The expensive part of the equation is that the resin doesn’t last all that long. The DIC-20 CR sent me to test sells for $449.95, though there is a DI-120 system for $249.95 with one filter cartridge instead of two. If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyeballs, I wouldn’t have believed it. Hmm, the wall mount version saves you $50 and would be one less thing to trip over in the garage… Even the rubber looked somehow better than usual. But when the CR Spotless deionized water had evaporated from the glass and chrome, those areas were more streak-free and shiny than I’d ever seen them, and totally spotless and clean. I’d always dried it in the shade whenever possible, with a synthetic chamois and a towel – especially the glass, which would always wind up a little streaky anyway. The car does have a decent coat of wax on it the water beaded up and I chilled with a beverage to await the results.Īh, yup, the car dried completely spotlessly and looked cleaner than ever. It was hot enough that I had to work quick to rinse the car off with the Spotless system before the soapy water dried. I started off with the hardest test, because I didn’t believe this thing could possibly work: I parked my ’97 Shaguar in the hot March sun and soaped it up, a thing I would never normally do. Screw on the two big plastic cartridges which contain the resin, screw the supplied stainless steel hose between your bib and the IN bib on the CR system, attach your garden hose to the OUT, and turn on the water.
You can read all about it at CR’s FAQ page.Įverything needed came in the box with my DIC-20 system, including Teflon tape. Supposedly, the key here is deionization via ion exchange, as your hose water passes through a special resin which removes all the minerals and salts and things which are normally left behind when a drop of water dries on your paint.
On the other hand, drying your car (provided you have one you actually care about keeping clean and shiny) quickly gets to be a PITA. Besides, drying your bike after you wash it, even half-assedly, is a good time to give all systems a good eye-balling. (My bud Jim takes weird pride in the fact that his Ducati has never been touched by soap or water.) The average bike doesn’t really have all that much surface area, and there’s no way to get all the nooks and crannies dry anyway. Frankly, drying my motorcycles after I wash them has never seemed like that big a chore to me, since here in sunny SoCal I don’t wash them much.
How could this possibly work? You have to dry things after you wash them or you’ll have spots: Cars, motorcycles, wine glasses are all the same. Rinse your thing with this CR Spotless deionized water, and you’re supposed to be able to walk away and let mother nature do the drying without worrying about unsightly water spots. I’ve used the “Spot-Free Rinse” at the car wash, which I decided is probably a bad translation from the Chinese “Free Spots 25 Cents”. When CR’s nice PR woman asked if I’d like to try one, I almost didn’t. I didn’t need a CR Spotless Water Systems Deionizing water filter deal, but now that I have one it’s hard to see how I could go on living without it.