ilogikal1

My previous Next, either a Monaro/VXR8 or an Elise. Because they're similar cars, obviously.

No, you're quite right, I'll correct my post. A lot of faffing about! Like this. In essence, you need to measure how much water is drawn through the lance and then do some maths to get the required %. If I remember right I just fired the lance into a bucket for 30 seconds, measured then extrapolated rather than going to the extent of the guy in the link. A quicker, rougher way of guestimating it would be to use the flow rate that your pressure washer is rated to as rough idea - it won't be exact but shouldn't be too far off. I forgot to mention, this is the easier way of doing it rather than measuring it in the 25litre drum;

Sadly doing side-by-side snow foam test is both a lot of faffing about (even with 2 lances) and hugely expensive. I may do a side-by-side with the two foams I've currently got but I'd need a suitably filthy car to do first and the three cars I regularly maintain are currently spotless so it may take a while to get round to that. However, I can review the numerous foams that I've used over the years. Firstly it's worth noting that a thick, shaving cream like foam doesn't necessarily mean it's any good at cleaning and vice versa. Also foam will only really cling to dirt, so a relatively clean and well protected surface will sheet foam a lot quicker than a much dirtier unprotected surface. So, in no particular order; Megs Hyperwash - as this was the first foam I used, I'd like to revisit this one to give it a fair shot now knowing what I do that I didn't at the time, however it does foam very well and cleans suitably. It's got a fair clinging ability but I was using way too much when I had it so it wasn't very economical for me at the time - it might be more so if I used it again properly but at the time I was basically just guessing my way through the dilution ratios and focusing more on getting thick foam than on cleaning ability. Priced at ~£35 for 5 litres. Valet Pro PH Neutral Snow Foam - this produced a thicker foam which had decent clinging ability, but it needed that to clean anywhere above average - the longer it was on the panel the better it cleaned, but it needed somewhere around 10 minutes or so to make the effort anywhere near worth it. It's not a terrible foam, but it's one that I've tried and moved on from. Priced at ~£16 for 5 litres, it's well priced. Autobrite Direct Magifoam (blue & purple versions) - firstly, there's no difference between the colours other than the slight hint of that colour in the foam. The colouring isn't really that noticeable on the car unless you're working on a white car and it's very much just a gimmick. Magifoam is a very thick foam and, despite it's fans, I found it absolutely useless. It clung to the car well but then once it's rinsed off it hangs around on the drive for days to weeks afterwards. The only way to get rid of it is to let it dry out and rinse your drive the following day or hope it rains for a month after you use it. It's very messy! It's cleaning ability was poor for me, regardless of what dilution I used and it made very short work of clogging up the gauze in the lance (to the extent that I had to clean the gauze every 2 or 3 uses, regardless of what steps I took after foaming to clean it out without dismantling the lance. In case you were wondering, this is why I have 2 lances so in my experience Magifoam is blooming expensive as it cost me another £40 on top of the foam). I wouldn't even entertain the idea of using this again even if I got a lifetime supply for free. Priced at £30 for 5 litres of the standard stuff and £40 for the coloured foam. Chemical Guys Mr Pink - technically this is a shampoo, but Chemical Guys, in typical Chemical Guys fashion (serious, check out their websites), claim that all their products do all things, ever. One of things they claim Mr Pink does is make a decent snow foam, so I tried it. It doesn't. You need to use 300ml+ neat to get any sort of contactless cleaning from it and even then it's quite poor. Does foam well though, so if you like using a lot of shampoo it's bad way to apply the shampoo to the panel for the actual wash part but even then you'll end up using more than just the small amount you'd use in the bucket. Priced at £8 for 500ml 50Cal Ambush - I only had 100ml sample of this to use, so based on just the single use I got out of it, it's one of the thicker foams, clings okay but not spectacularly and lingers on the drive for a day or two but even at lower-that-recommended dilution rates (I believe it suggests 10-20% in the bottle, which is meaningless as it's the panel ratio that matters but anyway I used mine at 4% on the panel) it cleans quite well, not spectacularly but still significantly. Priced at £15 per 500ml it's not cheap though. Auto Finesse Avalanche - produces a very thin foam which, if you don't get the dilution rates right, can be too thin to get any decent cling time. However, get the dilution right and it's easily one of the best cleaning foams I've used. Priced at £30 for 5 litres (or £13 for a litre) it's not the cheapest though. Car Chem Snow Foam - no fancy names here, no fancy packaging either, but Car Chem products tend to 'just work'. Their snow foam is no different. It's one of the thinner foams, although slightly thicker than Avalanche and thus less difficult to get the cling time right and it's cleaning ability is very good even in a short amount of time. Priced at £17 for 5 litres, £12 per litre, £7 per 500ml or £67 for 25 litres it's one of the most economical in larger qualities. However, they have changed their larger containers, so you'd need to buy of their "taps" for the 5litre sizes and up at £4. This is okay as a one off cost, albeit a slight annoyance, but the tap isn't anywhere as good a the pump dispenser (£3) that you'd need for all of the others. Bilt Hamber Auto Foam - Again lacking the fancy packaging just a great product. It produces a similarly thin foam to the Car Chem offering and cleans every bit as well that works between 4-8% on the panel. I use it at the lower 4% which gives it a good cling time and makes it very economical at £17 for 5 litres. I've probably forgotten some. And although it's not a snow foams, they are is still a pre-washes; Auto Finesse Citrus Power - spray on neat, allow to dwell, rinse off. Serves the same purpose of snow foam but doesn't require either a lance, a pressure washer (although not required, it is still advised to rinse off) and no setting up. Works very well, wax safe and a decent degreaser as well so has quite a few uses but at £35 for 5 litres or £10 by the litre, it's not cheap. Valet Pro Citrus Pre Wash (previously Orange Pre Wash) - this is a concentrate, so dilute to taste, spray on, allow to dwell, rinse off. It works well up to 1:10 dilution but not quite as well as Citrus Power. It is a economical alternative to Citrus Power though at £19 for 5 litres or £9 per litre which can produce up to 10x those amounts in usable product. For absolutely no reason at all, I prefer to use foam over the spray on pre-washes, but a direct comparison can be seen here; http://www.350z-uk.c...80939-pre-wash/ My choice for foam would always come down to either Car Chem or Bilt Hamber at the moment and the only real life difference between the two is that BH is green and smells nice, Car Chem is red and smells more chemically (but not unpleasant though) and Car Chem stuff comes in a variety of sizes. Also, it's easier to measure out the Bilt Hamber using the pump dispenser (x number of pumps = the required amount), however the Car Chem stuff can be decanted into another bottle with the smaller neck to utilise the pump dispenser or you can just measure once and mark the level on the lance bottle, so it's not the end of the world.

