Bilt Hamber Auto Foam
Bilt Hamber Auto-Foam is a powerful, water-based snow foam pre-wash designed to soak and saturate dirty vehicle surfaces before contact washing.
Key Benefits
- Effective Pre-Wash Cleaning: Loosens and removes road grime, traffic film, and heavy surface contamination before contact washing.
- Maximum Wetting Technology: Rapidly spreads across the surface to soak and saturate dirt rather than relying on unnecessarily thick foam.
- Non-Caustic Formula: Provides powerful cleaning performance without using caustic soda.
- Safe for High-Gloss Finishes: Will not dull automotive paintwork when used according to the manufacturer’s directions.
- Reduces Contact Washing Risk: Removes a substantial amount of contamination before your wash mitt touches the paint, helping minimise wash-induced marring.
- Easy to Rinse: The highly wetting formula rinses cleanly and carries loosened contamination away from the surface.
- Foam Lance Compatible: Suitable for use with pressure washer foam lances.
- Economical Concentrate: Applied at a typical 4% Panel Impact Ratio for dependable and repeatable cleaning performance.
Why Auto-Foam Is Different
Auto-Foam is designed around cleaning performance rather than producing the thickest possible foam. Its rapid-wetting formula spreads across the surface, penetrates contamination, and helps loosen grime during the dwell period.
The foam may appear wetter and collapse faster than heavily thickened snow foams. This is intentional and allows the cleaning solution to maintain close contact with the paintwork while it works.
Recommended Dilution
Apply Bilt Hamber Auto-Foam at a typical 4% Panel Impact Ratio (PIR). The amount added to your foam cannon will vary depending on the pressure washer, foam cannon, water flow, and equipment settings.
To calculate your required mixture:
- Fill the foam cannon with a measured amount of water.
- Spray the full contents into a bucket.
- Measure the total amount of water collected.
- Calculate 4% of the collected volume to determine how much Auto-Foam should reach the vehicle.
- Adjust the concentration in your foam cannon as required.
How to Use
- Prepare the Mixture: Dilute Auto-Foam to achieve a typical 4% Panel Impact Ratio.
- Apply Evenly: Cover the vehicle thoroughly using a pressure washer foam lance.
- Allow to Dwell: Leave the product on the surface for approximately five minutes while ensuring it does not dry.
- Rinse Thoroughly: Pressure rinse the vehicle to remove the loosened grime and remaining product.
- Contact Wash if Required: Follow with your preferred automotive shampoo and safe wash method.
Perfect For
- Removing road grime before contact washing
- Regular vehicle maintenance
- Heavily contaminated vehicles
- Reducing wash-induced swirls and marring
- Professional detailing workshops
- Enthusiast vehicle care
- Use with pressure washer foam lances
Important Information
Do not allow Auto-Foam to dry on the surface. Avoid applying the product to hot panels or in direct sunlight. Always calculate dilution using Panel Impact Ratio rather than relying only on the amount placed inside the foam cannon.
PRO TIP: Do not judge Auto-Foam by the thickness of the foam. Its wetter, fast-acting consistency is designed to maximise surface contact and cleaning performance. Correctly calculating a 4% Panel Impact Ratio will produce far better results than simply filling the foam cannon with an estimated amount.
Dilution calculator
Pick your container and your ratio, and read off how much concentrate to pour.
A foam cannon does not spray its bottle. It draws from the bottle into the pressure washer's flow, so a 1 L bottle can put 11 L on the car and the ratio in the bottle tells you nothing about what reaches the paint. Measure your setup once and the number holds for every product that quotes a PIR.
Common questions
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Parts water to one part product. A 10:1 mix is ten parts water and one part product, so a 1 L bottle takes 91 ml of product and 909 ml of water. A few brands print theirs the other way round, so check the label if a number looks unusually strong.
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Water first, then the concentrate. Pouring concentrate into an empty bottle and topping it up makes it foam over the top, and you lose some of what you just measured.
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Most diluted products keep for a few weeks in a sealed, labelled bottle out of sunlight. Write the product and the ratio on the bottle. An unlabelled trigger bottle is how the wrong chemical ends up on someone's interior.
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Panel Impact Ratio is the concentrate as a percentage of everything leaving a foam cannon, the bottle water and the pressure washer water together. It matters for snow foam and pre-wash only, because a cannon draws from its bottle into the washer's flow rather than spraying the bottle.
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A syringe or a measuring jug with millilitre graduations. Capfuls vary by bottle and by how full you fill them, and at 256:1 a few millilitres out is a noticeable change in strength.