Between motorhome touring holidays, it’s well worth treating your hardworking ‘van to a shampoo and wax. Getting the mud and grime, sand and salt spray off your vehicle is a great way to preserve its good looks. This is especially true if you’re planning to leave it parked up for a few weeks at a time, or even mothballing it for the winter.

The annoying thing about a damp British winter is that mould and algae tend to thrive – and if your motorhome is left muddy, these undesirable elements of nature will take it as an invitation to move in and multiply. Another factor occurs if you’re planning to cover your motorhome with a tarpaulin or even a bespoke motorhome cover. If you wrap your motorhome up while still dirty, the wind will blow the cover onto your ‘van, effectively grinding any mud and grit into the exterior.

Fortunately, a simple wash and wax will avoid any such issues.  

So, which are the best cleaning products to use on your motorhome? Must you choose a specialised product designed for motorhomes, or will any old car shampoo do the job just as well? To find out, we’ve collected rival cleaning products together on the Practical Motorhome test bench for a group comparison test. 

We tested Mer High Shine Shampoo at £6.99, Screwfix No Nonsense Wash & Wax Shampoo costing £6.99, and Triple QX Silicone Free Wash ‘n’ Wax at £9.72. We also tested Fenwick’s Caravan Cleaner Concentrate at £8.99, Care-Avan Hi-Tec Shampoo at £7.50, Blue Diamond Perfection Caravan Cleaner at £8.49, Silky Cream Cleaner at £3.99 and the excellent MudBuster Caravan & Motorhome Exterior & Interior Wash & Wax, from £8.99.

In this review we’ll concentrate on the Triple QX Silicone Free Wash ‘n’ Wax to find out if it’s any good for cleaning motorhomes.

The Triple QX Silicone Free Wash ‘n’ Wax is another mainstream mix worth considering because, unlike most, it can be applied either manually when you’re washing the motorhome yourself using a bucket, sponge and a step ladder at home, or by using a hot or cold pressure-washer.

Unlike Screwfix’s bargain No Nonsense Wash & Wax Shampoo offering, though, that five-litre bottle doesn’t equate to fantastic value for money. When the Triple QX Silicone FreeWash ‘n’ Wax is diluted down to 50:1 (which is recommended for medium soiling), the bottle produces up to 250 litres of ready-to-use cleaner. 

That’s respectable rather than outstanding compared to others here, but the premium price is justified by Triple QX’s performance: it is a good cleaning product. It’s hard to state definitively whether this or the Screwfix worked better. (But the Screwfix does make more than six times as much of the diluted cleaning solution.)

Still, in all, the instructions insist that the Triple QX solution must not be allowed to dry on the surface. This makes us wonder whether it is too potent a potion to use, given some of the delicate materials used to build and embellish many motorhome exteriors.