Touchless best chemicals?

[wash12]

I have a new touchless and am having trouble cleaning grime/road film off the cars and bugs especially, I know touchless only cleans a car so much but have had some complaints and we just opened!

I am using a low and high PH anyone have any recommendations on getting the grime and bugs off better?

Currently have high pressure rinse at 1000 PSI and thinking about taking it to 1100 PSI.

I apply low PH pre soak first followed immediately by a high PH followed by a high pressure rinse, I am putting a fare amount of pre soak on, currently using Stinger products.

 

[DiamondWash]

You need a dwell time in between your passes, I dwell for 15 secs after each application then hit it with high pressure.

 

[chaz]

The brand of soap and type of soaps for your area are huge! I recently switched to JBS products in my IBA and S/S....huge improvement. The sales rep spent two days on site adjusting chemicals and even measuring usage per car..... it’s only been a month...I never thought chemicals were very different but so far I’m thrilled....could also be that we are now titrated instead of hey it looks good. I’m now using less soap per car,...and getting better looking coverage

 

[OurTown]

^^^ this ^^^

 

[Greg Pack]

Soil conditions are unique and some products and processes will respond better than others.

Before you give up on your mfg. I would start by swapping to hi/lo and see if that helps. Also pick up a titration kit from your mfg and start researching yourself and get close to what they propose is a safe upper limit on their product strength. You can not judge by look alone.

If all else fails I would also see if your chemical supplier sells any alkalinity boosters that can be teed in such as warsaw's hot shot, quest's ad hi, or blendco. My experience has been that cleaning performance is directly related to alkalinity levels, and the boosted products will clean much better than any non boosted product. However, you need to enlist the help of a chemical rep that understands what they're doing.

 

[tdlconceptsllc]

Greg is 200% correct on the booster alkaline advise. It took me a couple years to figure out adding/injecting booster is the difference in cleaning on touchfree. I went to stingers website and by looking at there product line they have a booster for the HI PH alkaline that can be injected with your HI Product it’s called 562-Smart base high PH 2 booster. Your chemical rep should know this info and how to apply it in your setup. What size dual hydro flex injector,what size tip & ratio all that good stuff and titration. This is the kind of support you get with a chemical company that’s into cleaning cars vs kleen rite/mailorder chemicals I say on the form and people don’t understand until they have been through a wash using booster products. Call your stinger rep and ask him. Greg is absolutely right and some people don’t understand the importance of it or to cheap to buy it. After what I have learned in the past couple years of chemicals. I will go as far to the extent of not using a chemical company if they don’t sell booster products.

 

[Roz]

We signed a contract with Turtle Wax. With that came a knowledgeable sales reps who spent two days refining the chemical usage to the ml for each chemical. He tested the water first as the type of water you have influences the chemical ratios. Then he measured the usage of each chemical as we ran many test runs on various challenging cars (all black, all white, various dirt). We also adjusted the delays between chemical applications.

To build our mix the rep started with a known baseline and adjusted based on the test results. In the end we use much more Hi pH than Lo pH presoak whereas in other parts of the country it is usually the opposite from what I am told. When the testing was completed I was given a spreadsheet of the chemical usage and chemical costs by wash package. In almost three months I have found the car count per chemical container to be spot on +/- 1 car which is amazing for a 30 gal container.

It helps to have a chemical pro show you how to set the amounts. Only thing I have done to improve the process is to adjust the delay slightly so the presoaks have more time to do their cleaning which improved the results slightly on challenging cars.

Other variable we adjusted and tested was the nozzle distance to the car for the arm. We have a WW Razor and made adjustments to the arm distance as well as the arm rinse speed (slowed it down from initial settings).

If you have a WW Razor the people in WI are extremely helpful so you might ask them for advice if you do not have a chemical consultant to set your numbers.

 

[wash12]

Greg is 200% correct on the booster alkaline advise. It took me a couple years to figure out adding/injecting booster is the difference in cleaning on touchfree. I went to stingers website and by looking at there product line they have a booster for the HI PH alkaline that can be injected with your HI Product it’s called 562-Smart base high PH 2 booster. Your chemical rep should know this info and how to apply it in your setup. What size dual hydro flex injector,what size tip & ratio all that good stuff and titration. This is the kind of support you get with a chemical company that’s into cleaning cars vs kleen rite/mailorder chemicals I say on the form and people don’t understand until they have been through a wash using booster products. Call your stinger rep and ask him. Greg is absolutely right and some people don’t understand the importance of it or to cheap to buy it. After what I have learned in the past couple years of chemicals. I will go as far to the extent of not using a chemical company if they don’t sell booster products.

I have never thought of adding a booster, great info thanks guys. So you only add the booster to the high PH what about the low PH?

Also do you dwell in between low to high PH soaks and if so how long I currently have it set to dwell for 8 seconds after both high/low pre soaks are applied before high pressure rinse.

