This is the Griot’s Garage Ultimate Car Wash Bucket and it costs $50. Technically, the bucket costs $34.99 but if you buy it in this configuration with the castor wheels and lid, it costs $50. In either case, it seems to be insanely priced for what it is. So, why does it cost so much?
Well, first off it’s pretty obvious that this thing doesn’t look like the typical bucket, it’s rectangular. The Ultimate Wash Bucket comes in at 19” in length, 9” wide, and 9” deep. These dimensions allow you to hold 6 gallons of water. To help carry this bucket, there is a handle on the side. If you also pick up the wheels, they quickly slip into the bottom of the bucket. Then the lid, of course, sits on top of the bucket. The lid just snaps into place and doesn’t have any seels so it’s not meant to keep the bucket watertight. Speaking of the lid, it doesn’t seem to be very well sized for the bucket. The corner tabs actually stick out a bit too much and when I try to lift the handle, the handle catches the lid and wants to lift it up. I have to actively push the handle through to make things work.
Moving to the inside of the bucket, we see where this bucket differentiates itself from others. Up top, we have a grill that’s meant to be a shelf that holds various items. Say you’re washing a car and it’s time to put the mitt back into the bucket but you don’t want to put the mitt in the water, you can put it on the top grill. This is something that I actually find useful because I often drape my mitt or sponge on the top lip of my circular buckets and they do periodically fall over. One thing that I’m worried about with this feature is that it really just pressure fits around some small tabs. From the reviews that I’ve seen for this product, the tabs easily snap off at the top where it isn’t connected to anything. I can completely see this happening because if you don’t lift the grill straight up and if it’s at the slightest angle, the grill will catch the tabs. I guess I’ll just have to see how things hold up over time.
At the bottom of the bucket is another grill, but this one is more so suppose to act as a grit guard. It helps to keep dirt and debris at the bottom of the bucket and separate from the clean water. At the center of the bottom grill is a molded-in measuring cup. I really like this feature because if you’ve seen any of my car soap review videos, you’d know that I always measure out my soaps with a measuring cup. This just makes the process a little easier. The only problem that I see with this measuring cup is its limited scale. The cup is sized so that filling to the first line equates to 2 ounces and filling to the top measures to 3 ounces. Because there are only two increments, you’re kind of limited in your mixing ratios. It’s also a problem if you need more than 3 ounces of car soap. What do you do then? I guess you can fill the cup up, clear it out with water, then fill it up again. This is just something that should’ve been thought out better. Most problems would’ve been solved if Griot’s simply added another one of these measuring cups in the grill. Again, I think this is an extremely useful feature but I currently mix soap at 1 ounce to one gallon of water and only use 3 gallons of water in total. So, this system is perfect for me.
At this point, I’ve had the opportunity to use this bucket for a few car washes. Overall, I think it’s a nice tool to have. No doubt it’s the best car wash bucket that I’ve used, but is it worth it? For me personally, no bucket is worth $50. The only reason that I purchased this one is because I had $50 credit to a store that had nothing that I wanted to buy. This product just randomly got recommended to me. I didn’t even know that it existed so I bought it on a whim. Even after getting it and seeing how much better it performs than a regular 5-gallon bucket, I would still say that I would personally not buy it with my own money. It just costs too much.
However, this is not me telling you not to buy the Ultimate Car Wash Bucket. If you have the money and find value in this type of thing, then go for it! It works pretty well. The pricing isn’t even all that bad when you consider the price of a bucket, rolling base, grit guard, and measuring cup. A rolling base for a standard 5-gallon bucket alone is around $40. Thinking about it this way, the price of the Ultimate Car Wash Bucket isn’t all that bad, especially for something that gives you everything in one place. But just remember, if you’re using the two bucket method, it would only make sense to have two of these buckets. Then, you’re looking at $100 worth of buckets. That’s a pretty steep price for two buckets that hold water.
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All the Auto Detailing Equipment I Use: https://www.amazon.com/ideas/amzn1.account.AF43XRPGVOUH2E5CJXQY4FIOGVAQ/3AI3XVAQEMORX?type=explore&ref=idea_cp_vl_ov_d
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