Optimum No Rinse Wash and Shine Version 5 - ONR Rinseless Car Wash Soap for Auto Detailing, Use On Paint, Ceramic Coatings, Glass, Interior (1 Gallon)

I’ll admit—I was skeptical of this at first. A rinseless wash sounded like a recipe for swirl marks, especially on darker paint. But I’m very particular about how my vehicles are cared for, and after doing a deep dive into proper technique (and seeing how many serious detailers rely on this), I decided it was time to try it for myself. I detail my own vehicles whenever possible—most recently my black, new-to-me 2019 Sequoia—because I’ve seen firsthand what automatic car washes can do to paint. I’m also considering starting a mobile detailing business, so learning efficient, paint-safe systems like this really matters to me. Used correctly, this product is impressive. The solution is extremely slick, and with quality microfiber towels and light pressure, dirt lifts away far more easily than you’d expect. The key is good technique—working top to bottom, using clean towels frequently, and never scrubbing. When done that way, I’ve had zero issues with scratching or hazing, even on black paint where flaws show instantly. I also love how versatile this is. It works beautifully as: a true rinseless wash a pre-soak for lightly dirty panels a quick detailer at higher dilution Not needing a hose is a huge bonus—especially for winter, water restrictions, or quick maintenance washes. It also uses very little water, which I appreciate. Another standout is how clean the finish looks afterward. The paint feels smooth, looks glossy, and dries without residue when you don’t overdo the product. Less really is more here. This isn’t a shortcut product—it rewards care and attention—but for anyone serious about maintaining paint safely at home, this absolutely earns a permanent spot in my detailing supplies. It’s efficient, economical, and surprisingly satisfying to use once you trust the process.

Update: When your car is only lightly dirty (nowhere near the level of filth in my photos), I highly recommend using a garden pump sprayer to get the job done. I use the Chapin 2 gallon sprayer (from Menards or any home improvement store) filled with regular water and 4.5 capfuls of ONR. I used a few microfiber towels to clean the car. I dried it with the Aquis waffle weave towel, and used Chemical Guys' new Blazin' Banana Spray Wax to finish it off. You can wipe down your car very quickly with this method, but the Chapin sprayer really shines when used to clean wheels and tires. I wanted something that could rinse the Super Clean off the tires easily, because spraying them with a spray bottle is far too tedious/time consuming. I used about 1.5 gallons for the entire wash. ONR is a great product for maintaining a nice finish in winter, but I can't wait to try mixing it with a normal car soap. I will update my review again when the weather's nice enough to bring out the hose! --------- Sure, automatic car washes exist. They're great for getting salt off the undercarriage. But nothing beats the satisfaction of making your car shine in the comfort of your own garage, at least in my opinion. I was skeptical about ONR for the longest, but after letting my car go unwashed for over a month, it was time to go ahead and try it out. I wrote out my method and additional products used, but I think the before and after pictures speak for themselves. I pre-soaked one side of the car at a time, mixing 32oz of distilled water and 4 capfuls (2oz) of ONR in a spray bottle. I used two buckets and a handful of microfiber towels to get the job done. The wash bucket had 3 gallons of hot water mixed with 3 capfuls (1.5oz) of ONR. The rinse bucket had about 3.5 gallons of hot water with nothing added. After letting the pre-soak dwell for a couple of minutes, I started from the top and worked my way down to the dirtiest parts. Weeks worth of heavy salt, snow and mud simply glided off with very light pressure. No scrubbing was ever needed, and that's what really shocked me about this product. It made the water so unbelievably slick, I no longer had fears of scratching the mess out of my paint. I finished the body within an hour of very careful cleaning. I dried each panel with the Aquis waffle weave towel (yes, it's marketed towards hair use, but it does an amazing job of drying the car!) There was no residue left behind, the paint looked and felt clean. I used the ONR pre-soak spray on my wheels, and it did a good job with the use of a wet microfiber towel. For the tires, I used Super Clean degreaser full strength with a wet firm-bristle brush. I recommend the Tuf Shine brush, it's very comfortable in the hand and scrubs tires well. I finished up with Griots Spray-on Wax and Meguiar's Dub Tire Shine. Overall I'm very impressed with ONR and will definitely keep using it!

