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Foam cannons have quietly, or maybe not so quietly, become just such a hot button topic.
And I think for good reason in the detailing space. And foam cannons, I know there's massive debates and around, you know, rinse-less washes versus foaming cars.
Do foam cannons even do anything? Is it just all show, no go? Two bucket method, all touchless, all these different little kind of niche things that we get into.
But today, I really wanted to talk about for good reason, like, because I think foam cannons are such a good tool for a detailer to have in their arsenal,
whether you're just doing it for fun, which there's nothing more fun than foaming a car.
My kids absolutely love doing it, want to do it, and makes them want to wash a car.
And as an adult or a big kid, it kind of makes me want to wash a car, too.
And I smile every time I do it. But actually, if you pair it with the right soap, too, it's actually the most labor-saving way to wash a car.
I did rinse-less. I was a mobile rinse-less car wash detailer for years and years and years, like seven years, where I didn't even carry a water tank in my van with me.
And so I come from a heavy-duty, you know, rinse-less, water-less background.
And yet, I've been foaming cars for a few years now, and it's still like the most fun thing ever. I still get a ton of smiles on it.
But people obsess over different foam cannons, orifice sizes, pressure washers, cannons, cannon size, round, big opening, small opening at the top of the thing.
Brass fittings, stainless fittings, plastic fittings. Does it rotate? Does it spray? Does it fan? Does it suck too much water? Does it suck too much soap?
We get obsessed over the tool itself, but in reality, we should be talking more about the soap, because without the right soap, your cannon is literally just spraying water.
And I've tested so many foam cannons. In fact, one of my most popular cheap versus expensive videos that I first did was on foam cannons, where I tested an MTM foam cannon that I believe at the time the kit was like $120,
or maybe it was $80, or something like that. And I tested it against a $15 foam cannon, and found out that the $15 foam cannon was just as good, if not better, with a few small tweaks, of course, that I call more so, like, annoyances.
So, but the thing is, is you see endless debates about PSI, GSM, orifice size, which foam cannon's the best? Mine's better because it's this color. Mine's better because that color.
Yada, yada, yada. It goes on and on and on. Which, don't get me wrong, those factors do change how much foam you get. I noticed with like the Harbor Freight foam cannon, the bottle is much smaller.
So, again, it goes into these little, like, inconveniences that come into it. I also noticed with the Harbor Freight foam cannon, though, I don't know if it's, because it is a smaller bottle, but I do feel like it sucks the, I did put it on a different bottle, because it was threaded the same.
And it did, I do feel like the top of it just sucks more water and foam, and so I do feel like I go through more product, just in general, with the Harbor Freight one, but the cheap ones on Amazon, on Amazon do really, really good.
And so, I've seen a bunch of talk about why new foam cannons are the best, but again, the real secret is the soap. Without the soap, your foam cannon, again, is just spraying water.
So, even with the best, you know, setup, the best pressure washer, gas pressure washer, you know, two gallon per minute, three gallon per minute pressure washer, you know, the 1.1 orifice, if you have bad soap, who cares, right?
And so, and also, not only soap that just foams, but can, you get foam that cleans too. That's really the secret. That's why I went down a massive rabbit hole with this, because I thought, man, if we scratch our car,
every, or we have the potential to scratch our car, every time we wash it, why do we touch it so much during the wash process? And then we have that whole debacle of like, hey, if you're, you know, car care oriented and you want your car clean, you probably wash it often.
But that is one of the most, like, high times to actually scratch your car, which seems a little weird, but it is, like, the most scratching you're going to do to your car is probably during the wash process, right?
So what are we doing here? And then, when it comes to, so I think that's what helped with like foam cannons, like, hey, we're getting more foam on the car, more lubrication, we're scratching our car less.
This is a good thing, right? But the problem is, like, if you use just any soap or cheap soap, you get watery foam. And so it just runs off the car and it doesn't lubricate well. It doesn't have time to clean anything like that.
So if you get cheap, runny soap, you get less cleaning power and a bigger chance of scratching your paint during the wash process, which is, like, what we're trying to prevent.
