If you are a regular reader of this blog, you will know that I recently tried out “Auto Wash” by Bilt Hamber, and was pretty impressed by the performance and value of this shampoo. When I was picking up this shampoo on Amazon, I decided to also throw a big bottle of Bilt Hamber snow foam offering into my cart.

“Auto Foam” is another well known and much-praised product from Bilt Hamber, so it was another one I was eager to test out to see if it did indeed live up to the hype.

As I wash my car with snow foam at least once a week, I wanted to make sure I was getting good value for money, as I tend to go through products quite quickly. I opted to pick up the Auto Foam 5L Bottle in the hopes that it would last me a good amount of time.

What is Bilt Hamber Auto Foam?

According to Bilt Hamber themselves :

“Auto-foam is a new generation premium quality, foaming water-based pre-wash treatment, designed to soak and saturate soiled vehicle paintwork before the application of vehicle shampoo and paint food. Auto-foam is gentle too and is for use with all pressure washer foam lances.

Applied at a typical PIR (Panel Impact Ratio) of 4%, auto-foam will panel dwell for typically 5 minutes. auto-foam is formulated specifically to offer maximum wetting, it rinses easily too. It is not designed as a superficial high foam product but as a functional material.”

One important point is that Bilt Hamber Auto Foam will not affect LSP ( so will be safe to use on Coatings Etc )

Bilt Hamber Auto Foam – How to Use

There is a lot of confusing information online about the dilution ratios of Bilt Hamber Snow Foam, which makes it quite difficult to figure out the exact amount of Water: Product Ratio in the snow foam lance.

Direct instructions as per the Bilt Hamber website are to “dilute as required to obtain a PIR (panel impact ratio) of between 1:100 and 5:100.”…right.

To know the exact PIR, you need to calculate the flow rate of your washer first.

However, if you do want to calculate this – you can use the method below.

To correctly calculate the required quantity of auto-foam to use in a pressure washer reservoir or
foam lance bottle. For virtually touchless cleaning 4% is needed at the panel, not in the detergent bottle or reservoir. To
obtain this fill up the detergent bottle or reservoir.

Take a large container and discharge the lance into
this until the detergent bottle is empty of water.

Measure the total amount of water collected, and
multiply this number by 0.04.

Fill the detergent bottle or reservoir with the calculated amount, and
top it up to full with water. This method will create the correct concentration of auto-foam discharging
from the lance

I decided to take my very scientific approach and dilute the product as I would any other snow foam I have used and see how it performed. ( My Car was not exactly filthy, to begin with – so decided that a high concentrated dilution was not necessary )

 

Bilt Hamber Auto Foam Review – Is it Good?

Once I had my snow foam lance filled up, I started to apply the auto foam solution to the car’s paintwork. My first impression of the foam was that it was not very thick. ( At least not as thick as I am used to seeing )

Admittedly this could be down to me using an incorrect dilution ratio in the cannon ( too weak ), but from what I have read elsewhere online, this is not a very thick foam anyway.

One common misconception when it comes to snow foam is that “the thicker the foam the better“, this is not the case.

Thinner viscosity foam is better at allowing the surfactants within the product to absorb and loosen the dirt. The balance of surfactants to foaming agents has been finely tuned within auto-foam but some of these thicker other thick foams tend to have too much foaming agent.

When the balance is wrong the foaming agent actually hampers the ability of the surfactants to clean and this is why Bilt Hamber Auto-foam is the viscosity it is.

That being said, I was very impressed with the cleaning ability of this foam. It was the closest thing to a touch-less wash I have ever experienced. I can only imagine how well it would work at an even higher concentration. I will be looking forward to trying this on a more contaminated car.

Once I had let the foam dwell on the car for about 5 minutes, I could see that it removed most (if not all ) of the surface dirt that was built upon the paintwork.

This made the hand wash that followed much easier and quicker to carry out.

Another important benefit of the foam removing most of the surface dirt is that it will the wash process much safer, and reduce the risk of any dirt getting trapped in your wash mitt. ( Which could lead to swirls and scratches in your paint )

This is a result of just the foam action and before I touched the car. Pretty Impressive!

What impressed me the most about this snow foam is that It’s well priced compared to some of its competition – and the 5L bottle is going to be very good value if it is this effective even at the fairly dilute concentration I used in my test.

This seems to be a great all-rounder and probably the most impressive foam I have used so far. When used in conjunction with “Auto Wash“, it seems like a pretty unbeatable combination! ( You can read my review of that shampoo HERE )

• Price 9/10

• Application 8/10

• Thickness 6/10

• Cleaning Power 10/10

• Overall Score 8.5/10

Bilt Hamber Auto Foam – Where to Buy?

If you want to try Bilt Hamber Auto Wash- please consider purchasing it through my Amazon Link HERE

This helps me keep this blog up and running.

If you have tried this foam by Bilt Hamber already, I would be interested in hearing your opinions on it, so please feel free to leave a comment below.

Until Next Time,

Happy Detailing!

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About the Author – Darren O Hara

Darren is the founder of the DriveDetailed blog and is a keen detailing enthusiast living in the rainy south of Ireland. When he is not cleaning his car he is always researching ways he can improve his techniques and enjoys testing out new products.

Darren currently drives an Audi TTRS and is a big fan of performance cars.

You can follow Darren on Instagram @darrenoharacork