that have got real graphene.
1:18:30
We did some testing.
1:18:31
We bought the equipment.
1:18:32
We bought a shearing homogenator.
1:18:34
We ordered the graphene and the graphene had to come in in glass containers.
1:18:38
You can't come in packed in anything else except glass.
1:18:41
Otherwise it'll permeate the material you're sitting on.
1:18:44
We decided to look at producing what's known as a graphene colloid.
1:18:48
Colloids are one step beyond an emulsion.
1:18:51
We produce these graphene colloids, and we then took oils in particular.
1:18:57
We took Lotus leaf extract oil, and we took Carnauba resin, which is
1:19:01
from our, our liquid Carnauba, and we homogenize those together with graphene.
1:19:06
There's some interesting things when you put it on a car and we've
1:19:09
had lots of problems trying to convey what our graphene product
1:19:14
does to a customer, because it's hard for them to understand it.
1:19:18
When you put it on the paint surface of a car, it finds its third and fourth atom.
1:19:23
If you clean the car surface and there's no wax on it, it will
1:19:26
find its third and fourth atom.
1:19:27
And at that point, it becomes part of your car.
1:19:30
It's no longer a coating.
1:19:32
It's no longer a wax.
1:19:34
It's not a sealant that we've put on the car.
1:19:37
It now becomes part of your paint.
1:19:38
It becomes part of the metal on your car.
1:19:40
It becomes part of the metalized plastic on your car.
1:19:43
The questions we've been asked about our graphene product
1:19:45
is, How long does it last?
1:19:47
It lasts as long as the paint does on your car.
1:19:49
If you wanted to shine the car up even more a little bit, you could
1:19:53
use our spray detailer over it.
1:19:55
But if you want to take your paint and you want to take all the surfaces of
1:19:59
your car and you want to harden those surfaces, graphene is the way to do it.
1:20:03
And we brought our product out immediately, three or four companies
1:20:06
popped up and said, well, we've got graphene, we've got graphing, they've
1:20:09
got graphing oxide using number two pencil lead in their product
1:20:15
and they're calling it graphing.
1:20:16
We've done some interesting cars.
1:20:18
We've got a blue three 56 that we use the graphing product on that is staggering.
1:20:23
Absolutely staggering.
1:20:24
The same owner has a anthracite 9 11 target that we used it on.
1:20:30
We've used a graphene product on our Ford F 350 Super Duty 99 Dualty that we
1:20:37
used to haul around our horse trailer.
1:20:39
The truck looks brand new, literally looks brand new.
1:20:41
We've got a bunch of people across the country that have
1:20:43
used our graphene product.
1:20:45
There's a fella that runs a magazine.
1:20:46
It's called garage style magazine.
1:20:48
Have you ever seen it?
1:20:49
Don out there runs it.
1:20:50
Donna's moved from California to Texas now, and he's got an old Mustang that
1:20:55
he decided to clean up real well and try a graphene product on, and he's
1:20:59
still talking to himself, understand how this stuff works, the finish you get.
1:21:04
on the graphene is pretty scary.
1:21:07
Look, that happens to the surface, especially if you've done the right paint
1:21:10
prep, you've really cleaned up the bank.
1:21:12
And by the way, we've got an odd name for the graphing product.
1:21:15
It's our atomic graphing shield.
1:21:18
Okay.
1:21:19
It sounds futuristic.
1:21:20
Well, it's not so much future.
1:21:22
We've gotten some complaints about the name.
1:21:24
Some people have said, Atomic graphene shield.
1:21:27
I mean, did you guys watch back to the future a few times?
1:21:30
It's very German.
1:21:33
If you think about it, it describes what it does.
1:21:36
I mean, that's how like a lot of German vocabulary is, right?
1:21:39
It's just a description.
1:21:41
Atomic, atomic graphene shield.
1:21:43
It is, it is an atomic product.
1:21:46
It's graphene.
1:21:47
And it does shield the car.
1:21:49
There you go.
1:21:51
So that's a product that's new.
1:21:52
We've got two new products that we're working on with Martin guitar.
1:21:55
And we have one more product in our factory.
1:21:59
We've got a bunch of panels from this company that's in Santa
1:22:02
Clara, California that builds EVs.
1:22:05
We're going to be letting this product out on Amazon on an exclusive basis.
1:22:09
We've got a product that is for electric vehicles.
1:22:12
It's a positive ion product.
1:22:14
The mix is positive ion.