Basically, our whole world is like, how do we have the cleanest car possible with scratching it? The absolute least amount is possible, right? Which are basically two oxymorons.
But a quality soap will give you that rich, thick foam, more cling time, which is important, and tons of lubrication.
So if you do go in for a contact wash, you want that thick foam, you don't want it to all be on the ground before it even did anything.
That's how you're going to increase the chances of your scratching the car, right?
So what makes a good soap, though? If you're on the fence and, hey, I bought the most expensive foam cannon I could, or I splurged, and I bought a really good, high-quality foam cannon,
now I'm looking for what type of soap to put in the foam cannon. We need to know, in order to find what is a good soap, we need to kind of lay the ground rules for what makes a good soap, right?
So in my opinion, this is my opinion of what makes a good soap, and in my opinion, strictly in my opinion, the soap is going to be more important than the foam cannon.
Sorry if you just splurged on an expensive foam cannon, but I will say the more expensive the foam cannon is, usually the better user experience you have.
So, though the cheap foam cannon, and I have videos on this, but the cheap foam cannon will do the same job as a more expensive foam cannon,
a more expensive foam cannon will just be a little nicer to use. It'll have some of the niceties, and that sometimes is a tax that you're willing to pay and sometimes you're not willing to pay.
If maybe you run a mobile detailing business and you have employees and they constantly break foam cannons, maybe you just want cheap ones because they're basically replaceable, right?
But I think more important than that is having a good soap. So what makes a good soap? Obviously, having a concentrated formula.
So you want something that foams when you dilute it, and all you need is a few ounces in your foam cannon, right?
I prefer something that when it's coming out of the foam cannon and when it's diluted down in the foam cannon, it's a little bit more pH balance.
It keeps your waxes, sealants, coatings safe. Again, we're trying to preserve all the work that we've done, not create more work for us, right?
And then, lubricity is a huge one. Everyone talks about it. The slicker of the soap, the safer if you do a contact wash.
It's also great because you can use it as a clay lubricant. So if you want to talk about efficiencies, one thing that I like to do is I like to foam a dry car, rinse it,
foam again, and then do either a contact wash then, or if I'm using the Super Soaper, I know that the car is like 99% clean.
In fact, I did it today right before recording this podcast. I will foam the car for a second time, and that will be my clay lube, and then I just go around and I clay the whole entire car.
So you want to make sure that a soap, if you want to do that, has good lubricity.
But that also, or the next point that I want to talk about is versatility, so lubricity and versatility.
So I prefer soap that can also work in a pump sprayer. If you wanted to do that, you could put it in a wash bucket, something that works more than just in a foam cannon.
I like in a pump sprayer for pre soaking. So if you're listening to this in the winter months, there's a lot of built up dirt and grime on the lower sections of your car.
Being able to put a couple ounces of your same soap into a pump sprayer and do like a pre soak for those really dirty lower areas of your car is massive.
With the Super Soaper, you tend to, that first initial foam can kind of be your pre wash or pre soak, whatever.
And so I use about a half a foam cannon normally for the first foam. I rinse off the first foam and with that, you're left with a really, really clean car.
I do the second foam. If I'm going to do a contact wash or a clay bar, and I will use the foam on the car as my clay lube.
This is a very efficient way to do it. It saves a ton of time. And if you have a good soap that produces thick suds and good lubricity, you're good to go.
So with something like the Super Soaper, you get all of that. You can foam it in a foam cannon.
It's pH balance, but you can actually increase the pH a little bit by just making it a little bit more concentrated if you want.
If your car is really dirty, you could do that. I actually add a little bit of pure magic cleaner in there as well if the car is real bad.
But that's how I do it. And that gives me extreme versatility. I can have one product that can replace, you know, maybe three or four different products.
So you don't need a high pH and a low pH soap. You just need one that you can dilute according to how you need the soap to work.
So the soap is working for you. Again, the whole premise behind the Jimbo's detail in line two is efficiency and making sure that the products work in multiple situations so that you don't need a bunch of products.
