Snow foaming your car

[Niall]

Ok so this is very easy to do but you do still need to know what your doing first time round as it doesn't tell you on the bottle!

You need:
A car.....
Pressure washer
Snow foam lance
Snow foam

Now a little about it. The idea of snow foam is you spray it onto the car and leave it for a while. It removes the surface dirt from the car eliminating the need for you to take a sponge to the car. The means wax products stay for longer and you damage the paint a lot less because your not rubbing a sponge against the car (which effectively turns into sandpaper on really dirty cars!)
Snowfoam works great on a well maintained body. Not so great on a dirty car which has had neglect when it comes to the body work. The whole idea of it is to maintain. Not as a initial wash!

So, to start! Take your lance and attach to the pressure washer. Obviously you need the hose and mains connected!
Remove the bottle from the lance and put about an inch of snowfoam concentrate in the bottom. Now fill the bottle to 3/4 with water (carefully! If you jet it in, it will all just foam out of the bottle)
Reattach the bottle to the lance. Set the mixture to minimum and close the outlet of the lance right up.
The first few sprays will be a trial to get the mixture setting right.
Spray the car a few times and see how it comes out. You should be getting a thick foam that doesnt just run straight off the car. The idea is you want to be keeping the foam on the car between 5-10 minutes depending on the contamination. If it runs off quite quickly, up the mixture. As you up the mixture, you want to open the outlet on the lance accordingly. This isn't too important but helps.
Got your mixture right? Good cover the car and leave it for a while. You will see the foam working its magic lifting the dirt from the car.
After 5-10 minutes, get the normal lance on your pressure washer and wash it all off the car. Clean!

As said, it works much better on a polished car. The idea is to maintain the shine and protection on the paint.
One side of my car has been polished and waxed where as the other hasn't. As you can see from the photos below, there is a big difference on how well it removes the dirt.


Polished side


Non polished. It's difficult to see in the photos but it is still a bit grubby.

Last one, what the car looked like after a couple of minutes of foam


Hope this helps some. Will add links to the products I used in a bit after some dinner

[Niall]

Ok so this is the snow foam I sued

http://www.juicydetailing.co.uk/washing ... s.tpl.html

I will say, it smells really nice but you can get scented ones like cherry, apple ect. I didn't bother because I didn't think it would make a difference but it does leave a lovely smell to the car!

http://www.juicydetailing.co.uk/pre-was ... s.tpl.html
This is the lance I bought. Expensive but very well made and looks like a if a bomb hit it, it wouldn't mark it!
You need to choose the fitting for your brand of pressure washer but don't worry. If you ever buy a new make of washer, you can just buy the adaptor that they put on them for about 10 quid.

You can also use a snow foam pressure container to do this job. This is something I will go into at a later date when I buy one.

[kentiiboii]

Thanks niall looks good. Might think about this.

[Niall]

The initial cost is quite high but you use bigger all of the stuff. We did 2 cars and there was still some left in the lance.

Once I've got my car properly polished and waxed, I will just foam it once a week to keep up the shine

[Scott]

Thanks for writing this up Niall

I'll do one for washing the car with the 2 bucket method soon

[Ben Jay]

[MiiTCH]

Old thread... But do you have a link to the foam you used? That one doesn't work anymore... Or could someone link me to some on eBay?

[Tom]

New linky!

http://www.cleanyourcar.co.uk/washing-an...d_516.html

[Niall]

Will be doing an update to this guide in a few weeks seeing as the weather is getting a bit better. Will try and get a video as to how to use it and how it should sit on the car.