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Who doesn’t love spending your whole weekend washing, and scrubbing, and drying, and polishing, and waxing your car? Me. I don’t. I love the results of a good wash and or detail as much as the next guy. Now, I can totally nerd-out on the tech and chemistry of detailing and car wash products, but still, the best thing I have to say about doing it is, at least it’s not golf. Luckily, companies like Chemical Guys keep sending me new products to test and ogle. Otherwise, my poor car would hardly be washed. Or worse yet, I’d be running it through the paint grinder every time I stopped for gas and a slushy.
I’m focusing on two products from Chemical Guys in this review. The Megalodon Twisted Loop Drying Towel and Two Face Color Chanign Wheel Cleaner. If my editor hasn’t already had an aneurysm, I will point out: the adjective two-faced, and Detective Comic’s Character Two-Face, both have hyphens. Chemical Guys have decided against using a hyphen, possibly for legal reasons. I mean, besides being a villain and a vigilante, Harvey Dent’s path to evil started in law school. Home Detailers: check. Golfers: check. Editor: check. Lawyers: check. Let’s keep going and see who else I can anger reviewing a towel.
The Bottom Line
As you might guess from the name, the Chemical Guys Megalodon Towel is huge. It measures 2 x 3 feet and weighs nearly 2 pounds. It dries streak-free from the first pass and I dried my entire crossover without having to wring it out. This towel feels great, doesn’t leave scratches or swirls, and doesn’t feel or smell strange. This will likely be my new regular drying towel.
The Megalodon isn’t cheap at $39.99. But if you take care of it, it’ll last for years(probably, I’ve only washed it once). Is it worth it compared to the 50-pack of Noname microfiber towels from Amazon? That’s not for me to decide. Some of you are still using old t-shirts so make your own priorities. I can tell you, this does everything promised, better than I thought it would, and changed my mind about blanket-sized towels.
Now, how about that wheel cleaner? I’ve been testing detailing products professionally for 20 years and using them a lot longer than that. Although they all promise it, I’ve never used a true, spray-on, hose-off wheel cleaner. I tried Chemical Guys’s Two Face, and I still haven’t. It does stick to the wheel without running off. It certainly does change color to let you know it’s doing something. And it does take off most of the built-up brake dust and road grime. If you want your wheels factory-fresh and shiny, you still need to use a wheel brush, as you do with every other wheel cleaner I’ve tried.
My only complaint is that the nozzle, even on the “Spray” setting and not “Stream,” has a narrow pattern that requires a lot more squeezes to cover the whole wheel. It also smells more like an effective chemical wheel cleaner and not candy. No judgment here, just stating that as a fact. It works, fine. It works better than what I would consider the average wheel cleaner I’ve tried, but we’re all still searching for that true no-scrubbing-needed cleaner, right? Two Face is $14.99 for a 16-ounce bottle or $27.98 for a 32-ounce bottle.
| Megalodon Towel | Two Face Wheel Cleaner | |
|---|---|---|
| Ease Of Use | 9/10 | 7/10 |
| Value | 7/10 | 7/10 |
| Quality | 9/10 | 9/10 |
| Effectiveness | 9/10 | 8/10 |
| Overall | 8.5/10 | 7.8/10 |
Why Do People Use Microfiber Towels and Are They Better?
How does a towel work? I’m guessing a good 99% of humans have never given it a second thought. Briefly: Water exhibits both adhesion and cohesion properties. Adhesion means it’s attracted to some solid surfaces because of water’s polarity, the same thing makes it attracted to itself, cohesion. Towels are made of hydrophilic materials, which means water will adhere to them. That material has tiny spaces between its fibers, so a process called capillary action, is caused by the adhesion forces that pull it in initially and cohesion forces that suck up more water, to fill in the space between fibers. Microfiber towels, as you may have guessed, have smaller fibers which means more surface area, so capillary action is more effective.
It isn’t quite that simple; all microfibers aren’t created equal. The density of the fibers, the pattern in which they are woven, and the ratio of synthetic materials, usually polyester and polyamide, all affect how the towel works. The megalodon uses twisted-loop fibers. It’s capable of holding nearly three times its weight in water. However, it won’t dry as fast as other, less absorbent microfibers.
Lastly, most detailers choose microfibers over natural fiber towels because they are less likely to scratch your paint. The smaller, softer fibers themselves are less abrasive. However, they are also more effective at trapping and encapsulating dust or other particles that will scratch whatever surfaces they contact.
The Verdict: Chemical Guys Megalodon Twisted Loop Drying Towel
The Megalodon is a big towel measuring 24 x 36 inches. It’s also THICK. It’s as thick as 4 of my normal microfiber towels stacked up; that’s the center of the towel and not even the thicker outer border. It’s also heavy, it weighs 2 pounds dry. It holds an additional 7 pounds of water or roughly 0.85 gallons. I had to find that through experimentation as I dried my entire car with it and didn’t have to wring it out. Chemical Guys claims it holds “over a gallon.”
