Are my "OLD" Meguiars polishes / waxed still "GOOD"

[kozak]

Hello Guys and Gals,

I have been using Meguiars products for the last 8 years or so, but my "detailing career" had a long break. For the last 3-4 years I either did not have a car, place to polish/wax a car and have been pretty lazy. Finally I have purchased a car that I am planning to take good care of and digged up my old polishes, waxes and the DA from my parents basement. I did a couple of searches on the forums and it looks like in general the shelf life of the products is 3-5 years. I have had the products for longer than that but they have always been stored inside and never subject to temperature changes.

I decided to take some pictures and try to get some of the experts here to chime in:

Overall:

I did not shake the Tech Wax bottle too well, put a paper towel on it and did it again

Closeup:

Another closeup:

Paste Wax:

This one is going to the garbage:

[Murr1525]

Re: Are my "OLD" Meguiars polishes / waxed still "GOOD"

Looks ok, except for that bottom one.

[Detailing by M]

Re: Are my "OLD" Meguiars polishes / waxed still "GOOD"

if they work, there good. If your just going by the looks of them then that might be be a good gage. Try them out and see the results.

[kozak]

Re: Are my "OLD" Meguiars polishes / waxed still "GOOD"

Thanks a lot for the input guys, I will give them a shot and report back.

[Michael Stoops]

Re: Are my "OLD" Meguiars polishes / waxed still "GOOD"

3-5 years shelf life is a very general rule of thumb. We've got some really old product around the office here that is still perfectly serviceable - by "really old" we mean the stuff is in the original glass bottles, and we haven't packaged in glass for several decades!

So, how to know if a product is still good many years on? If it's a liquid product give it a good shake and then try to pour some out. It should be a uniform, creamy consistency (actual viscosity will vary a bit from product to product) and not water or lumpy, and it should smell "normal" for that product and not have a horrible smell that knocks your head back. If it's watery, lumpy or it stinks, it's gone bad no matter what the age. A single freeze/thaw cycle will kill many of the products, but if you've had these stored indoors for a few years they should be fine. And aside from that last image, they all do look good to go.