Autogeek Prototype v17 Rinseless Review & Comparison

[kevincwelch]

I've become a big fan of rinseless washes. Most of you in areas where there are water restrictions and just about all of you in cold areas (midwest!) know that you can't always hose down your vehicle and lather up your ride to wash it every week.

There are a lot of great rinseless and waterless washes out there, and they perform at a very high level.

Nick was kind enough to select me to receive one of Autogeek's prototype rinseless washes. This is prototype v17 (Pv17), which to me suggests that it's been through a lot of testing and development at this point, and if they are sending it out to forum visitors and detailers, they are pretty close to releasing it. Although I can't be certain, it came in a box that was labeled "Blackfire," so I wonder if this is going to be a Blackfire product.

I received in a well-packaged box a small bottle of their rinseless wash. I could tell just by inspection that it looked thicker than some of the other rinseless washes I have used.



The instructions on the bottle were quite simple: mix 1 oz of product with 3 gallons of water.



When I dumped the 1 oz into the bucket containing 3 gallons of water, I noticed that the water was quite hazy -- something unlike ONR but more like Duragloss #931 (wash and wax) and ONR Wash and Wax.



Using my very unscientific test of lubricity, I poured a small amount of Pv17 on my hands and rubbed them together. It felt as though I had a very thin layer of surfactant or soap between my skin. After cleaning my hands, I did the same with ONR wash and wax, DG #931 and ONR. ONR wash and wax felt very similar to Pv17 and so did DG #931. Although I could feel the lubricity, it was a little less when doing the same "test" with ONR.

I first put Pv17 to the test on my wife's Highlander. She had taken the kid to a fall camp over the past few days, and there was a lot of dried out mud on the car.

Disclosure: the Highlander is recently polished and coated with Gtechniq C1/EXOv2 (past 6 weeks).

Here are a couple representative shots.





Using some 600 GSM MF towels, I began to wash the car from top to bottom. My technique is to fold the towel into quarters and completely soak the towel. I wring the towel out slightly so that it drips water, but doesn't make a mess all over the place. I use one quarter per stroke and never use the quarter again.

Here's what the lift gate looked like after I had done a section with Pv17.





I felt like the towel glided very easily over the surface, and the combination of towel and Pv17 lifted all the dirt off the surface of the car. The section was then dried with a waffle weave MF towel.







Here are some more shots of the vehicle after doing one side of the car. I tell you, it glided very nicely across all surfaces.



After doing the entire car with Pv17, I drove the car out of the garage and looked at it under natural lighting. It was an overcast day, so the shots aren't really that impressive -- no amazing reflections or lens flares or any of that good stuff. My reaction is that the car looked very clean and was a breeze to accomplish with Pv17.










Now, on to the next car.

Tesla Model S. Recently polished and coated with 22PLE and Gyeon Booster.

It was hard to get some decent shots of the car showing the amount of dirt. I would consider the car to be mildly contaminated with dirt. It rained a couple times in the past two weeks, and the car hasn't been washed in 2 weeks. But, you can see some flecks of dirt as well as some streaking from where I applied some Nanoskin QD the other day just to quickly address a large water splat that dried out with some mineralization.





For this run, I decided to do a test. I was given no information about what was in Pv17. Was this a straight up rinseless wash? Was it a rinseless wash and wax? Did it have some hydrophobic coating magic in it? I didn't know. So, I decided to test it against plain old ONR.

I took the hood and divided it down the middle with some tape as you can see.



Then I made two buckets, each with 3 gallons of water. The bucket on the left is ONR at the appropriate ratio and the bucket on the right is Pv17 at the appropriate ratio. You can immediately see the difference in the turbidity of the water. I can clearly see the grit guard in the bucket with ONR but not the one in the bucket of Pv17.



Then I dunked a few 840 GSM MF towels (nothing but the best for my S!). These towels are purple and pink. I drenched the towels and inspected them. There was no way to tell if it was a towel with ONR or a towel with Pv17 because of the color. Red/purple/blue diluted all looks the same on these towels. I then turned my back to the buckets and had my wife randomly hand me a towel from one of the buckets.

As before, I folded the towels into quarters and performed one swipe with one quarter. I never reused a quarter while washing the hood. One side of the hood was done with Towel #1 and the other side was done with Towel #2. Since I didn't know which was which, I applied the same pressure and performed 4 swipes on the pink side to do the initial cleaning and then flipped over to do a second pass with the purple side.

I laid the towels down on the buckets to see how dirty they were. Where I put down the towels was completely random.