 

[tdlconceptsllc]

I have never thought of adding a booster, great info thanks guys. So you only add the booster to the high PH what about the low PH?

Also do you dwell in between low to high PH soaks and if so how long I currently have it set to dwell for 8 seconds after both high/low pre soaks are applied before high pressure rinse.

8-10secs dwell is fine I did see a lo ph booster also in there product line. I would start out with HI booster first. You may need lo booster in the winter on brine maybe. It’s just trial & error till you get the recipe correct and what your cleaning exactly

 

[carwashireland]

What type of equipment are using?

 

[Greg Pack]

Also worth trying is just hi/hi and skip the lo. It is common to do two passes of high ph here. I sometimes do boosted high first, followed by a weak high (basically just enough product for good foam show). You can minimize or skip the dwell altogether on this since the second pass essentially serves as a dwell for the boosted high put on the first. Although I feel like my best results are a weaker low followed by boosted high, the low works well as a second pass to help get rid of excess alkalinity.

Bottom line, it takes time to experiment or a good chemical rep.

 

[wash12]

What type of equipment are using?

PDQ 360 plus

 

[wash12]

Greg is 200% correct on the booster alkaline advise. It took me a couple years to figure out adding/injecting booster is the difference in cleaning on touchfree. I went to stingers website and by looking at there product line they have a booster for the HI PH alkaline that can be injected with your HI Product it’s called 562-Smart base high PH 2 booster. Your chemical rep should know this info and how to apply it in your setup. What size dual hydro flex injector,what size tip & ratio all that good stuff and titration. This is the kind of support you get with a chemical company that’s into cleaning cars vs kleen rite/mailorder chemicals I say on the form and people don’t understand until they have been through a wash using booster products. Call your stinger rep and ask him. Greg is absolutely right and some people don’t understand the importance of it or to cheap to buy it. After what I have learned in the past couple years of chemicals. I will go as far to the extent of not using a chemical company if they don’t sell booster products.

Where do you buy the kit for this and we run a 30 gallon of low pre soak would I just need a 5 gallon how much of the PH 2 booster would I be using? I read on the website that it helps save money as you don't have to run as much pre soak because it makes it stronger?

 

[tdlconceptsllc]

Yes most of the time 5 gallons you get over 2,000 cars on booster and run a lean tip. Your chemical rep should dial it on everyone's set up is different

 

[wash12]

Yes most of the time 5 gallons you get over 2,000 cars on booster and run a lean tip. Your chemical rep should dial it on everyone's set up is different

See attachments of pics of a car that ran through our Premium wash 2nd best wash and it still looks dirty?

I was embarrassed how bad that car still looked what am I doing wrong in chemical set up. Does these pics help anyone tell me what I need to increase, I am going to look into the suggestions about a booster but in the meantime I don't want to lose customers as if this was my car I would not return?

 

[Greg Pack]

Do you have a chemical rep?

If you're on your own, film on paint will likely respond best to higher ph. Switch to hi/lo and then high/high if needed. Also, if you're wetting the side of the car with a gatlin gunner or similar before you go in that is also probably making the job harder. Also, make sure your chemical feed water is soft.

 

[Roz]

Chemical usage can vary by machine. Safer to use more chemicals to get the right outcome than to save a few cents per car. A chemical rep is really the best approach to show you how to find the right chemical usage.

 

[wash12]

Do you have a chemical rep?

If you're on your own, film on paint will likely respond best to higher ph. Switch to hi/lo and then high/high if needed. Also, if you're wetting the side of the car with a gatlin gunner or similar before you go in that is also probably making the job harder. Also, make sure your chemical feed water is soft.

Yes but he is not very helpful or even knowledgeable IMO. I thought you are always supposed to go lo/hi? What does lo work best for? Yes on top washes the side of the car is getting hit with water, maybe I need to add some air to the pre soaks so they aren't so watered down? The pre soaks do drip down the car pretty good I wondered if we have to much water with the chemicals.

Chemicals are soft water and even are hot.

 

[soapy]

It is hard for me tell from the pictures but the spots look like hard water deposits. When you wiped the spots with a towel or by hand did they come off easy? If it was hard water spots then no car wash , friction or touchless is going to remove the spots. Hard water deposits will need to be removed with a light acid or buffed out by a professional detailer. Usually the spots will not be all over the car but on one side or front or back. I see this a few times each year due to our 20 grain water hardness. SPrinklers are the usual scource.

 

[rph9168]

Potable water like that is used in parks, golf courses and other public area have to either be buffed off or in some cases a light duty polish will do the job. If that is the way all your vehicles come out there are a number of possible solutions which would be hard to offer without much more detail as to what you are currently doing. A decent chemical rep should be able to help. A bad one will cost you more money and you will still have the problem.