BHPian traderjagadeesh recently shared this with other enthusiasts: In my last thread, I highly recommended people to buy this foamer instead of investing into an electric pressure washer first if you are an enthusiast, and living in an apartment. Then a lot of people wanted a detailed explanation of how to use that before buying, so wanted to give a quick review, pros and cons of owning one. Disclaimer:- I have no afflations to any company, and I’m a detailing enthusiast who has been doing that for 8+ years on my own vehicles. Firstly, why we need to foam any chemical when we can just spray with a garden sprayer and do the job? Dwelling time:- Foam just sticks to the surface, do the job it’s supposed to do (emulsification and encapsulation) much better than just spraying the chemical onto the surface. Less product usage:- For a vehicle size of my XUV 700, it just takes around 1-1.5L of solution to foam the entire vehicle. If I use a pump sprayer, it will at least take 3L to cover the entire vehicle. A tad bit of agitation imitation by the foam:- Every time a bubble that’s in contact with the surface pops, it slightly agitates the surface which is needed to break into the grit. Secondly, why can’t we rely on cheap pump foamers in stead of investing in brands like IK? I have a 2L and a 12L IK foamers which I have bought around 5 years back. I also bought 2L foamers from brands like shinexpro, wavex and few other local brands which never lasted for more than an year. And we never know the material they have used as there is a risk for the bottle to burst when pumped more than it can handle. And the quality of foam that we get from those can never match what we get from an IK. Take it from my mistakes, and buy an IK once and maintain it properly than to buy anything else just to end up putting more and more money. Thirdly, where and how can we use it? I use to to do the alkaline pretreat with apc to rinse before going for the contact wash. (both for my car and the bike) I use it while engine bay detailing. We can get away with a sprayer here as we are just dealing with horizontal surfaces, but foam has other advantages like I’ve mentioned above. I use it for foaming wheels with an apc in every wash. I normally fill my IK foam pro 12 with 350mL of Koch Chemie Greenstar + 50mL of Koch Chemie GSF+ 5L of RO water. That gives me around 6L of usable solution. That will easily last 2 months to wash my car and the bike. (3-4 car washes and 1or2 bike washes). Keeping it for a few weeks is the reason why I used RO water for dilution. Not a fan of pumping manually. I just use the tire inflator to fill the pressure before the wash. One fully pressurized can foam one side of the car inclusing the wheels and wheel wells, or twice on my bike. Cheat code is using Xiaomi battery tire inflator that has a hidden setting to maintain the pressure through out the wash. If it is avaible, better to buy one. Review:- You can choose the kind of foam you like. The more dry and thick it is, the more product you gonna use. It has three nossils for dry, intermediate and running foam. I use the intermediate all the time. But keep in mind that except one or two layers of foam that is in contact with the surface, rest of the thickness doesn’t add any cleaning value, but adds some lubrication if you are doing a contact wash. So for a pretreat, it is just a waste of product and time. Try it for yourself and decide what kind of foam suits you the best. With a 2L foamer, it’s hard to hold it in different directions especially while foaming horizontal panels and wheel wells. With the 12L one as we do it with the wand, it’s much more easier. On my bike, I can just foam with apc soution, agitate the engine with a brush, agitate the rest of the body with a noodle mitt, and then rinse it off with a cordless pressure washer. A quick 10mins is what it takes. For the car, it takes half an hour to do a maintaince wash as this pretreat and rinse takes away almost all the grit and I just need a quick contact wash with rinselss to get rid of the traffic film. Attaching a small clip that I have recorded using the IK foam pro 12. I will be doing engine bay detailing soon, will post more like that to give a clear overview of how handy this little thing is. Pumped it manually here as I forgot to charge the inflator. Read BHPian comments for more insights and information.