I use this exclusively as a quick detailer -- I've not once used it for its primary purpose of being a rinseless car wash, so I can't comment on that. As a quick detailer, it's great, and much more economical than buying a new bottle of quick detailer when you run out (especially if you go through a bottle a month, or even more frequently!) Buy yourself some microfiber towels, a misting spray bottle (or repurpose an old quick detailer bottle,) and you're off to the races. Dilute 1:5 with water for quick detailing. Use distilled water for absolute best results, but it's not a dealbreaker if you don't. I use water from my Brita pitcher and call it a day. I enjoy great results on paint, wheels, and brake calipers. Wipes away pesky stuff like dried bugs, tree sap, and brake dust with ease. Leaves the surface light and smooth. Takes a bit of experimenting to spray the right amount without getting streaky (a light, wide mist is best for me,) and comes up better the more dry your towel is. Larger vehicles may require 2 or 3 microfiber towels as they get saturated with the product. The only thing I think it's missing from being a true quick detailer is wax content, which is solved by adding a bit of your favorite liquid wax. It does provide a decent clean shine without, but not quite a just-waxed (or just-quick-detailed) shine. What I do: using a 12oz spray bottle and a 30mL syringe, I add 60mL (about 2oz) of this product, 5mL (about 0.16oz) of liquid wax, and then top the bottle off with water. Shake well. Oh, and it smells pretty great, too!

Sick of Automatic Car Washes Taking Over Your Town? Try This Instead! Are automatic car washes popping up all over town like they’re the latest TikTok investment craze? Yeah, apparently it’s the hottest “easy money” hustle for investors scrolling through their For You page. But let’s be honest — behind those ugly buildings with their spinny brushes and giant flashy signs is a whole lot of water wasted and eyesores cluttering up the neighborhood. If you’re ready to fight back against the Great Car Wash Invasion, I’ve got just the thing: this waterless car wash. Okay, so it’s not *completely* waterless — you mix a tiny splash with a couple of gallons of water, then wipe it on and dry it off with a microfiber cloth. One bucket, a clean sponge, & a microfiber drying towel is all you need. Now here’s where it gets wild — this stuff feels downright **futuristic**. It feels like some kind of sci-fi magic potion. Every swipe with the sponge is like a mini miracle — you can literally *feel* it lifting dirt off your car, like your sponge suddenly grew ninja powers. It’s a weirdly satisfying sensation that you just have to experience to believe. Seriously, it’s like your car is getting a spa day from the future. And, for the price? I went to the website to see if they’re hiring. A scrubbing monkey could sell this product for a lot more! **Why this waterless wash is the real MVP:** - **Water Saver Extraordinaire:** Way less water than those noisy automatic car washes. - **Peace and Quiet:** No loud brushes or annoying beeps ruining your vibe. - **No Waiting, No Weird Small Talk:** Clean your car whenever you want, no lines required. No declining the “unlimited packages” they offer. - **Magic Sponge Powers:** That satisfying “lifting dirt” feeling that makes cleaning kinda fun. - **No Hose, No Fuss:** Without a hose running, washing your car actually feels more like fun than a chore. Plus, you can break it up — I even managed to clean my whole car during commercial breaks of the game. So forget the TikTok hype and the car wash takeover — take control, clean your car your way, and keep your town looking less like a car wash theme park. Your car (and your town) will thank you. - The Suburbs of Atlanta.

Oh, heavens!!!! I have wanted to try this stuff for some time because nearly EVERY detailer I follow on YouTube has been singing its praises for this stuff. I finally decided to try it with the smaller bottle first before I splurge on the gallon size. Well, my trepidation was not warranted - this stuff is incredible! It cleans your car beautifully! It cleans the stainless steel appliances in my kitchen better than anything I have ever used previously! Use it on the interior of your car and it takes all the crud off and leaves a nice, dust free surface to apply protectant to. And the smell is definitely addicting. Okay, so why only four stars after all this? I have found that while it does clean glass pretty well, it is not streak free as I have been led to believe. I find that I have to go over an area with another microfiber to get all of the product off the glass. I mixed it according to what the manufacturer recommended for this application, just scaled down. Optimum recommends mixing this 6oz to a gallon of water for glass and I was using a 32oz (1quart) spray bottle, so I mixed it to 1.5oz to the spray bottle. (6oz divided by 4 quarts, or 1 gallon, gives you 1.5oz) But that mixture is pretty universal for most tasks except cleaning the exterior of your car. That is 2oz to a gallon of water to do that. But overall, yeah, I really like this stuff and will be buying the gallon container next time. It has become a staple in my car care routine now in a really short time!

