Detailing World Forum banner

Buckets & Grit Guards

6K views 20 replies 17 participants last post by  Mcpx 
#1 ·
Hi Folks

Looking for some advice from you, I am looking to get a couple of decent buckets with grit guards and wondered if anyone had tried the poor boys one as local shop has them on offer?. Or if not what do you recommend?.

I don't fancy a B & Q cheap version as looking for something that will last.
 
#11 ·
Wash buckets

As far as I can see any bucket will do although people seem to be brainwashed into thinking you need a 'special' bucket with a sticker on advertising a company.
A simple W and R written with a black felt tip sorts them out for me and I never use a grit guard. I never go anywhere near the bottom of the bucket so what is a grit guard achieving apart from costing you money.
PS the three cars in the household are all swirl free before somebody mentions it!!!😄😄
 
#13 ·
Halfords had the Megs buckets recently for a really good price, think it was sub tenner. Apart from the quid builders bucket B&Q also do a bigger bucket, grey with orange handle, that are really good for about £6, look in cleaning aisles with the mops. Then there are the plasterers buckets, good and strong but actually too big imo, yes they are deep enough not to need grit guards but with 30 litres of water in them, you don’t want to be carrying them around.

I have very nice Chemical Guys buckets thank you, and yes they were a tenner each and yes they do exactly the same thing as the £1 buckets do.
 
#16 · (Edited)
Halfords had the Megs buckets recently for a really good price, think it was sub tenner. Apart from the quid builders bucket B&Q also do a bigger bucket, grey with orange handle, that are really good for about £6, look in cleaning aisles with the mops. Then there are the plasterers buckets, good and strong but actually too big imo, yes they are deep enough not to need grit guards but with 30 litres of water in them, you don't want to be carrying them around.

I have very nice Chemical Guys buckets thank you, and yes they were a tenner each and yes they do exactly the same thing as the £1 buckets do.
Look on euro car parts for the megs buckets.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro
Better still take the item number from ECP and drop it into carparts4less. I ordered two megs buckets yesterday for £13.60 delivered

I've used a deep plasterers bucket through winter, great for the bigger volume but it comes with the weight penalty, and size for storage
 
#14 ·
I don't believe in grit guards, they don't magically stop the crud at the bottom being displaced and floating back up as you dunk whatever it is you use in the water.
Snake oil!

I bought two large meguiars buckets from halfords, £7 each and then a trade discount on top of that as they were far cheaper than larger buckets on ebay. Used to use a plasterers bucket for years but always ran out of water in it.
 
#21 ·
The grit guard argument has been raging for ever, they are either as important as breathing or as much use as a one legged man in an **** kicking contest, depending on who you ask.

So for my 2p, no they are not essential, good technique is more important. You can have a good wash technique and do without but you can also very easily use them with bad technique and get a bad result. Don’t want to turn this into the best wash technique debate but if you are taking a significant amount of dirt off the car with your wash media then it has to go somewhere, preferably not back on the car.

Do they stop grit from coming back up into the water? Yes. And no. The normal design (grit guard and Scratch Shield type) does trap larger particles, the cyclone design maybe smaller ones too, but the normal tiny bits that comprise most of the dirt on a car, no they don’t. The main problem is that in order to trap particles, those particles first have to sink to the bottom of the water, smaller particles either float around and never get trapped in the first place, or are simply sucked back up into the higher part of the bucket when the water is disturbed.

There was a video on’t tube that I can’t find that demonstrated the behaviour of particles in water when used with a grit guard. Although there was a difference, the grit guard did not keep all the particles trapped when the water was agitated. Stacking two gg on top of each other did make a dramatic difference, but it was still not 100% perfect.

So do I use them? Yes, partly because I already have them so why not, but mainly because when I empty out the buckets yes the water is dirty, meaning there is dirt in the water, but there is also dirt under the grit guard, which proves that they do catch some dirt, not all, but some, and every little helps.

So no, not essential, and they are definitely not as effective as the manufacturers would have you believe, but they are certainly not snake oil.
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top