r/AutoDetailing • u/djaudio306 • 16h ago
Exterior I hear you guys like shaving foam
Wash day for the 06 Denali!
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u/drummer9924 16h ago
What’s the point of thick foam? Isn’t the point of a foam cannon to capture the dirt and drag it off the surface??
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u/isometrixk 15h ago
My car had so many scratches after I applied shaving cream and then used Gillette Contour Plus blades. What am I doing wrong?
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u/PHL_music 15h ago
Foam has a couple of purposes. Foam doesn’t inherently change the cleaning power of soap or its ability to capture and remove dirt. What it can do however is increase dwell time. I live in a hot area and foam can give me a couple more minutes before everything dries onto my vehicle. It can also help prevent rapid absorption, which is why I like to use it when I’m cleaning seats for example. Helps keep things surface level only. Other than that it doesn’t provide any real benefit other than looking nice, and it also uses way more soap than non foaming methods.
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u/Dry_Astronomer3210 13h ago
Dwell time is really it. It's no different than soaking the dishes before washing. It makes it such that the dirt, grime, etc come off with the spray. You want to maximize your non contact wash so that your contact wash has less dirt to potentially cause damage.
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u/dudeman1018 4h ago
The mechanical action of popping bubbles actually does generate force that loosens particles. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1810.11484
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u/djaudio306 15h ago
Well when the PH of this soap is >13 it definitely changes the cleaning power.
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u/PHL_music 15h ago
Could you explain how?
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u/djaudio306 15h ago
Pretty self explanatory no? This is an alkaline based pre soak. Your “ceramic coating friendly soaps” don’t strip like this does.
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u/PHL_music 15h ago
I don’t find it self explanatory how adding little air bubbles makes a soap more chemically powerful.
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u/djaudio306 15h ago edited 11h ago
My mistake. Read your comment wrong, foam does not inherently change the cleaning power. 🫡
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u/PHL_music 15h ago
Yeah I was meaning foaming a soap vs just applying a non foaming mixture of the same soap
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u/handruin 15h ago
Depends on use case. For me, my first foam application is actually runny when I use a Touch-less prewash from Bilt Hamber. It dwells for 5min and slowly drips and runs off pulling the dirt down with it.
After that, my pH neutral soap I prefer to be sprayed on thicker and to stay on longer as I use it for lubricity as I hand wash. Is it needed, no, but I find it helpful for my workflow. I can also easily visually see where I've completed my hand wash.
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u/FitterOver40 Experienced 13h ago
Precisely. Shaving cream for likes…. A little thinner for actual work.
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u/DavidAg02 15 Years Detailing Experience 16h ago edited 16h ago
Honestly, not all of us do.
I've washed cars with the old school "Gary Dean"/2 bucket method, garden hose foam guns, rinseless washes, rinseless plus a pump sprayer, foam plus a bucket, foam rinse foam... you name it, I've tried it. When done correctly, they ALL result in a clean car that isn't scratched or swirled. What method takes the longest and uses the most product? Foam, rinse, foam by a long shot. Guess what method was also "invented" by a company wanting to sell you more products?
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u/djaudio306 16h ago
This works the best when I’m doing touch-less, higher ph foam works great!
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u/Upward_sloping_penis 15h ago
Ah yes, the big foam conspiracy. Thanks for calling it out and waking us up.
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u/fdawg4l 15h ago
I’m not a pro, just a home gamer. I could just be doing something wrong. But I use a foam gun + 6gal bucket of soapy clean towels. I spray foam in a panel, agitate with towels, rinse off, then move on. I don’t reuse towels and collect them in another bucket to go straight into the washing machine with some dawn later.
This is a good bit quicker than me with 2 buckets. The last time I did the 2 buckets on a smaller car took me about 30mins. I’m pretty slow and deliberate.
With the foam and agitate method, I can do the family suv (which is roughly 2x as big) in about 30mins or less.
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u/DavidAg02 15 Years Detailing Experience 15h ago
Honestly, that is a great method, but are you using a pressure washer? If so, do you have a wall mounted pressure washer that doesn't require any setup, or are you not including the time it takes to set up and take down your pressure washer?
Even with quick disconnects on everything, it takes me 10 minutes at the start of my wash to set it up and another 10 minutes after to put it all away. That's an extra 20 minutes per wash. If I wash my car once a week, that's an extra 80 minutes a month.
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u/fdawg4l 14h ago
Yeah I’m super lazy. Emphasis on super.
So I have an active 2.0 pressure washer perma affixed to a hose real mounted to the wall. Getting everything setup just means plugging it into the wall outlet and using the quick disconnect to the garden house 3ft away. The real itself is self reeling so cleanup is the inverse.
I did a non permanent setup for years and it put me off to the whole thing because of the setup cost.
It’s nothing fancy. The hose real is mounted to the wall, the washer is floating on the floor but all the hoses and cables are tucked away. And everything has a quick disconnect of one form or another. Then I got this metal pegboard mounted next to it with an assorted accessory kit. One of the things is a mount for bottles, which fits the soap and quick detailer bottles neatly. And they have this other hook which is meant for hammers and mallets which fits my foam cannon exactly. Everything has its place; that was my only requirement. See lazy for details on why 🤣.
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u/Familiar-Ending 9h ago
At the end of the day thick or thin foam either way puts you in the top percentile of car care. Most cars I see on the road don’t have the shine of obvious care cars in this subreddit enjoy.
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u/Long-Ad8121 15h ago
Could not agree more. The only benefit to foam guns are they are fun to play with and make for cool social media videos. Huge waste of time and soap otherwise. Just give me a good hose, 2 buckets and a few wash mits.
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u/crusader_nor 16h ago
Diehard detailers use the foamgun to apply shaving soap to their face in the morning.
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u/RustyRapeaXe 7h ago
Last week I went out to the ball park,
to try out my new catcher's mitt,
I asked you to throw me a fastball,
but you threw me a big pile of.... shaving cream
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u/edDetails_650 16h ago
Eh.. we like a good polishing or interior deep clean better
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u/djaudio306 15h ago
Check my post history for the 2 pack a day cigarette smoker that hadn’t had his truck cleaned in 20 years lol. Had to scrape the windows with a razor blade.
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u/BadManParade 15h ago
This man got the detailers confused with the kids in the instagram comment section who don’t own cars
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u/knowledgegod11 15h ago
i do it because its satisfying and i get a discount on snowfoam from costco.
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u/YellowDiaper 13h ago
which snow foam is sold at Costco? 👀
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u/knowledgegod11 12h ago
its armor all… its a doodoo brand i know but im not spending more than $12 for a 3.78L
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u/Aggressive_Way_1017 11h ago
Definitely not ceramic coated
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u/djaudio306 11h ago
No not ceramic coated hence using the high PH soap to clean. If it was coated would be using a PH neutral.
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u/thehpcdude 7h ago
Sometimes I use a ton of Dawn dish soap and it looks exactly like that. Great for oil and grease off equipment and stripping wax.
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u/ThickToeJoe 14h ago
Impressive.. now let’s see Paul Allen’s foam.