After seeing these advertised on TV, I went on a mission to track one down.
My local supermarkets didn't have one, but the local pikey emporium next door but one to my shop got a delivery of them this week. So I bought one.
Woke up quite early this morning, and was out on the drive with my hosepipe at 9.10am.
Followed instructions - spray car with water, spray with soap, sponge to remove dirt, spray clean, then switch to 'auto dry' de-ionised filtered water and rinse.
Have to say, it works very well - I had a shiny clean car in 25 mins.
Definitely worth the £18 I spent.... but I haven't looked into the price of refils yet.
£18? Sounds a bit steep for a one shot car wash. Taking into account the (unknown) costs of refills that would probably keep you in meguiars, it's all we use on the BM.
There's one car wash where we live. It's either rammed with chavs washing their Corsas or the farmers washing their jeeps or broken completely.
Even if it's not too busy, it would still take me just as long to drive down there and wash my car as it would to do it with the Flash thing on the drive.
As it happens, the Flash thing has managed to not only do a good job of washing my car quickly, it's also left no water marks on it at all - not even the 'spot free finish' at the carwash / jetwash does that.
Go to a carwash - only £2 or £3 a go and it seems to do a fairly good job, it takes a few minutes with no effort. I certainly wouldn't pay out for the FLASH car wash system. No doubt people will fall for the marketing and advertising in the same way they do for other products. I must put some nitrogen in my tyres to get extra fuel economy ! (one place in Wales advertises that for boy racers)
A lot of people don't even know how to wash a car by hand and end up making a right mess. Have you ever seen someone start with a sponge giving the wheels a scrub, then work around and upwards scratching the hell out of the car. Bits of dirt and possibly small stones scraping away. I have even seen someone use fairy liquid to wash a car, that contains salt, then there are people that will use a scourer ! A car wash causes a lot less damage, unless you can state specific cases that are checkable and publicised to show a car wash can cause damage. (In the UK in the past few years) No company would allow ongoing damage to customers so it should make interesting reading.
Instead of going to the car wash, how about just borrowing a sandblaster=20 and going over car with a bicarb load. It will remove as much crap, and=20 treat your paint in the same way, but release less harmful chemicals.
Few facts about car washes.
1) There are two main types, those that use harmful detergents that can=20 damage paint if not properly waxed by hand regularly, and those that use=20 recycled water with minimum filtration between washes.
2) Both types use nasty rotating plastic bristled brushes. The Plastic=20 bristles can actually cut into plated metal finishes, never mind=20 relatively soft paint finishes.
As an aside, both types never actually get into the the bits you want=20 cleaning, especially those that really collect crap like the sills and=20 the wheel arches.
A car should only be washed by hand. The Flash gun method seems a good=20 day to day compromise as long as the shampoo contains no salt, as it is=20 totally hose based and is sponged down to loosed the crud, before=20 rinsing, but ideally.
1)Rinse with free running water.
2) Apply shampoo with a sponge, using one bucket of soapy suds and a=20 second bucket of plain water to rinse the sponge, this stops you re- applying grit and dirt that the sponge has loosened and picked up.
3) Rinse with free running water (not a couple of quickly thrown=20 buckets).
4) Dry with a chamois or lint free microfibre cloth.
5)apply wax if the rinsing water didn't show signs of beading.
Not difficult, couple of hours max, and you get a sense of well being=20 for a job well done.
The Flash gadget looks to be just the thing when you don't have those=20 couple of hours though.
--=20 Carl Robson "Sorry Sir the meatballs are orf" (The poster formerly known as Skodapilot)
Haha, nice one. Do they actually advertise better fuel economy or just nitrogen fills?
We looked at filling the racecar tyres with nitrogen for this year and it's a pain to do properly. The whole point of using nitrogen is because air is 'damp' so when you're racing and heating the tyres up any moisture in there will vaporise and expand, and causes the tyre pressure to change.
You can use nitrogen to help eliminate this but it's a ballache because you have to make sure you get all the air out, otherwise it's a waste of time. And I suspect the chav place in Wales doesn't...
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