As much as I love my factory fenders, there is one thing that I absolutely hate about them and that's how crappy they can look after getting some mud on them. The mud has a way of getting into the texture or the pores of the fenders and that leaves behind a stain that can be near impossible to remove even with a good power washer. While scrubbing at them with soapy water and a brush will get them looking clean again, it takes a crazy amount of work and it'll only take one wheeling trip to ruin them again. Because of this, Cindy and I have resorted to using cleaning products to help us get our fenders looking clean and black again and with as little effort as possible. Over the years, we have used a host of different products and the following is a test that we just did using a small sampling of a few that we just happened to have in our cleaning cabinet. I hope the results of our test is useful to you and if there's something you use and find to work well, we'd love to hear all about it. :yup:
From left to right, we used the following products for our test. Our tried and true ArmorAll in both wipes and spray, Mother's Back-to-Black and last but not least, 303 Aerospace Protectant.
Here's a shot of our very mud stained rear fender after applying a single application of each product. As you can see, the ArmorAll did a pretty good job but you can still see a few spots left behind. The Mother's Back-to-Black barely made a difference and still looked very blotchy. Without question the 303 Aerospace Protectant did the best to clean and blacken things up and in just one application.
Here's a close up shot of the ArmorAll test.
This is a close up of the Mother's Back-to-Black test.
And finally, here is a close up of the 303 Aerospace Protectant.
With that said, a second application of ArmorAll provided a similar result to the 303 Aerospace Protectant but the Mother's Back-to-Black did a whole lot of nothing. I should also note that after about an hour in the sun, the single application of 303 lightened up a bit where as the 2 coats of ArmorAll did not. I'm sure if we applied a 2nd coat of 303, it may have held up the same but being that it's more expensive and kind of hard to come by, we typically just use ArmorAll.
Here's a side by shot of another mud stained fender with one side untreated and the other ArmorAll'ed.
And finally, here it is all cleaned up and blackened again.
So, that's what we've seen using these 3 products to clean our mud stained factory fenders, what do you use? We'd love to know
From left to right, we used the following products for our test. Our tried and true ArmorAll in both wipes and spray, Mother's Back-to-Black and last but not least, 303 Aerospace Protectant.
Here's a shot of our very mud stained rear fender after applying a single application of each product. As you can see, the ArmorAll did a pretty good job but you can still see a few spots left behind. The Mother's Back-to-Black barely made a difference and still looked very blotchy. Without question the 303 Aerospace Protectant did the best to clean and blacken things up and in just one application.
Here's a close up shot of the ArmorAll test.
This is a close up of the Mother's Back-to-Black test.
And finally, here is a close up of the 303 Aerospace Protectant.
With that said, a second application of ArmorAll provided a similar result to the 303 Aerospace Protectant but the Mother's Back-to-Black did a whole lot of nothing. I should also note that after about an hour in the sun, the single application of 303 lightened up a bit where as the 2 coats of ArmorAll did not. I'm sure if we applied a 2nd coat of 303, it may have held up the same but being that it's more expensive and kind of hard to come by, we typically just use ArmorAll.
Here's a side by shot of another mud stained fender with one side untreated and the other ArmorAll'ed.
And finally, here it is all cleaned up and blackened again.
So, that's what we've seen using these 3 products to clean our mud stained factory fenders, what do you use? We'd love to know
