Okay, so I finally got around to trying out one of those foam attachments for my pressure washer. Heard a lot about them, seen the videos with cars covered in thick white stuff, figured I'd see what the fuss was about myself.

First step was digging out the pressure washer itself, making sure that was running okay. Then I unboxed the new foam cannon attachment. Looked simple enough, basically a bottle that screws onto a nozzle head with some brass fittings.

Connecting it was straightforward. My pressure washer wand has one of those quick-connect ends. So, I just pulled back the collar, popped off the regular spray tip I had on there, and pushed the foam attachment on until it clicked into place. Felt secure.

Next up, the soap situation. I'd read somewhere you can't just use any old car soap, you need the proper 'snow foam' stuff designed for these cannons. Something about how it mixes with air and water to get really thick. So, I grabbed a bottle of dedicated snow foam concentrate.

The attachment came with its own plastic bottle, maybe about a liter or so. I unscrewed that from the nozzle head. The soap bottle said to mix it, like, 1 part soap to 10 parts water or something? Honestly, I just poured maybe two inches of the thick soap concentrate into the bottle. Then I filled the rest up with warm water from the tap, leaving a little space at the top. Gave it a gentle swirl, didn't shake it like crazy, then screwed the bottle firmly back onto the brass nozzle head.

Now for the fun part. There are usually a couple of adjustments on these things. Mine has a knob on top, which I figured controls how much soap mixture gets pulled through – basically controlling foam thickness. Then the actual nozzle end twists, changing the spray pattern from a narrow stream to a wide fan, like maybe 90 degrees.

I twisted the end nozzle to the widest fan setting. And I turned the top knob towards the '+' sign, guessing that meant more soap for thicker foam. Hooked up the water, turned on the pressure washer unit.

Took aim at the car (which was pretty dirty, good test), held my breath for a second, and squeezed the trigger on the pressure washer gun. And yeah, it worked! Out came this stream of pretty thick, white foam. It wasn't quite that crazy shaving-cream thick you sometimes see in ads right away, so I fiddled with the top knob a bit more, turning it back and forth until the foam looked richer. The wide fan setting covered the car panels pretty quick.

I coated the whole car, starting from the bottom panels and working my way up, overlapping the passes. The foam clung really well, didn't just run straight off. Left it to sit there for a good 5, maybe 7 minutes. You could actually see some of the dirt starting to loosen and drip down with the foam.

After letting it dwell, it was time to rinse. This bit's important: you need to take the foam cannon off the wand first. Released the quick connect, swapped it back to my regular rinse nozzle (I like using the green or white one, wider angle). Then, starting from the roof and working down, I pressure washed all the foam off thoroughly.

The result? Well, the car was definitely much cleaner. A lot of the loose dirt, dust, and grime was gone. But, it wasn't magically spotless. You could still see a thin film of road dirt bonded to the paint. So, it's not a completely touchless wash, at least not for how dirty my car gets. I still needed to go over it with a wash mitt and bucket afterwards to get it properly clean.

But, what it did do was make that hand-washing part much easier and probably safer for the paint, since most of the heavy grit was already removed by the foam and rinse. Felt like a good pre-wash step. Plus, gotta admit, covering the car in foam is kinda satisfying. I'll definitely keep using it as the first step in my wash routine now.