You might be surprised to find out that the American Society for Testing and Materials does, in fact, have a testing standard for water absorption, ASTM D4772-14, but it’s for terry fabrics and not microfibers. I’m sure you’re not at all surprised that I looked it up. So I will be the first to admit my testing may be flawed and I will happily retract that statement if Chemical Guys, or anyone can tell me how to accurately measure absorption.
I will start by saying, I don’t like big towels. I said the same thing when I reviewed the Chemical Guys Thirst Trap Towel. I’ve used the two microfiber technique for years and find one big towel takes more effort to keep from dragging on the ground than I put into drying my car. Plus, I’ve never felt like one towel is as effective as two. The Megalodon changed my mind—where other products, even from Chemical Guys, have not. It leaves a streak-free finish, it doesn’t leave swirl marks, and for whatever reason, maybe the more rectangular 2:3 aspect ratio of the dimensions, I didn’t drag it on the ground once. Unlike most microfibers, it works right from the start, it doesn’t need to be “primed” by soaking up some water on one part of the car that inevitably ends up with streak marks on the paint.
Also, and this is a big one for some of us with texture sensitivities, I can grab this towel, wet or dry without flinching. I usually wear nitrile gloves when I wash my car, so it isn’t a huge issue with other microfibers, but the twisted fiber design feels more like a normal terry towel but works better than other microfibers. Although I’ve been a devotee of the two-towel technique team for tons of time, the Linus’ blanket-sized Megalodon has snuck its way into my routine.
The Verdict: Chemical Guys Two Face Color Changing Wheel Cleaner
When I worked in print, our mailing address was printed inside every magazine. Because of this, every imaginable car product, including detailing supplies, regularly arrived in our mailroom. If I had a nickel for every wheel cleaner I’ve tested, I’d never have to detail my own car again. The holy grail of wheel cleaners is to spray-on, hose-off, and get a perfectly clean wheel. Unless we all go back to drum brakes, or use even more powerful regenerative brakes, never scrubbing a wheel again is a fantasy. So I have to rate wheel cleaners appropriately. Two Face is pretty good.
I’ll start with my only real complaint, and that’s more with the trigger spray head than the product. As you can see in the photos, it has a rotating nozzle with two sides that are Off, one side is Spray, and the last is Stream. I like a nice wide spray pattern for wheel cleaners. It distributes a nice thin coating across the wheel with minimal pumps. Two Face has a gel-like viscosity. This helps it stick to the wheel once applied. It has more dwell time to break down, lift, and encapsulate all the gunk(technical term) on your wheel. Gels don’t aerosolize easily and my guess is if they did, they may not be as effective.
I’m no chemist, but I think the ideal wheel cleaner would probably be a thixotropic non-Newtonian fluid that would spray on easily like a low-viscosity liquid, but then thicken up like a gel once applied. That would probably cause other problems like beading up as it’s being shot at the wheel and you’d end up with globs, I don’t know. Back on track.
Most car detailing and cleaning products in general, are scented. One reason is to cover up the unpleasant chemical smells. The other is to use something called the Proustian Memory Effect. Scents like citrus or pine hit your olfactory bulb and make your limbic system say, “Hey, that stuff is cleaning the thing.” Two Face is refreshingly honest and unmasked—it smells like as….. I mean, it smells like Monoethanolamine thioglycate, which is a common ingredient in hair products, but also handy for binding to iron so it can be washed away. To be clear, I consider this a neutral observation, not a complaint.
To clean my four 19-inch wheels, I used about a quarter of the 16-ounce bottle. It sells for $14.99, so that’s $3.75 per car wash. I gave each cold wheel a good coating, the front wheels were far dirtier than the rears. The yellowie product in the bottle sprays on mostly clear. Almost immediately it begins turning purple, as it reacts to the iron in the brake dust. It was roughly 55°F when I washed my car, and I gave it roughly 2 minutes of dwell time before hosing it off. There was still a very light coating of brake dust on the wheels. I used a Chemical Guys Wheelie Brush and soap, after washing the rest of the car, to get the wheels perfectly clean.
Overall, I’m happy with Two Face as a wheel cleaner. It ranked the way it did compared to the dozens of other wheel cleaners I’ve used in the past and not compared to my platonic ideal of a wheel cleaner. There are less expensive wheel cleaners, even from Chemical Guys, that are just as effective and because they spray on more effectively, will work out to be even cheaper per wash. I’m not sure I would go out of my way to buy Two Face on its own, but as part of one of Chemical Guys discounted bundles, it makes a great choice.
