New vs. Old Bilt Hamber Touch Less

Summary: Quick test of the 2024 vs 2022 revision of Bilt Hamber Touch less

First off, this is just a little fun quick test, not an in-depth review. Still, with the new Touchless on its way and many people being excited about it, I think it’s time to do this. A comparison at lower dilutions will follow later.

The test car (my own car) was washed the last time a week ago and did 600 km (about 370 mi) between these washes through cold wintery German countryside.

Testing Conditions

For this test the same kind of Pump Sprayer (a Marolex 1.5L) with the same nozzle was used for both to keep results as consistent as possible. Dwell time was 5 minutes to make sure any advantage in cleaning power from longer dwell time was mostly negated. 

After the rinse at three points (lower front door, lower rear bumper, rear hatch) cotton make up pads where used to take samples of remaining dirt – the dirt that would be in your wash mitt.

Observations

• TL new foams a little even with a pump sprayer indicating much better foaming abilities
• Old TL is much better at building a flat layer of cleaner on the surface, eliminating beading and sheeting for the duration of its dwell whereas new TL still beads a bit and runs off much quicker
• New TL rinses easier than old TL 
• Beading is fully there after a quick rinse with new TL, where with old TL it took a second to break the layer of cleaner
• Subjectively new TL smells worse, but it’s not offensive in any way, just more intensive

Here are the Pictures of the cotton swabs, the Yellow nozzle indicating new TL:

Front door, Left is new TL, right is old TL

Bottom part of the rear bumper, left is new TL, right is old TL, ignore the little specks of dirt

Rear hatch, left is new TL, right is old

As you can see it’s rather close in the pictures, though in real life I would say new TL has a slight advantage. This was also noticeable in the dirt level of the mitt. The mitts used on the new TL side were slightly cleaner. 

I have to say that while old TL feels better to me due to how nicely it builds this sheet of cleaner, the new TL seems to clean slightly better. Neither did produce any browning on tires, giving a good first indication for them being safe on rubber.

New Touch Less has a pH of about 10.5 in concentrate while old TL had about 12. How that will result in cleaning power on things that greatly benefit from stronger alkalinity like insects will be seen in the summer, when I will do a repeat of this test for sure.

Also a test at the lowest end of concentration – 0.5% and 2% respectively – will be done in the future. 

Conclusions

If you have old Touchless, use it up before buying new. If you have to buy new, the new Touchless is still the thing to buy from what I could gather from this little quick test.