You don't need to over complicate this. It's very simple. We're just washing cars, keeping it clean.
So you need products and a product line that matches that. Again, you don't need, you know, three or four or five different compounds and polishes.
You need one and one person, one brand that was willing to stick their neck out and learn how to do it and get people to rally around them to know how to do it and put that one product out there.
So that's what I did with the Picture Perfect Polish. It's also what I did with the Super Soap. You don't need a dozen soaps. You don't need a low pH, a high pH, pH neutral.
You're seeing brands do that. And this is not the bag on other brands because this podcast is about foam, can and soap.
But you're seeing other brands do that where they develop multiple different products that essentially could be wrapped up in one product.
Now, from the brand standpoint, I understand the more skews you have, the more products you have, in theory, the more profitability you'd have.
But I've taken a completely different approach with my product line and I do the exact opposite of what a lot of brands do.
I have one or two products that do everything that you need it to do. And the Super Soap is one of those.
That's why the Super Soap is my pick and that's why I created it because I saw what people do.
I saw what brands do but I saw what detailers do and what their habits are when they're washing a car.
And so I wanted something that would work in a pump sprayer. That would work as a pre-soap.
That would produce thick shaving cream-like foam that clings, yes, and that gives you that smile on your face when you use it.
But also actually cleans the car and breaks down the dirt fast.
So I call it a touchless wash. You can foam, let it dwell, rinse and most of the dirt, if not all the dirt, depending on how dirty your car is, is gone before you even touch the paint.
And then that goes back to my original theory of like if we want to keep a car as clean as possible, but yet in touching it we run the risk of scratching it.
How do we kind of mitigate both those, right?
And so while the conversation in the industry is so often around the foam cannon and the tool itself, I decided to focus on what you put in the tool to make it work.
That really matters. And in my opinion and in my testing it matters more than the delivery system of a foam cannon.
So that's why I created the Super Soap. It's also safe on all surfaces.
Super cost effective because you're replacing multiple products with one, right?
And it just makes any foam cannon look amazing, if I were to be honest.
Whether you buy the cheap one on Amazon or you splurge and you, you know, you buy an expensive one, which would be great.
Again, the main difference between a cheap foam cannon and an expensive foam cannon is going to be the experience that you have.
So if this is something that you really enjoy doing and this is a hobby for you, it may be worse splurging on a nicer foam cannon.
If you really don't care, you just want to get foam on the car, get the cheap one. Why spend more?
It's getting foam on the car. It's like, you know, hey, a car gets you from A to B. Yes, it does.
But it's in between the A and B. How comfortable do you want to be, right?
So any foam cannon will get foam on the car. Yes.
Do you think that more comfortable is a better user experience with a more expensive foam cannon?
Probably, right? And at the end of the day, does the foam cannon matter? Yes.
But the soap matters the most aside from the user experience too.
So if you want a real foam experience, stop stressing about orifice size.
Stop worrying about if you have the right foam cannon, do you need to upgrade your foam cannon
and start focusing on what soap you're using?
So I'll drop a link to the Super Soap in the description below if you want to support this channel, this podcast.
And as more and more people comment, and I hope you will comment below also and let me know what you think about this topic in general.
But as more and more people ask about, hey, what foam cannon works best for the Super Soap or blah, blah, blah, blah.
Should I get this new foam cannon? Should I get that foam cannon?
And I would say use what one you like. Use whichever one.
But just know that you do also need to focus on what you put in that foam cannon as well.
So I will link the Super Soap or to both my Shopify site and Amazon as well.
They're on both places, so I hope you'll check that out.
And enjoy the experience of washing your car.
Enjoy the process of washing your car.
And yeah, I'll catch you on the next one.
Thanks for all the support for the Jimbo's Detailing Brand.
Obviously, it means a ton to me and helps me keep going, keep doing these videos and keep doing everything I love doing.
And giving you a great user experience.
So I'll catch you on the next one. See ya.
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