I see what you did there

Cheers chaps. It looks pretty when it's shiny, but it's soooo horrendously dull to drive.

Nice write up. If it helps, I used my sample at 4% on the panel, it wasn't as thick (although it did linger on the drive forever ) but it still cleaned well. To be honest, I think 50Cal might be over-shooting with their product pricing which is a shame as they're not bad products, they're not certainly economical products either though.

Excellent write up.

Ask and ye shall receive eleventy billion more photos. The Seat is your basic, run-of-the-mill, flat white. So gloss was the order of the day because... well, there's knack all else you can do with flat white really. So I searched through my unused Waxybox samples and found AM Details AM Seal. Very simple to use, spray on, spread, leave a couple of minutes to cure, buff off, job done. Supremely simple to work with, it spreads forever and a day which makes it easy to get a thin layer and there's absolutely no effort required to buff off once it's cured fully. My only "issue" with it was that it's quite difficult to see where you've been with it, although that was as much down to working on a white car with inadequate lighting as much as the product (I really need to get that lighting sorted thinking about it). Anyway, once buffed it gives tremendous gloss which gets better with each coat. The 50ml sample was enough to do three full coats on the whole car (and even a fourth coat over the lower panels... just because I wanted to use it up). And that leaves you with; Obligatory 350Z content for relevance And considering it's a sealant, the beading's pretty good too; That's Nanolex Trim Rejuvenator beading like a good'un on the random plastic section of the bonnet by the way, it's "only" been 5 months since it was applied You might notice the brief hint of sunshine in some of the beading pictures, well whilst I was taking those pictures a ninja rain cloud was sneaking up behind me and before I knew it, this was occurring; And whilst I did get wet, it did mean I could get this, my favourite shot taken to date;

So that's what the waxes look like in the dry. Let's add some water; Sheeting wise - all three sheet quite well for a wax. Desirable seemed best at this, followed by Pentawax and then Desire, but to be honest there was very little between the three. Beading... well you can see that above. But have some more pictures. Because I have them. My thoughts; Desirable produces the biggest beads which tends to lead to more of the water running off and probably relates to it sheeting so well. Desire produces more, smaller beads. Pentawax is pretty much bang in the middle of them. Again though, there's not a massive difference between the three really. All three of them bead very well. Pentawax; Out of focus Desirable; And what Desirable beading looks like when it's in focus (just in case you prefer that sort of thing); Desire; And some random shots; I have more. Many more. But I'll stop now.

