AMDetails Review - An excellent product line, new to the US market

Anytime I get the chance to try out a new product line, I’m all over it. It’s one of the things I enjoy most about detailing, the chase of finding the best of the best, and finding out what works well from each companies line. When given the opportunity to try out the AM Detail line from Jason at Car Guy Supplies, I naturally jumped on it. I’d like to greatly thank him for providing me with these products for testing.

To give these products a fair shake, I decided I would use them to do a full detail on my BMW i3. This car is the family “shared” vehicle, so it sees a fair amount of abuse, and is definitely not perfect by any means. To start the detail, I went right for the wheels and tires.

AM APC dwelling on the i3 Tire

The tires had not been dressed for a long time, and they were beginning to brown fairly significantly. To attack this, I sprayed down the tires with AM APC, which started to have a bit of brown run off fairly quickly. While it didn’t foam up very well with agitation, the product seemed to be plenty effective in removing the browning. I repeated until the runoff was nearly white, using my Tuf Shine brush to agitate the product. Next, I sprayed down the wheels with AM Wheels, let it dwell for about 45 seconds, and then foamed the wheels with AM Foam and cleaned them using my DI Wheel Brush. This combo left me with clean wheels in no time, with AM Wheel taking care of most of the brake pad deposits with ease, and AM Foam taking care of the dirt, with agitation.

AM Foam dwelling on the wheel

Once the wheels and tires were done, which took a while given the amount of tire browning that needed to be addressed, it was time to start on the paint. Both of the AM soaps seem to have excellent performance for their respective tasks. The AM Foam has a very nice dwell time, and rinses cleanly, not leaving behind residue.

AM Foam after a few minutes of dwell time on the i3.

AM Bubbles creates a great lather with a minimal amount of soap being used in the bucket. Washing the car with this combination was painless, and the car cleaned up easily, even though it had not been washed in over 2 months. To wash, I foamed the car with AM Foam first, let it dwell, rinsed, and then washed with AM Bubbles using a two bucket method.

Leftover bug guts after the wash, before using AM Clay

Now that the car’s exterior body was clean, there were a few areas that needed to be addressed. The car had recently been on a long range trip to the mountains of Upstate New York, and was driven throughout the night, resulting in a lot of bug build up. While the AM Foam and Bubbles took care of most of this during the wash, the front bumper still needed work. In comes AM Clay with AM Detailer for use as a lube. AM Detailer has an amazingly potent smell, and I absolutely love it. The product itself also leaves a nice, slick, surface upon removal, with no streaky or oily residue.

Using AM Detailer as lubrication for AM Clay

Before moving on, a comment on the clay bar; It’s excellent for a traditional clay bar. It stretches incredibly well, making it easy to get a new, clean surface after use, and even more impressively, it seems to not leave any annoying residue on your hands that many other clay bars do. To begin the process, I sprayed a decent amount of AM Detailer on the bumper and went to work at the bug stains with the clay bar. Within about 20-30s of working the area, all of the bug stains were gone without an issue, and after checking with my Scangrip, I found there to be no real marring added to the paint.

All of the bugs are gone after using AM Detailer and AM Clay

The next thing that needed to be addressed was the lower trim below the doors on the I3, which are a matte black plastic. Even though they were cleaned during the wash process, they appeared to show some staining from dirt being sprayed on them. Given this car’s daily driver status, I decided that I simply wanted to dress the trim and not spend a ton of time working to “fix” it, or make it completely clean before dressing. Enter AM Dress, an incredibly easy to apply multipurpose dressing that goes on smooth, and leaves no sticky or annoying residue. A quick spray and wipe of the product produced the desired results on the lower matte black trim, a nice, deep, black, finish, that showed no more staining from dirt.

Before AM Dress treatment
After AM Dress treatment

Next, I went ahead and sprayed Dress on to the black plastic trim around the windows, and finished off with Dress on the tires as well. For the tires, I simply sprayed, make a single wipe to level it out, and then left it alone. This left me with a somewhat glossy look with a nice deep black color, exactly what I usually like to go for.

AM Dress does a qreat job of darkening this rubber window trim that typically looks faded on most BMW's

To finish the car off, and since it hadn’t had any paint protection applied since the car was first purchased, I sprayed down the entire car with AM Seal. To apply, I sprayed the product into an applicator and treated it almost like applying a coating. After spraying onto the applicator, I wiped it into the paint, one panel at a time, adding product as necessary, and buffing off when I reached the end of a panel. While I’m sure this was overkill, I wanted to ensure that I covered the whole car thoroughly, as I know it’s going to be a while before this car gets a detail again. The paint was left feeling incredibly smooth and looking great. The product was able to add a nice pop to paint that has been fairly neglected for a while.

The I3 after applying AM Seal

The last product that I used for this round of testing was AM Rain. While my windshield was already treated with another product, I wanted to make sure to give this product a more long term test, so I treated all of the drivers side glass. After 2 months of testing, I am happy to report it is still shedding water nicely on my drivers side windows. For application, I also went with the overkill method of treating it like a coating, spraying Rain into an applicator, buffing it on, and then waiting the recommended 15 minutes before removing the residue. The residue buffed off nicely, and left me with no annoying streaking to chase after. While I can’t comment on the durability on a windshield that gets wiper abuse just yet, I can confidently say that I’m pleased with performance on the surfaces I’ve treated.

One more shot of the i3 after AM Seal treatment with AM Dress on the tires

To summarize my thoughts, I’d say that the AM Details line fills a unique spot in the enthusiast/prosumer market as a higher end product with an excellent price point. When compared to other brands with products that perform similarly as well, the AM Details line is an excellent value, with their 16oz offerings typically coming in at a lower price than alternatives. The AM Details line is filled with solid products that simply work and do what they say they will do. It seems that in the case of most of these products, you are not exchanging longevity for ease of application, you get both. Any enthusiast will appreciate the fact that these products are easy to apply and just work. There seems to not be overstated promises with these products, and thus far I am seeing results that are true to the way the products are marketed.

As with all of my reviews, I will be updating this over time to see how the products held up to their claimed longevity, although, at the time of posting, I can easily confirm the longevity of AM Rain being as advertised, if not better, with AM Seal also showing good promise of being a long-lasting product. This is also only Part 1 of the review series for AM Details, as I do have some more products to get to in due time.

If you are looking to purchase any of these products, you can click any of the products names in the article above, or simply visit https://carguysupplies.com. Car Guy Supplies is the exclusive US distributor of AM Details.

Lastly, a quick Q&A with Jason from Cay Guys Supplies, the exclusive US distributor of AM Details:

OBM3: Where do you see the AM products fall in terms of market placement? Consumer, prosumer, or something that even a pro might use as some of the items in their arsenal?

J: The AM detail products are definitely targeted for the prosumer, some of the products, in my opinion, are not priced for professional use. Most of the products come ready to use, I would like to see some concentrate versions.

OBM3: Can AM Dress be diluted to achieve a more matte shine on tires and trim, if so, what is the recommended dilution?

J: AM Dress is waterbased so you can dilute it for more of a matte finish.

OBM3: How would you recommend using the AM APC? Would you use it on the interior, if so, at what dilution ratio?

J: APC is great, I use it straight. You can definitely dilute it if you want. It cleans well, doesn't leave residue behind and smells fantastic.

OBM3: What is the expected longevity of AM seal, and is it best applied as an LSP or a topper over something stronger? Is there any benefit to layering it?

J: AM seal is a sealant and will last 6- 8 months. You can put multiple layers of this product for more durability.