1:22:16
And the reason why we chose to go positive ion is because the bodies of
1:22:21
true electric cars, not so much hybrids, but true EVs are forced negative charge.
1:22:28
They have a negative charge on the body of the car that is a forced negative charge.
1:22:34
It's not just grounding.
1:22:35
It's a forced negative charge.
1:22:37
It's an old british car and it's as an example.
1:22:41
That's a Lucas car.
1:22:43
That's a story for another day.
1:22:45
That's the story of another day.
1:22:46
Lucas, Lucas light switch on, off and flicker.
1:22:50
The interesting thing about our product for electric cars, if you were to take
1:22:54
a look at any of the electric cars, whether it's a new new Audi's, Mercedes.
1:22:58
No, the teslas, the batteries that run the motors are not the same
1:23:02
batteries that run the rest of the car.
1:23:04
They don't use those batteries to run the rest of the car.
1:23:06
The voltage is too high.
1:23:07
The amperage is too high.
1:23:09
If you were able to actually touch the connectors on the
1:23:13
battery that runs that car.
1:23:14
You're going to die.
1:23:15
No question about it.
1:23:16
That's serious stuff.
1:23:17
There's another separate battery in there that's designed to
1:23:20
negatively charge the body.
1:23:22
That's so in case there's any leak of any current from any of the batteries that
1:23:27
run the car, it's going to ground out.
1:23:29
We noticed that our standard waxes didn't do very well on EVs, so we
1:23:34
decided to come up with a new product.
1:23:36
I think it's on our website now.
1:23:38
The product is called ION.
1:23:39
It comes with a container that has a bag in it, and the product is sitting
1:23:43
in the bag in the container, and you pump the container up, which pressurizes
1:23:47
the outside of the bag, which lets you spray it, and it's a metered
1:23:51
spray, and it comes out in a mist.
1:23:53
And there's some videos on YouTube of our product ION that you should
1:23:58
be able to find interesting.
1:23:59
So, in January, we're going to let that product go to Amazon and
1:24:03
let Amazon sell it exclusively.
1:24:05
So Chuck, looking back over the incredible history of Zymol, 40 plus years now, and
1:24:11
the love and passion that you've put into developing these products that take care
1:24:15
of cars for all sorts of applications, but also for airplanes, boats, horses, musical
1:24:22
instruments, and such down the line.
1:24:23
I mean, it's absolutely fascinating.
1:24:25
And for the folks out there that are maybe still non believers, it's
1:24:29
time to give Zymol a try, put it up against the products that you have And
1:24:33
remember to read the directions first and, and, and see how it stacks up and
1:24:38
see how you like it, keep up with the developments that they've got going.
1:24:42
All these new products are fascinating.
1:24:44
I mean, they're at the front end of some really, really cool things.
1:24:48
So if you want to learn more about Zymol, be sure to check out www.
1:24:51
Zymol.
1:24:53
com for more information or follow them on Instagram and Facebook.
1:24:57
At Zymol underscore official.
1:24:59
So Chuck, I can't thank you enough for coming on break, fix, sharing these
1:25:03
stories, telling us about the history of Zymol and, you know, sharing your
1:25:07
passion with all of our listeners.
1:25:09
This has been absolutely fantastic.
1:25:11
I thoroughly enjoyed it.
1:25:12
It was, it's lots of fun.
1:25:13
And I'm happy to talk to anyone who contacts the company and says, Hey, I'm
1:25:17
going to talk to that Bennett character because I've got a problem with my car.
1:25:21
And, uh, we want to hear about the problems.
1:25:23
We want to, we want to solve problems.
1:25:24
That's what we're here for.
1:25:25
That's what the company was built on.
1:25:27
Was built on solving what kind of problems people had with their,
1:25:31
with their finishes on their cars.
1:25:33
Your passion and authenticity has been refreshing to see.
1:25:37
So it's been a delight listening to all your stories.
1:25:39
Thank you, Chuck.
1:25:40
Thank you.
1:25:46
That's right, listeners.
1:25:46
If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to check out our Patreon for
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1:25:55
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1:25:57
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1:25:58
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the scenes content from this episode.
1:26:04
And more, if you like what you've heard and want to learn more about
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org.
1:26:13
You can also find us on Instagram at grandtorymotorsports.
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1:26:29
We'd love to hear from you.
1:26:31
Hey, everybody.
1:26:31
Crew Chief Eric here.
1:26:33
We really hope you enjoyed this episode of Break Fix, and we wanted
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