Snowfoam. Great stuff for budging really stuck on road grime and muck, helping you to not scratch your most precious machine. The problem is, I can never be bothered to get the pressure washer out to do it.
That means I MAYBE snow foam a car once a year. Usually, in the winter, when the roads are particularly gruesome. Would I do it more? Yes.
Now I had seen that a number of other detailing brands have released snow foam pump sprayers in the last year. So when a PR email from my go-to car washing product company, Autoglym, popped into my inbox, I replied explaining the above.
They said, great, we’ll send you one out to test. So here we go!
Quick links to get to the bit you’re interested in:
What is it?
Simply put, the Autoglym Polar Foam Sprayer is a pump action sprayer that creates a vacuum inside the bottle as you pump the handle. You mix up the Autoglym Polar Blast/Wash or Seal to the right dilution, and when you press the trigger it gets forced through a teeny tiny piece of foam that sits in the nozzle.
This helps create a nice thick foamy substance.
What’s the Autoglym Polar Foam Sprayer like to use?
Well, I specifically left the little BMW i3 filthy until the Polar Foam Sprayer arrived. And I mean, it hadn’t been cleaned since maybe December? So a good three months of winter’s worst was baked on layered up and then baked on again. No, I’m not usually this lazy, but the roads around here have been constantly wet and mucky, so it would just be a waste of life to clean it for all of 10 minutes of driving. Yes, I felt bad for the i3.
Starting off with a bit of Polar Blast, which is a pre-wash, to help loosen all that winter grime.
Now, mixing up isn’t as easy as you’d think – and maybe something for Autoglym to change in the manual or maybe tweak the bottle design.
You see, on the back of Polar Blast it says:
Polar blast can be used in various dilutions depending on the density of foam desired. A good starting point is 100ml product to 500ml of water in your foaming bottle.
But the instructions that come with the snow foam sprayer say:
Ration 1:10 – 100ml to 1 litre of water.
Which Autoglym say is the recommended amount for an average-sized car.
And the max you should fill the 1.5l spray bottle to, is 1.25l. That’s a lot of numbers and instructions when you just wanna car clean.
So ignore the back of the Polar bottles – all of them. And just go by the instructions in the manual.
But that does mean you have to keep the manual handy, and if you’re doing all three – Blast, then Wash, then Seal. That’s three times you need to check these instructions.
There’s also no measuring cup with the sprayer, which would help this situation. As you also have to go and pinch a measuring jug from the kitchen. Shh don’t say anything.
The manual is either going to get lost over time, or wet with all the back-and-forth mid-car cleaning.
It would help massively to have those dilutions on a sticker on the side of the sprayer. Or include a measuring cup that has 100ml Polar Blast / 50ml Polar Wash / 40ml Polar Seal on it.
The spray bottle is probably too large to have a ‘fill line’ for each, as measuring out 40ml to 1.25l of water would be minuscule.
Anyway.
Once you’re all measured out and pumped up, set the direction of the nozzle – you can have it any way you like, so the foam sprays out in a large fan. Vertical is helpful for sides, and I switched to horizontal for the bonnet.
True to its word, it produced a nice thick foam of Polar Blast.
I had to stop and repump the bottle maybe twice, but the results were fantastic. Easily equal to the snow foam attachment on my pressure washer.
A quick empty, wash out and refill with Polar Wash next.
Now, I think I should have upped the amount of wash in this one, as it wasn’t as foamy as the Polar Blast. It was a little more runny, but it still clung to the car, albeit not as thick.
Next up was the actual wash.
Two buckets (naturally), a wash mitt, and (sorry Autoglym) Meguiars Gold Class Shampoo – my only ever real betrayal of the Autoglym brand.
Washing the car down with the mitt and the dirt simply wiped off. There was no hard scrubbing, no need for a second wash. Perfect. And that’s precisely why you snow foam!
I ended up using 200ml of Polar Blast, which is nearly half a bottle in one wash. So I’d say it’s definitely worth investing in the large 5 litre cans if you’re going to be a regular snow foamer now that the Polar Foam Sprayer makes it far less hassle to use.
I didn’t end up using the Polar Seal as I always finish off with the Autoglym Rapid Ceramic Spray.
Autoglym Polar Foam Sprayer Conclusion
Overall, it’s excellent! Way, way more convenient than lugging out and setting up the pressure washer. To me, it does exactly the same job. The foam was nice and thick, and it melted off three months of grime with ease.
As mentioned above, the measuring out could be improved, but that could be a quick remedy.
Oh, and you also get little foam pads for the nozzle, you’ll need to replace them if they get dirty or start to disintegrate. There are 10 with the sprayer.
Where can I buy the Polar Foam Sprayer?
Currently your best bet is Halfords, where it’s retailing for £29.99. Or of course, you can go direct to Autoglym.
