Need some help with the Gilmour Foam Gun (1 quart size)

ntwrkguy1

ntwrkguy1

New member
I bought one of these recently, and am having a bit of a problem getting it to work at its peak efficiency.



I tried it yesterday with Meguiar's Gold Class car wash (measured out 2 oz. and put it in to the bottle, then screwed that on to the gun). It produced foam, but not nearly what I had hoped. Now I've used up the Meguiar's, and have moved on to a gallon of TW Ice that I bought at Costco today exclusively for the gun.



My question is this: How much soap should I put in the bottle? And should I fill the bottle with water BEFORE screwing it on to the gun, or let the hose do that as I pull the trigger. I've read a few posts where people filled the bottle with water and soap, then shook it to thoroughly mix it.



The cars I am spraying are my own, and are all extremely well-prepped. I saw in my searches that the foam tends to slide off of well-prepped surfaces, so I'm ok with that. Just want to make sure I'm doing this right and not wasting any car wash soap.
 
yes you need to pre fill up the cup with water and give it a shake to mix up the solution. I can usually get around 2-3 washes from a full cup of soap mix. Around 2 oz of soap sounds right.
 
It's a little more involved than that (for me, anyway). The foam gun is a proportioning device; thru a venturi effect, it's siphoning out a portion of what's in the cup and mixing it with the water flowing thru the gun from the hose. Other people are a little more cavalier, but if I'm using a thick 1oz/gal soap like GC, I will mix 8oz of soap with 24oz of water to fill the cup. So this is 1/4 soap. Then I set the orifice bar in the gun (presuming you are using the Foamaster I gun with the brass hardware) to the center hole, which is 4oz/gal...which gives me 1oz/gal at the car. Since you're in the middle hole, you can ratchet it up or down two notches either way to get a thinner or thicker mix.



If you are using a thin wash, you can try to use it straight in the cup (thick washes won'd siphon properly unless you dilute them down). Also, it can be a little tricky (for me, anyway) to be sure which hole you are on, and make sure you keep the orifice bar straight up otherwise you will be shutting off the soap supply.
 
Setec -- the one I have is the plastic version with the thumb-dial on it. There only seems to be two settings: one is for the soap/water mixture, and the other is (at least according to the rather limited instructions this thing came with) a straight water setting. Not sure what the benefit of a straight water setting is.



If what you say is accurate (and I know you have more experience with these things than I do so I'm sure it IS accurate), why do we use them? :) It seems like a LOT of soap to use to , especially considering I typically use about 1-2 oz. when bucket washing. I realize the benefits of the foam gun as far as reducing swirling, but it seems like they must have been created by the soap manufacturers.....haha.
 
I would say instead of the 1-2 oz that I used to use...now I use about 3 oz...so that's in the interest of more flushing and less marring. You could go down to a more watery mixture and then use the same or less soap than you do with a bucket--some members seem to do that. I think the plastic dial is labeled A-B-C-D-E, so if you use my mixtures above, you'd use the "C" setting to start. And the straight water setting is for rinsing ;)
 
Weird.....I just went out into the garage to look at the dial. Believe it or not, my dial just has the "A" setting and the "water only" setting. Makes sense that the water setting is for rinsing, now that I think about it! :)



I wonder why my dial only has the one setting -- wonder if it is some factory defect that Gilmour didn't catch. Either way, when I tried it tonight with approximately 2 oz of soap, it gave me a decent amount of foam. The surface of my GS430 is so slick that the foam ran off fairly easily, but I could definitely see it on the surface.
 
I just checked the paperwork, and yes, it is the fixed-ratio gun, calling for a 4oz/gal. ratio.



Seems a little light to go with just 1oz/qt., but it did say you could mix all the way up to 14oz. When I used 2oz last night, it foamed pretty well. I'll probably stick with 2/3oz tops.
 
So that works out to a dilution ratio of .25oz/gal (if you put 2oz in a full cup)...so that should certainly keep your soap usage down or let you use lots of solution.
 
Good idea, Accumulator. I'm washing a few cars tomorrow and will try a few different ratios. If nothing else, the foam gun has the neighbors wondering what I'm up to! :)
 
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