Swarfega Orange Hand Cleaner 400Ml Pump Bottle

After an eternity of waiting to get my car back from a repair shop, I was absolutely itching to get under its bonnet and service it. Oil levels? Check. Air filter? Check. Brakes? Check, check, check and check. You get the idea. After a while tinkering, unscrewing, screwing and happily playing around in the dirt and grime of an engine that's done almost 100k miles in its lifetime, I went to wash my hands. Unfortunately, I only had fairy liquid and some flowery branded hand-soap to go for at the time. The fairy was useless. Whilst it might be good for cleaning up dirty dishes and cooking oil, engine grease and grime laughs in its face. The other hand-soap was OK, but it took FOREVER to get it all off.After a bit of searching for the orange hand soap my fellow mechanical tinkerers use, I FINALLY came across Swarfega, a garage classic and ordered one. It cuts through grease and grime like you might wash your hands after eating a particularly messy kebab. It contains granules to help scrub out the toughest of materials embedded in your skin and leaves them feeling pretty fresh indeed. I don't know whether these are the same plastic micro-beads that are destroying our oceans and waterways, but I can certainly vouch for their effectiveness in cleaning just about anything you could encounter when working on a vehicle.Good points- Highly effective against most vehicle lubricants, grease, grime and anything else that gets your hands dirty.- Easy to use.- Smells just-the-right-amount-of-manliness to keep most guys happy, and appease their partner(s) that they have sufficiently washed their hands.- Gives a very satisfying scrub.- Easily identifiable in the kitchen.Not-so-good points- If you keep it in the kitchen, make sure your partner approves first!- Does take a little longer with stubborn stains and particularly thick grease, but your hands still feel pretty good afterwards, unlike tougher solvents that dry your skin out.OverallIf you work with anything mechanical and get yourself dirty, you need a bottle of Swarfega Orange.

Much as expected from a Swarfega product, works well at dissolving grease, grime, dirt, paint etc and the added granules help with ingrained grime. Pump is handy and works well, but only complaint is it's impossible to get the last of the product out with the pump - quite a lot is left in the bottom when the pump stops working. You either have to throw it out and waste it, or struggle with dirty hands trying to remove the pump and pour the last of the product out onto your hands. A tweak to the design that fixed this would deserve a five star review.

I've always used 'Manista' which is excellent. Thought I would try this as it comes with a pump, although not as much product as the Manista small tub for a similar price. It's fashionably eco friendly in that it uses cornmeal as the friction agent - Manista still using micro poly-chips but presumably will be changing that in the future.The pump makes it more economical in use and less messy than taking a lid off and dipping into a pot. Manista do offer a pump but only as an extra purchase for their much larger sizes. If everything was equal I would still go for the Manista - feels more obvious that it's doing the job - also the lemon smell enforces that.This does a good enough job, (never liked the green original, adding sugar if you had some around improved it, giving it more 'scrubability') and will last me quite a while - especially if I can remember to use the barrier cream before a job.

I wanted a solid hand cleaner that can do a better job than regular products for when I am working on my car or doing messy / greasy DYI tasks. This does exactly what I need and it's a small enough bottle to tuck away easily when not in use (I didn't have the space for a bigger one that is more commonly available). Would certainly buy again.

I have been using Swarfega regularly for longer than I care to remember, but always found the lingering smell on my hands a bit overpowering. Then recently I found out about Swarfega Orange, and I am delighted to confirm that it works just as well as the original, and smells a whole lot better. There is a very slight residual smell on my hands afterwards but it is actually quite pleasant, and disappears completely after just one normal handwash. I just wish that I had found out about it before!Does anybody want to buy half a tub of regular Swarfega, very cheap??!!!