Okay, update on the looks of the three waxes; Aside from the bonnet, the rest of car is wearing the 50Cal samples from the branded Waxybox (Pentawax topping Fortress), so I'll get the Fortress review out of the way first; It doesn't seem to have much, if any, corrective abilities of it's own despite it's claims (it struggled to remove even the water spots in places). However, it does both darken the paint and enhance the gloss. I haven't tested it as an LSP though, even though it claims to contain wax so I can't comment on that. Again, like the 50Cal wax it's very easy to to work with, both in application and removal, and is very workable. I would liken it to Autoglym SRP - it's not really a polish but rather a decent glaze. It's not a bad product, but it won't be replacing Black Hole in my arsenal. It should be noted that the paint hasn't been properly prepared since some time before winter. The prep for this consisted of an APC foam on top of the usual wash routine and then a single coat of Fortress. No decon, no clay, no paint cleansers, no polish. I'm not expecting miracles with the finish here. With that said, Pentawax has disappointed me somewhat. It looks great... until you catch it at certain angles in direct sunlight. Not the best photo, but after a brief drive today (hence the evidence of a body count on the windscreen & trim) I noticed this which isn't actually visable unless the sun is in exactly the right place. Observe; Take a step to the right and...; You may not be able to make out from the photos, but that is a big patch of oily residue. Despite being buffed twice. Now it may well be application error (most likely over-application), but basically it makes Pentawax not quite as forgiving as I originally thought. As the sun moved around the car I discovered more and more of these on every single panel. I'm pretty sure I've even now I've not got them all. The solution however was very simple; move to Scotland. No sun, no problem. Failing that a once over with a QD removes the residue that no amount of buffing seems to lift. Until I get round to QD'ing (or more likely re-washing) the whole car, that's going to bother me... until the sun goes away at least. When you do find a good angle, out of direct sunlight though, you do get good gloss, nice flake pop & some depth (this was pre-QD; Desirable (middle section) and Desire (right/passenger side section) had no such issues. And they look like this (please ignore the swirls); And the Pentawax section (note, that's poorly removed residue due the headlight rather than swirls - I added a 2nd coat of each wax to the bonnet shortly before these photos and tried to remove Pentawax before it had cured fully. Very much user error this time!); In the unlikely event of anyone being interested, I have some pictures of the shiny Seat on the left along with a review of the AM Seal it's wearing, but I won't post that now unless anyone asks for it.

I quite liked them all, to be honest, but then I am a wax guy. 50Cal Pentawax was the most forgiving - it's easy to apply, easy to remove even if you leave it to cure forever (well, for 24 hours anyway) even when over-applied. You can apply to the whole car, go and have a cup of tea (it does need 10-15 minutes to cure), have a nap, go to the pub, get drunk, pass out, sleep off the hang over and have another cup of tea before removing it without any issues (with the wax at least). It even smells pretty good too. AF Desire was easy to apply, easy to remove up to about ten minutes after which time it got progressively more difficult and needed some QD to remove the over-applied bits fully after 20+ minutes. I'd suggest doing no more than 2/3 panels at a time. It smells fantastic, slightly better than Pentawax in that regard. AW Desirable was easy to apply, easy to remove up to about 5 minutes after which time it got very difficult to remove very quickly even with a QD, I ended up having to reapply a small amount of the wax to remove it after 20 minutes. I'd suggest doing one panel at a time with this one. It smells pleasant but nothing particularly outstanding like the other two. Not so long ago rumours were rife that Desire and Desirable were actually the same wax - Anglewax manufactured, Auto Finesse re-branded - however I, like almost everyone else who has used both, can confirm... they ain't. Not even nearly. There aren't any rumours to dispel about Pentawax. Yet. Looks - really can't distinguish between them under the woeful lighting in the garage to be honest/ I'll get some pictures when it sees daylight again at the weekend and re-address this and water behaviour then. Durability might be tested, but I was planning a proper detail/summer prep. at the end of the month so they'll probably be removed at that point. I may reapply to my test panel afterwards though - I might even chuck a few more into the mix...

Blackfire then Wolf's Decon Once they're clean and shiny, seal them (FK1000P or Hubirims if you like wax-like products or C5 if you like not having to seal them again for 2 years) and then wash with normal shampoo.

Or you could run some APC through the lance - I usually APC foam the car prior to the bi-annual 'big' detail and that was usually enough to keep the gauze clean... ...except when I used Magifoam which did a better job of clogging up the lance it ever did of cleaning the car, but hey ho.

Welcome. I'm based not too far away at all.

It's not just me!

I can't wait for the discs to be abolished purely so that I no longer spend hours getting the disc exactly level in the holder, curse my OCD.

Thanks Bradders. How does that work as I need to renew mine in Sept ..Does that mean I have to tax it for a month and then use the new system ?. No, you tax it for the year/6 months as usual. In October you can bin the disc from your window, then the next time after that, that it's due you just have more payment options. The system itself isn't changing.

None of that over here either.

http://www.350z-uk.com/topic/79053-pressure-in-fuel-tank/

If you're impressed by that increase in MPG from cleaning the MAF, just wait until you discover those other 5 gears...

*patiently waits for this to escalate to the Stillen system*

They don't get dispatched until at the end of the month.

Not sure how I missed this thread, but yes there's a couple of us on here - such as me. The owner of this one is local to Hull too and a couple of other members visit Hull on the odd occasion - Nixy and Atkin666 spring to mind.