There’s a huge amount of technology floating around – literally – suspended in water to help you get your bike clean and apply a protective layer, but when it comes to drying it afterwards you’ve got three choices: time, chamois or an Air Force Blaster.
I got quite good with a chamois, once I’d tired of spotting the bits I’d missed in the washing process – usually ten miles from home, filling up – but it gets old really quickly … always assuming you can find where you left the chamois to dry.
You don’t forget where you left an Air Force Blaster – at least not the 4hp version that we’ve been using for nearly ten years – and not because the unit is huge but because the 10ft hose doesn’t tuck away easily.
It transformed washing test bikes – long term loans particularly, because they inevitably need more washing by us – and on the strength of the original review, the people who look after Harley-Davidson’s press fleet, WMB, invested in one and were so impressed that they bought a second!
So, if you’re not familiar with it, what is it?
A 4hp electric motor from a company that makes industrial vacuum cleaners, blowing rather than sucking.
More importantly it is blowing clean, filtered air rather than picking up whatever detritus is in the general vicinity of the motor – which is why you don’t want to go recycling your leaf blower.
It turns drying a bike into a game, chasing water across painted, chromes or vinyl surfaces, and out of switchgear and all those silly little water traps on and around your motor: the ones that will ultimately take the sparkle off your motor, no matter how careful you are. It even warms the air that it is blowing, after a couple of minutes, a side benefit of cooling the electrical motor as it gets hotter.
I would go as far as to say that it is an essential purchase if you want to keep on top of cleaning a new bike, preserving the finish for longer.
You will be annoyed by the monotonous drone of the motor – which inevitably sounds like a vacuum cleaner – and you will spray yourself with water that you have liberated from between the fins or wherever else it has tried to hide, but the result is a clean and dry – streak-free – bike that is ready to ride, or to polish, in a fration of the time required by any other method that I’ve tried
The selection of nozzles supplied provide a range of different characteristics, but I tend to use the large rubber nozzle because it provides more than enough air pressure from the 29,000 feet per minute that the motor pumps to shift water from anywhere on a motorcycle. It is also less prone to be spat off by the air pressure, which resents the restriction. Take particular care to secure any other nozzle, not least because they are plastic and could damage a more delicate surface.
I’m pleased to say that it is performing as well as it ever did, and even though it now shares its duties with a 1.3hp Metro Sidekick dryer, it’s still getting plenty of use: the self-contained Sidekick is easier to store so lives at the house. But this is always on hand at the workshop – with the pressure washer – where its additional grunt and less weight in the hand is appreciated.
Comments 1
You are right, it is more than excellent at chasing the water away. I’ve had one for some 4 years and having recently moved, cutting a hole in a side wall for a personell door into the new garage, then used it to blast all the brick dust and general detritis (plus a spider or two) out of all the nooks & cranies Great at spring cleaning the shed as well.