Gilmour touchless wash experiment

Ok, so I wanted to get a feel for the best way to use my gilmour and to try and quantify what it can do. I know they're not as well regarded as foam lances on a pressure washer but as I don't have a PW I figured that I'd give it a go. I've never been one to get too worried about snow foaming but with the winter approaching I thought I'd pick one up to see what it can achieve.

With a warm (ha!), dry today ... and serious backache making a normal 2BM wash impossible I figured it was a perfect time to try this out. I actually went and nabbed my dad's old Kew PW to use in the experiment. The car is about as dirty as it ever gets, this was last given a big going over in October and finished with 2 layers of FK1000. Since then its had 3-4 washes but nothing since 2 weeks before christmas, no actual use over the break, and then another 2 week's worth of use in the snow since I went back to the office. So, here's the car all dirty (1999 Integra Type-R unmolested and original).











I then loaded up 100ml of VP neutral snow foam topped to 1l with warm water and gilmoured just the bottom half of both sides of the car passing probably 3 times to get enough foam on to feel like it was doing anything.





These photos were taken probably 30s - 1 minute after foaming, I then probably waited another minute or so setting up equipment before rinsing off. I chose to rinse the rear-ward half of each panel with my mains pressure hose and a trigger gun set to jet, the front half of each panel was rinsed with the PW. With everything rinsed off I went for a drive to dry off the water without touching the car (no way I'm going to use a towel without a proper touch wash).

The results











Frankly I'm underwhelmed The driver's side cleaned images actually look better in this photo that the car does in real life possibly because they were still wet in the clean looking areas, the rear quarter and passenger side doors are a more accurate reflection of the change ... which frankly looks to me like no wash at all. This is not meant to be a snub or criticism of any of the tech I've used just a statement of findings. I've previously tried double strength foam but didn't find any major improvement at the time. Normally, of course, I'd foam the full car so maybe there'd be greater foaming over these panels as the foam from the room\windows drains down ... but that was the point of the test. I had expected to see a set of 4 squares on each panel, poorest being hose wash without foam, best being PW with foam, and the other 2 however they ended up ... in the end I can probably make out a faint difference between the PW and hose sides of some panels but not the plane vs foam sections.

Thoughts, suggestions, observations?
I planned on repeating with a touch of APC or Megs gold glass in the bottle but ran out of time. I'd love to see the results of other's work with the gilmour plus maybe a repeat of my test with a foam lance rather than a gilmour. For me this hasn't turned out to be the result I'd hoped for, many say that it helps loosen up the dirt which I'd hoped to see reflected in the PW rinse areas but it doesn't seem to tally up.