Flannigan
New member
XMT Shampoo (New Formula) Review
Initial product impressions
This review will focus on the new version of the XMT Shampoo. The product comes in a bottle similar to the Spray wax bottle, with a flip top lid for dispensing. It is a bright neon yellow color and has a chemical type scent. It is not a bad scent at all, almost reminded me of the smell of my hair shampoo. It seems to be a little thicker than some other shampoos I have used. I would assume this is due to that fact that it can be diluted very well.
Application thoughts and observations
The first thing to do with a car wash, obviously, is to mix it with water. The directions are a bit vauge. They say to mix one or two ounces with a bucket full of water. I know for the masses, that would be fine, but honestly I like to be a little more exact. I probably don’t need to be, but it’s just the way I am. So I did a little bit of experimenting. I filled my bucket up with 3 gallons of water and then put in one ounce of product and mixed it with the grit guard. When feeling it with my fingers it did not seem like it had the same lubricity of some other shampoos I have used. So I added one more half ounce of product to the water, and tried again. Believe it or not this gave me the lubricity that I was looking for between my fingers. I didn’t want to put another full ounce in, since I didn’t want to risk striping anything off the paint.
Here is a picture of the product going in the water. Nothing to note here, I just thought it looked really cool. This does sort of illustrate how this product is a little thicker than others. It almost is suspended in the water until you mix it in.
After mixing it in with the grit guard, I gave it a quick blast of water from my hose. It foamed up very nicely, without being overly foamy. I like to have some suds in my bucket, but I don’t want a bucket full of suds with no water. This is a very nice amount of suds in my opinion.
Today I used my favorite wash media, the Griots Garage MF wash pad. I have always liked MF chenille mitts, but I don’t care for mitts themselves. This product is large enough to cover a big area, but still easy to handle. It offers two sides of MF chenille so you can cover more paint before you go back to your bucket. Here is a shot of the hood after going over it with the Griots wash pad loaded with XMT soap solution.
The solution has very good lubricity, and allows the wash media to glide across the paint. It is quite obvious since it takes very little effort to get the pad across the paint without instilling any marring. After going over a section it’s time to rinse the suds off the paint. This is where some soaps run into problems, mainly being hard to completely rinse off the paint. It seems like some soaps require multiple or extended rinses to get the product off. Here is a video of how easily the suds rinse off the paint. This is on par or better than most soaps that I have used.
After washing the entire vehicle here is what the soap bucket looked like. The suds were dying a little, but there was enough to keep going if you wanted to. This is after washing and drying the Cube which took about 45 minutes since I was stopping to take pictures and make observations.
After a quick blast from the hose however, most of the suds returned. It’s not as sudsy as at the beginning, but certainly enough to wash another car, or in my case wash the wheels.
Cleaning Power Test
Since my car wasn’t terribly dirty, I wanted to test the cleaning ablility of this soap. I decided to test it out on my wheels. The wheels are not coated with any LSP, and had not been cleaned in a little over a month. They aren’t terribly dirty, but there is a buildup of brake dust and grime, especially on the front two wheels. Here is what they looked like to start with.
To clean them I used an old MF mitt, and a wheel brush to clean the spokes and face. I was surprised how well it worked. No cleaner was used except for the soapy solution left over in the bucket from washing. It cleaned all the dirt and grime off very well. I didn’t work on the inner barrels at this time since it was getting dark. As you can see it got most of the dirt off the parts of the barrel that I was able to reach with my hands. Here is how the wheel looked after rinsing the soap off.
Final thoughts and Pros & Cons
Overall I think this is a top notch soap. It rivals even my favorite soap from Ultima. It dilutes very well (1.5 oz to 3.5 gallons), and has great lubricity. The lubricity is above that of most soaps, and almost as high as that of Ultima Shampoo. Also, it rinses off very easily. There is no need for excessive rinsing to remove this product. It comes off very easily, and leaves the surface squeaky clean.
Pros:
Pretty high dilution ratios
Great lubricity
Great cleaning power. Cleaned my wheels perfectly without and additional cleaners.
Cons:
None at the time of review.
Thanks for looking!
