# DW Review - Britemax Grime Out



## Brian1612 (Apr 5, 2015)

*Introduction*

So following on from the Solution Finish review I thought I would do a little write up on the Grime Out APC provided by Britemax Direct in the trim restoration kit they provided. Having used it to clean up the exterior plastics, it was so impressive I felt it deserved a stand-alone review.

For further info on any of these items, see http://www.britemax-direct.co.uk/PBS....asp?PBMInit=1.

*The Product*

A very generous full size 709ml (24 Oz) bottle of Grime Out was provided by Matt at Britemax-direct.



It came in a nice clear plastic bottle with the usual bold Britemax branding with spray nozzle. It was nicely presented with the bright orange solution catching the eye in contrast with the darker labelling. As per typical fashion, the spray nozzle was screwed off for a good sniff. WOW… This smells so good. I think I spent minimum a minute or two just smelling this, even treated the parents to a sniff of it. I have used a few APCs but none have ever smelled this good with its cherry/marzipan aroma.

The description of the product from Britemax is as follows:

"Grime Out very quickly dissolves brake dust, engine grease, embedded dirt in rubber, bugs, road tar, salt spray and hard water spots on glass. Performs where traditional cleaners fail, turns tyres black and white walls and raised lettering bright white. Excellent for removing show scuffs from door panels and wax residue from rubber and plastic trim. Excellent wash additive for extremely dirty vehicles. Does not contain acids or heavy solvents and is fully biodegradable.

FEATURES LIST

Removes brake dust
Cleans dirty upholstery
Cleans engine grease
Lifts carpet stains
Removes embedded dirt
Use on rubber & plastic
Brightens white lettering
Cleans bugs, tar & salt"

Well it certainly has plenty of uses and again, a good description much like the Solution Finish. Pretty much covers the lot and I will try using it in a variety of ways/dilutions to really put this degreaser/APC through its paces.

*The Method*

So onto the instructions, first things first:

"How to use - Spray onto desired surface to be cleaned. Allow to stand for 2-3 minutes. If grease or brake dust is heavy, agitate with a soft bristle brush. Rinse thoroughly with water. Totally safe to use on chrome, stainless steel, coated & painted wheels. Not to be used on bare uncoated aluminium unless you plan to polish afterwards."

"Dilutions
Degreaser Full strength
Wheel cleaner Full strength to 50% water
Wax Stripper Full strength to 50% water
Interior Cleaner 60% - 80% water"

Again, some nice clear and informative information on how to use this product with simple dilution rates for every application use, leaving the user no doubt about how to use Grime out. The test cars here are both my own and sisters car with interior cleaning, plastic trim inside and out, tyre side walls, alloy wheels and my exhaust tips being the uses here.

Tyres

So the first test of Grime Out was on the tyre side walls. This would be in comparison to my usual APC at a 1:5 dilution rate, maybe not fair but it was purely to judge how good it was as provided from Britemax.



Never had any issues with my usual APC until now. Didn't quite expect the results I achieved here. Sprayed on neat, it sat on the tyres well and the spray was of a nice quality, misting a nice even coat over the tyre.



This was allowed to sit on the tyre for 30 seconds before being agitated with a soft bristle scrubbing brush. The results were clear to see, never quite had as much dirt lifted from the tyres and you could see this from how brown the foam sitting on the tyre was, also equally pleased that it foamed up much better than my usual APC. I usually need to add a little shampoo into my usual APC bottle to get any foaming action from it.



I actually did this twice to show how well it cleaned the tyres and on the second application you could clearly see the foam wasn't nearly as dark showing the cleaning power of Grime Out after 1 use.





Next tyre and a different test method here. I decided the tyre would treated to two treatments and agitated in the same way as before but with my usual 1:5 APC mixture to begin with.





You can see it lifted nowhere near as much dirt from the tyre side wall as the Grime Out.





Having twice scrubbed this tyre with my usual APC, I decided it would be good idea to give it a 3rd treatment with the Grime Out to see if it cleaned the tyres any more as they looked quite clean to me. As you can see from the photo, the foam shows it lifted further muck from the tyres and the foam was darker than the previous two attempts surprisingly.



I have come to realise the 1:5 dilution stated by the manufacturer of my usual APC isn't nearly strong enough to properly clean tyres and must be upped to get anywhere near the same cleaning performance the Grime Out has.



Alloys

While doing the Solution Finish review, I thought I would mix up a 1:1 ratio of Grime Out/water as stated by Brite-Max and see how it performs as a wheel cleaner. It also gave me the opportunity to test the dilution ratio on the tyres and compare to the previous neat tyre test. So 250ml of Grime Out to 250ml of water, mixed up in a spray bottle and some photos taken of the dirt on the tyre/alloy wheel.





This was over a month worth of dirt that has accumulated on the tyre and alloy so a tough challenge for the now diluted Grime Out. With my mixture, the tyre side wall was firstly sprayed down, allowed to dwell for 30 seconds and agitated like before.



Performance certainly didn't appear to be reduced from the dilution and I was again impressed by the cleaning power. Taking a mental note to next try 1:2, I plan to further dilute it until I find the point where if stops being as effective but at 1:1 it is every bit as good as neat on this evidence. This was allowed to dwell while I sprayed the alloy wheel down with the mix. Like before, this was allowed to dwell for 30 seconds before I agitated it with my wheel brush.



Similar to when used on the tyres, this foamed up well upon agitation and I really do like this property. Again my typical Wheel cleaner usually has a little shampoo mixed into it to help with foaming. Grime Out needs no such help in this department. The wheel was then rinsed down and left behind was a very clean alloy, removing just about everything on the alloy bar 1 or 2 fallout spots.



