The P&S Wide Open All Terrain Wash is from their Off Road line, so as you would expect it is designed to clean off road vehicles. This means it needs to be aggressive enough to remove the high levels of contamination. However, being a professional detailing product, it needs to be safe on paint and pH balanced as well.
Because of this it initially may give the wrong impression to consumers. This shampoo is not supposed to be the strongest level of cleaning in your arsenal and able to remove extremely tough contamination with ease. It is designed to be the strongest shampoo possible while staying safe to use on all surfaces. Not an easy balance to achieve as you are limited by chemistry and the pH balanced outcome they wanted to achieve. Whether the balance chosen was the right one is up to us as consumers to decide.
It suds up very well and is very slick, making the cleaning process very easy. It also does a good job of cleaning and is better when compared to standard shampoos. It also works very well if you add to a bucket with your wheel cleaning tools to help easily break down the surface contamination and help keep your brushes clean so they can focus on pulling off new dirt from the wheels.
However, this product is on the expensive side. Looking at the larger size of other products as a comparison (assuming 5 gallons of water)
- 128oz of P&S Wide Open – $0.31/oz
- 1oz per gallon – $1.55/wash
- 128oz of P&S Pearl Auto Shampoo – $0.14/oz
- 1oz per gallon – $0.7/wash
- 5L of Gtechniq G Wash – $0.02/mL | $0.56/oz
- 40mL (heavy dirt) per bucket – $0.8/wash
Unfortunately, price is a huge factor in comparing products and especially when recommending products to someone. While the initial purchase isn’t too high, the high dilution ratio makes the cost of use very high. Then, justifying if the product is that much better than the lower cost alternative. I like the P&S Wide Open Shampoo as a product, unfortunately, the market for a good shampoo is highly competitive with a ton of good options at great prices.