These two products can be used interchangeably, and any cheap-ass version of either one will do for everything from toasters and dashboards to whatever else you want to be all clean and shiny.
What they both are is, for want of a more official term, plastic polish. I suspected this for a long time. I started using “stainless steel cleaner” on my other appliances a very long time ago, with excellent results. It shines and polishes everything beautifully. Then I got to thinking about Armor All and knockoffs. So yesterday I polished all of my appliances with the SS cleaner on one side and the Armor All knock off on the other, my SS fridge and my black plastic appliances. You cannot tell the difference.
And my stainless steel cleaner is some dollar store version, to boot.
Stop getting ripped off.
This has been a public service message from Stoid. Yer welcome.
“Formula One race tire are designed to exceed temperatures over 110°C. But this won’t help to refrigerate… a banana…”
“O’doyle rules! O’doyle rules! O’doyle ru…” Boom!
Is that Armor-All stuff the original formula? Back in the 80’s when it was new on the market, it turned out to be rather dangerous and crappy stuff.
Back then, it certainly made rubber and plastic nice and shiny but it turned out those same items would become brittle in a very short time. Automobile dashboards would lose chunks of surface and rubber would crumble and vinyl would dry out and split. It was like Armor-All was an addictive substance to those things; people would have to keep re-applying it in greater quantities at shorter intervals…
My fellow students in the bicycling class (an alternative gym class at my school) started discovering (the hard way) that Armor-All also trickles between the side of a tire and the wheel rim but somehow maintains a seal. Then when a poor chap would hit the brakes at a stoplight, he’d find his brake pads gripping the wheels and the tire gripping the road – but spinning freely on the rim and ripping the stem off the inner tube while the bike continued moving forward. That was scary stuff, and I saw my friends go flying through stops at intersections too many times. We all just learned to avoid that stuff.
Then, in the 90’s the instructor for the motorcycle safety course I was in talked about Armor All being the worst possible thing to do for a motorcyle, partly because it would ruin seat covers and mainly because motorcycle tires are tubeless (and lose air quicker when the seal is broken) and will zip farther past an intended stopping point when you hit the brakes to stop the wheels (but not the tires). He also said that, when he was a Highway Patrol officer, he and his fellow ChiPpies would give a bottle to new Motor officers and tell them to shine up their seats – then laugh when a stop at the front driveway (before exiting the lot) would invariably cause the recruit to slide forward and get bruised on the gas tank.
Anyway, Armor All is apparently not quite as dangerous on car/truck tires because it’s typically only used on the exterior-facing side of the wheel (rather than on both sides as is done for 2-wheelers) and that leaves the inner bead still capable of gripping the rim. Still, I remember the drying/cracking effects of that stuff and avoid it like the plague.
–G!
I [SIZE=4]want to ride my bicyCLE![/SIZE]:eek:
…–Freddy Mercury (Queen)
…Bicycle Race
…Jazz
Armor-All had nothing to do with it. back then those dash and trim panels were vinyl, and vinyl dries out and cracks once the plasticizers gas out. and attack by UV makes that go even faster. All Armor-All did was keep it shiny while it turned to shit. without Armor-All it would have become brittle and crumbled in the same amount of time.
As floor wax not so much. I tried it on the entry way slate one time and it took months for us to stop busting our asses. :smack: (Seemed nothing could remove it but time.)
Armour All and the like may cause a build up on the stainless steel,which might take a lot of elbow grease to take off… it may stick on like a paint and then peel off later ? A test of a few days is hardly enough.
Also some stainless steel surfaces have a grain and the Armour All may fill the grain ? This could result in the grain being rather blotchy or faded …
[QUOTE=Grestarian]
Back then, it certainly made rubber and plastic nice and shiny but it turned out those same items would become brittle in a very short time. Automobile dashboards would lose chunks of surface and rubber would crumble and vinyl would dry out and split. It was like Armor-All was an addictive substance to those things; people would have to keep re-applying it in greater quantities at shorter intervals…
[/QUOTE]
.
I suspect you may be right. But also, those of us poor kids in the bicycling class didn’t buy Armor-All and shine up our seats while the rich kids did* – and the rich kids’ black vinyl seat covers cracked in 3 months while the poor kids’ black vinyl seat covers did not crack at all. The only obvious consistent difference was the use of Armor-All or not. [We weren’t trying to be an experimental vs control group so there could also have been other factors.]
–G!
*Armor-All wasn’t expensive, but it certainly wasn’t a necessity either. Mom didn’t see any reason to waste the money on a vanity item for a mere vehicle.