Background I'm 34 years old. From the age of 12 until just 6 months ago, I thought that the "Right Way" to wash a car was the way my Dad taught me: on a nice day, maybe 3 or 4 times a year, always in the sun, take a bucket, an old sponge, and a bottle of car wash that will generally last for ever, or until you move house and forget which box its in. Lazily spray the car with water from a hose. Then cover the whole thing with lovely soapy sudsy water. Spray the car again with water to get the suds off. Make a token effort to dry it using a nasty old piece of Chamois, then go for a fast drive around the neighborhood to finish it off. The water spots and streaks were just a normal part of car ownership, and anyone that spent all weekend getting their car shiny was just obsessed. Revelation Well, all that changed when I bought my first NEW car. I suddenly gave a damn about the paintwork. I did not like the streaks. I did not like the swirls. I decided to see whats changed in the world of car washing since my Dad learned the art - some 50 years ago. I spent many days in the office reading up on the Two Bucket Method, the Importance of a Good Sponge (actually called a Wash Medium), and finally I heard about ONR (Optimum No Rinse) Can it be true? The ONR are useless at marketing themselves. They have no facebook page, they have no twitter account, and no hot models draping themselves over mustang hoods. Only a few people on a few car detailing forums seem to speak out in favor, most normal people are of the opinion: "hmm, sounds like it might scratch the paint" or "seems like it leaves a film behind" or the more general "Even though I don't have any first-hand experience, my intuition provides many great excuses why I should not leave my comfort zone". The benefits of being able to wash a car in my garage in under half an hour, not wait for a dry, warm day, not soak myself to the skin and not have to rush to dry every bit of the car before the hot sun baked the suds into the paint... the benefits seemed worth the risk. How it works: They don't have a facebook page, but they do know an awful lot about polymers. specifically with regard to making polymer solutions that can trap dirt with magical chemical hands and release that dirt into a bucket of water. I don't really know what a polymer is... "a chain of molecules" is what I got from Wikipedia. That doesn't really help, to be honest. But you know how soap gets dirt off your hands? Well, its like that. Dirt moves from the car to the cloth, then from the cloth to the bucket. Does it every time. And when you dry the car, its totally clean. There's no filmy residue at all, really none at all. I always give the car a blast of wax after anyway, which is a totally filmy residue. so I'm unsure why people don't like a filmy residue. But it doesn't leave one. Relax on that count. The dirt in cloth does not scratch the paint. It simply doesn't. Even if your brain cannot imagine that scenario, its still true. ONR can be a clay lubricant as well as a wash, so its slippery stuff. If dirt is still trapped in your cloth, the lubricant means it doesn't dig into your paint and scratch it. Again, hazy on the details, don't really know how it works, but it just does. Caveats: If the car has actual mud on its panel, blast it off first with a hose. If there's accumulated black crud on the panels, you may need to look at some other way to wash your car. This stuff will remove normal daily crime, but if you drive through mud holes, you're on your own. Also, importantly, if you have no problem with rinsing your car off - if you live in a warm place with ample drainage, where the sun won't prematurely dry your car (leaving ugly water spots) in the summer, and the cold air won't freeze it in winter - and if you have time on your hands - in all these cases you probably don't need ONR. That doesn't mean you shouldn't try it, but you're not going to get the maximum benefit from it. One more thing: if you're the sort of person to believe what your Dad taught you no matter what, you also probably won't like ONR. You probably won't buy it anyway. You're probably reading this thinking that I'm being paid to write it. Dude, companies who want marketing don't pay people for reviews on amazon, they hire hot chicks to lie on Mustang hoods and put the resulting pictures in car magazines. So no, I am not being paid, I'm just bored on a Sunday afternoon. I can't be bothered to wash my car. And finally, I know it doesn't quite "feel" right when you don't SEE a bunch of foam on your car, and SEE it getting blasted off with water. I sometimes feel like I'm cheating. I sometimes wonder if I should give it an occasional "proper" wash. But then I think that once we're in the world of molecular chemicals, the human brain and associated "feely bits" are not a very good judge of whats right and wrong. So I trust the scientists, and it never fails to impress me. Really, if you think you have a good reason why ONR doesn't work, I'm sitting here now saying you're wrong. How's it feel to be wrong? Look in the mirror. Look back at the screen. That person you just saw was wrong. How to do it: You mix up a bucket of ONR, and a second bucket of plain water (I recommend tepid temp). You take your microfiber cloth (you should have a whole stack of them by now), dip it in the ONR bucket, squeeze it out so its wettish / damp, then wipe it over a panel or two. While you're wiping, the polymers are clinging to dirt (and still clinging to the cloth). Now, dunk the cloth in the plain water. Agitate. Squeeze. Agitate again. The polymers have now released their dirt into the bucket. Leave your cloth in the clean bucket. Take another microfiber cloth, a dry one, and use it to dry off the panels that you just washed. Keep drying until it looks nice and shiny. Repeat that until you have done the whole car. It takes my about 25 minutes to do my Sienna. I would recommend getting the small 8 ounce bottle to start with. Your first wash will seem weird, but after that order the gallon bottle. Then, one day in a few months time when you're bored on a Sunday afternoon with your whole family napping, take the time to write a review on amazon. and ONR will send you a check. (only joking)