Here's what I noticed about the washing. The left side of the hood (passenger side) moved very nicely over the hood with only minimal sense of resistance. The second pass over the passenger side was even easier than the initial side. On the driver's side of the hood, the towel moved over the paint very easily without any sense of resistance. I couldn't tell a difference between the first pass and the second pass on this side. Both rinseless washes picked up a pretty good amount of dirt, and here's what the hood looked like after the washing was done.



There was a fair amount of beading on both sides of the hood, so didn't have any clues about what side was what.

Here's what the car looked like after drying and removing the tape. You can barely see where the tape was placed indicating where there is still some dirt.



After drying the hood, I placed two small microsuede cloths on each section and moved each one back and forth to see if there was any residue or dirt picked up on either side. On each side, I made 10 passes using the same pressure. Well, as imagined, there was no dirt on either microsuede cloth. However, there was a little bit of residue on the cloth used to wipe the driver's side of the hood.

This is a shot of the microsuede used on the driver's side. It's hard to tell, but it looked like there was a little residue picked up. I don't know. It looked different. Could be a variation in pressure. No dirt, nevertheless.



Which side was which?

The passenger side ended up being ONR and the driver's side ended up being Pv17!

I did the entire car in Pv17, and here are my glamor shots:









SUMMARY

I used Pv17 on two cars this morning, and both of the cars look great. In terms of application, it appeared to do well with 600 GSM and 840 GSM MF towels. Pv17 glided over the surface of my cars' paint very nicely and I had no real sense of resistance when I did this.

I can say that in terms of performance, Pv17 appeared to clean just as well as ONR did, but as I mentioned in the review, I felt as though the Pv17 was slicker and moved more easily over the surface when compared to ONR. There may have been a slight residue on the microsuede cloth used on the Pv17 side of the hood, but when taken into natural light, I couldn't detect any streaking or residue at all.

I think whatever this product is that it will be a winner. I'm anxious to see how this stands up to ONR wash and wax and DG #931.

My only wish is that I had some more of this product!

[ronkh57]

Nice review and comparison

[Ricorocks]

Wow! Excellent review Kevin, I liked the dbl blind, on the hood, I'll bet that was fun.

What's ONR & DG #931, trouble keeping so many acronyms straight. LUV your Tesla!

[AttyVette]

Wow! Excellent review Kevin, I liked the dbl blind, on the hood, I'll bet that was fun.

What's ONR & DG #931, trouble keeping so many acronyms straight. LUV your Tesla!

great review..

[ski2]

Thanks for the great review!! Seems allot like my experience when I compared ONR and UWW+ and switched over to UWW+ because of the extra slickness.

[kevincwelch]

Nice review and comparison

Thanks, man!

Wow! Excellent review Kevin, I liked the dbl blind, on the hood, I'll bet that was fun.

What's ONR & DG #931, trouble keeping so many acronyms straight. LUV your Tesla!

I enjoyed using Pv17. I think it will do well, and whenever it comes out, I'm going to get some.

ONR = Optimum No Rinse.
DG #931 = Duragloss #931.

great review..

Thanks for the great review!! Seems allot like my experience when I compared ONR and UWW+ and switched over to UWW+ because of the extra slickness.

Thanks!

I love UWW+. Unfortunately, In the summer I get to really wash my car frequently. In the fall and especially the winter, I can go for a month or more before I clean it again. Not really a time when I'd use UWW+. Although, I do like to use UWW+ as a "pre-soak" sometimes.

[haris300]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts! I love trying new waterless/rinseless products. Will have to give this one a shot when the time comes.

[SonOfOC]

Kevin,

Thanks for the review! How does it smell? Does it stain wash media? (couldn't tell from purple towels)
Lastly, does this product leave any protection?

[Tato]

Very good Review, Kevin. I like your in depth (although non-scientiphical) analysis, it really improves our understanding of product being reviewed.

In my opinion, you hit objective with final statement, it's expected to clean just like ONR, but it's noticeable the improvement towards slickness and a streak free finish. Every bit in those areas are very welcome!

Thank you very much for taking your time sharing your thoughts with us,

Kind Regards.

[kevincwelch]

I forgot to mention the smell! I love it. It's like cherry bubblegum. I did not notice any staining, but I doubt I would be able to notice since the towels are pink/purple.

As for protection, I don't know if it lays down any protection as I got no information about what was in the wash. Additionally, it would be hard for me to assess that on my two cars since they both have hydrophobic coatings...What's what? I wish I had a car with no protection to determine that, however.