Again, very impressed with the end results and the tyre was also left spotless.



At 1:1 it worked very well but it isn't exactly economical. I can't help but think that as a maintenance wash wheel cleaner and not a deep cleaner, a dilution of 1:2-1:4 would likely be more than enough to clean the wheels. It is something I will be testing out in the future for sure as it would be great to have 1 product in Grime Out that can replace my usual specific to the job products.

Engine Bay

The engine bay was looking a little grubby as it hadn't been touched since I got the car giving me the perfect opportunity to trying out Grime Out under the bonnet. As you can see from the photos there was a thin film of dirt starting to form on the engine cover etc.



I decided I would tackle this neat, likely not dirty enough to really be required but as a degreaser it is designed to be used neat in this type of application. An even coat was sprayed over the plastics under the engine bay.



This was allowed to dwell for two minutes before being agitated with a soft bristle detailing brush, as per its other uses, the Grime Out foamed up nicely here and lifted the dirt effortlessly.





This was then washed away with a kettle of water as I am too keen in using a hose/pressure washer under my engine bay. It was dried with a few old mf cloths and left a perfectly clean engine bay. I was very impressed with the level of cleaning power and don't think there was any need to dress the engine bay plastics after this (I did though afterwards to test out another product I have had sitting for a while, will be under another review).



Exhaust Tips

Fairly basic test here. Decided on using it neat on both my own Stainless steel exhaust tips, as well as my dad's chrome finish exhaust tips. As you can see from the photos, both cars exhaust tips were filthy with general grime and muck from the winter conditions.





A few sprays were applied from above and below the tips and allowed to dwell for 2 minutes. As you can see from the photo this actually broke down a lot of the dirt and it simply fell off the tips.





The tips were then wiped down with an old mf rag before being hosed with a little water and wiped dry again, leaving behind substantially cleaner tips.





By no means a replacement for metal polish & 0000 fine steel wool but for quicker cleaning on a typical maintenance wash, this worked well and removed all of the usual muck you would pick up driving around with ease.

Interior

So to test the cleaning power on interior fabrics, my mats from my Abarth were removed and would be the subject of this test. Shamefully, these haven't been hoovered/cleaned since I got the car 5 months ago, more so when you see just how nice these mats are with the Abarth branded stainless steel screw fitments and leather section. To test Grime Out on interior plastics, one side of my car sills which were filthy from someone standing on them to fit vinyl stripes on my car roof would be cleaned. So here was the mess my 1:4 dilution of Grime Out had to deal with.





So to begin with the car mats were given the usual hoover to remove most of the larger dirt particles.



This left the mats much cleaner but you could see there was still plenty of dirt engrained into the fabric as well as the leather. The mats were both given an even spray coverage, across both leather and fabric and was allowed to dwell for 1 minute before being given a good scrub with a hard bristle interior brush (a soft bristle detailing brush for the leather).



This did foam up a little although the photo doesn't show it, it didn't dwell more than a few seconds after each pass of the brush so hard to get a photo. This was then wiped down thoroughly with an old but clean MF cloth, leaving some much cleaner car mats and a much dirtier MF cloth.





To finish off the mats, the leather was given a final wipe down with another dry MF cloth and the mats were sprayed with some air freshener, leaving me a much cleaner and fresher set of mats to go back in my little pocket rocket.



So onto the plastic sill now, as seen on the previous photo it really was in a shocking state. It is great getting work carried out on your car but the dirt left behind by the person usually isn't very nice. Anyway, with my handy 1:4 mixture of Grime out, a few sprays were applied to the plastic trim.



A buff down with an old mf left the trim/sill looking much cleaner with a nice satin finish. I was impressed with how easily this mix shifted the dirt, 1 or 2 swipes was all I needed to lift the dirt straight off the plastic.





*Price*

Prices as per the Britemax-direct website http://www.britemax-direct.co.uk/PBS....asp?PBMInit=1 for this 24oz (709 ml) bottle it is £10.99 which is a fairly decent price compared to other APCs. Better yet a US gallon (3.78 litres) can be picked up for £22.99, although for similar sort of prices 5L of other APC type products can be picked up, making the larger gallon bottle a bit more expensive than the norm. I would suggest making an effort to have these supplied in 5L form at the same price to make Grime Out as cost effective as other APCs.

*Would I use it again?*

This isn't a resounding yes when the price comes into consideration but, when you consider the performance and uses of Grime Out, I am thinking of picking up a Gallon bottle of this stuff.

*Conclusion*

You can pick up APCs for the same sort of price but they come in 5L bottles compared to the 3.5L bottle of Grime Out. For me what saves the product is just how effective it is at cleaning in several different scenario's inside and out of the car. You could in theory do away with your wheel cleaner any other products you use for cleaning the interior/engine may. The dilution rates don't look as good when compared to other APCs but having tried some of these other brands, I believe the dilution rates claimed, at least for tyre cleaning are nonsense. They are not nearly strong enough at 1:10 or 1:5 to clean the tyre properly, which makes you question the claimed dilutions for other uses around the car. Personally I doubt they are quite as effective as Grime Out at the same dilution rate for cleaning power.

Due to the fact this smells so much better than any other APC I have tried, I would much rather use this in the interior of my car. Another great feature with this is how nice the foaming action is when agitated compared to the competition. It certainly looks to lift as much dirt off my tyres diluted 1:1 as other products have neat so I think Grime Out may be more effective when diluted in comparison. It may be more expensive but it is a more effective and nicer smelling APC than the competition I have tried, meaning I would consider this as a replacement for my current APC and wheel cleaner despite the similar price for 1.5L less.


_DW has followed the Manufacturer's Instructions and accepts no responsibility to any circumstances arising from any member using these products or following this test._


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