I put 2 caps in a rubbit foam sprayer and this thing eats the salt off my car. The edgeless towels wipe away dirt and leave an amazing shine. I do hit the windows with a dedicated window cleaner and wheels with pressure washer but this works on wheels too. Overall happy with this because temps have been cold under 30 degrees Fahrenheit

I can tell you without a doubt that I am one of the biggest skeptics you'll ever meet and when I saw rinseless car wash in a forum for the first time I thought it had to be total bull. I am totally anal about my car finish and wouldn't be caught dead with my 13 WRX at an automatic car wash. There was just no way could I believe that you could wash a dry dirty car without scratching the paint without a proper rinse before and after. However after reading so many positive reviews and so few negative in blogs and product reviews and watching a couple of you tube videos, I figured it had to be worth trying. I have an apartment I rent and beach house I own, both with limited access areas and water to wash vehicles, so this would be worth it's weight in gold to me. I tested it out on my g/f's 2009 BMW first, it was filthy with dirt and some traces of salt from driving in the rain. I used a 2 bucket system, one rinse bucket and one wash bucket with 2 gallons of water to 1 oz of product as instructed. I used a decent microfiber mitt, and made sure I used light pressure and side to side movements and rinsed out the mitt thoroughly in between small areas once the mitt looked dirty. I did about 1/6 of the car at a time, drying each section I washed with a Cobra Waffle Towel, which worked wonderfully I might add, and I dried two cars with one towel before the end of the day and only wrung it out a few times. My drying towel stayed pretty clean through the process other than a few small areas due to carelessness on my part. Also the rise bucket was almost black with filth when I was done the body, and the wash bucket was very clean with only a few particles in it. Showing that the wash was doing it's job in cleaning and protecting the clear coat. The wheels were a real PITA to be honest, and they took more time than the rest of the car. BUT, they did turn out really sparkling clean once I got a system down. My technique with wheels was to use an old rag to first wipe off any loose residue on the tires and wheel wells. Next I dipped a soft wheel brush in solution to soak the wheel, tire and well, rinsing the brush in between each application. Next I would the use three small towels, to clean. One to clean the outside of the wheels, one for the inside of the wheel and the last for the the tire and wheel wells. I then used 2 old microfiber towels to dry, one for the outside wheel, and the other to dry the inside wheel, tire and wheel well. This worked well as it ensured that I never used a dirty towel on the wheels at any point, and using the dirty towel on the tire and well didn't cause any dirt. If there was any flaw to my strategy, it was getting tiny splashes of soapy water on the body around the wheel areas, which was easily corrected using by wiping it dry with a clean microfiber cloth after I completed each wheel. The BMW finish honestly looked better than it had the day we bought it (used). So I did my 2013 Subaru WRX with it after I gained some confidence, and had excellent results. Cleaning the wheels and tires is a real pain with this stuff, there's no two ways about it, yet it still only takes about an hour for each vehicle which is about the same time or less than I'd spend doing a normal wash. The finish is by far among the best I've seen, detail quality shine without using any polish. I'd highly recommend this to even the biggest skeptic or car detailing fanatic that has limited resources or area's to wash with a rinse. I'd also recommend it even if you do have access to water because it's better for the environment, more time efficient and just as cost effective as any rinsed product I've tried to date. It did not scratch my finish, or even get my drying towel dirty.