Another mini-combo review....AR610 pressure washer & generic snub gun

**JCDetails** · 04-16-2018, 08:34 AM

Another double header this last saturday gave me a chance to stretch legs on a few things I'd been waiting to try. I also have a polishing pad question but I'll get the easy stuff out of the way first.

First, the AR610 pressure washer. Hand-carry form factor, 1350psi and 1.9gpm. Lotta ass behind this thing in a very small package, though not very hand-carry-able at a shade under 50lbs. I also picked up a cheapy snub gun from an unnamed online retailer, which I'll roll up into this review. The pressure washer itself is awesome. Decent price point for an entry level prosumer washer, and great to have electric and not need to worry about another gas engine. Adjustable unloader, I had been dialing it down to 1000psi for general rinsing under pressure with a 40* nozzle, providing more than enough flow and pressure to remove foamed soap, wheel/tire cleaner, APC from wheelwells and did an excellent job cleaning up those carpeted wheel well liners that are the bane of my existence as a detailer. The machine is pretty quick to set up, and my god is it quiet compared to other electric pressure washers. In fairness, I have not tested the detergent inductor as I have a foam cannon for that purpose.

The snub gun, man I don't know how I ever pressure washed a car without one of these. Mine's just a cheapo but I may upgrade to a nicer MTM or Mosmatic one eventually. I can certainly see the need for an extended lance in some situations, I'll likely be ordering up a 24" bent lance extension and setting it up with a QD plug to work directly off the snub gun's QD socket. So much easier to manipulate and move around the vehicle, and rinse stuff like wheel wells without having to worry about whacking the lance against the paint. It does give you a little less leverage with the foam cannon attached to it so it takes some getting used to. On the subject of foam, this combination far outperformed my cheapy greenworks PW. The snub gun's fittings did require a little tweaking. It had a M22 male inlet fitting which I needed to adapt down to a 3/8" Male fitting to allow a 3/8" FPT to Male QD plug to fit on it. I then adapted the AR's 3/8" MPT to a 3/8" FPT to Female QD socket, so I could quick change it out if I needed to rather than dealing with threading things on and off. The snub gun came with a 1/4" female QD socket, which takes any standard 1/4" QD spray tip or in my case my foam cannon.

The only negative to the PW is that because of the price point, it does not have an autostart/stop system or Total Stop System as AR calls it. This means you either need to shut it off manually every time you're done spraying, or after a little while with the gun closed the thermal safety will automatically trip the power switch, requiring a walk back to the washer if you're a little careless about it. When it comes time to upgrade or replace this one, that feature will be at the top of my list.

At 1350psi and 1.9gpm for the price point ($450 or so) it's really great. It also runs on a standard 15a outlet which almost anyone should have available to you. The higher end model that I originally wanted was the AR630-TSS, which has the TSS and also runs at 1500psi and 2.1gpm in the same form factor. Unfortunately it's $750 and requires a 20a circuit, which was a lot less practical for me.

The plan is to hopefully bring it up to the FD where we have a Honda EU3000is inverter generator and see if I can get it to run properly. If it does, I'll eventually invest in a small inverter generator (110v 15a is only 1650 watts) to give myself a little more independence, on the way to also getting a self-contained water source and becoming truly mobile.