Under carriage for SS Bay?

[Roz]

I am considering adding an under carriage system to one SS Bay as an experiment. I have many customers crawling under their cars and trucks to get to underneath the vehicle. Does anyone have experience +/- with the Hydrospray system? That is the only undercarriage system I can find for SS Bays, has anyone seen a different undercarriage system? Thank you.

 

[OurTown]

We have thought about it but would like to try one first. It seems like something that would be easy to make and can buy the offset handle. I can't figure out why their complete system is so expensive though.

 

[Roz]

Agreed! Their system is way too expensive. Would like a simple wand that works with the HP line, perhaps with a simple switch to go between a wand and an undercarriage hose. I see a great business opportunity here for an engineer!

 

[Sparkleclean]

I have 2 of them. They are good and customers love them. Main problem is educating the customers to know what it is and how it works. Once they see it they all say hey thats cool, or thats a great idea. But the signage that comes with it really sucks explaining what it is and how it works. I am in the process of having some signs made myself that will do a better job with pictures.

The system definitely needs a good clean constant 24 volts to operate properly. Anything less then 23.5 and the valves dont always open and close properly. Before you think of building one yourself just know that hydrospray discovered that they had to add a timer to the system to get it to function right consistantly. The valves dont open/shut simultaneously. They ended up with pressure issues when they designed it that way originally. So now there is a timer relay box so that when the buttom is pushed for the underbody option the underbody valves opens for a moment before the high pressure wand shuts itself off. That alleviated the pressure issues. Any pressure issues causes valve open/close problems.

I have had to fiddle with them slightly over the last couple years with some things, for example, i learned that hydrospray discovered if the check valves located after the valve bodies were too tight the valves wouldnt open....etc. but overall i would buy them again if i needed to. You could buy one and then just replicate it by buying the necessary parts. Technically you could even build your own wand. Its a simple design if you had the time and skills.

Another issue to overdome that is site specific is boom location. It can get crowded with triple foam, high pressure, air shammee, and underbody booms in one bay. Lol. These things in my opinion are a MUST HAVE for northern climate car washes. I have no experience to chime in on southern climate locations though. Not sure how many people care about washing the undercarraige. I also had to make my own underbody stickers to match my meter box as the only ones available are for rotary dials. And my dilling harris meterbox has verbal sounds pre programmed and none say underbody because it was never an option until recently.

Hope this helps?

 

[Sparkleclean]

The more i think about this set up the more i realized recreating it cheaply depends on where your wash is located. If your southern climate then You could simply use a splitter and feed both the high pressure wand and underbody wand at the same time. They would only spray when someone pulled the trigger and if they were both pulled at once then the pressure would just drop. However northern climates are the problem. You have to be able to not only weep both the hp gun and underbody wands, but weep them WHILE the other is in use. Otherwise you would freeze up whichever one isnt being used during super cold temps. I experience -15 temps here and freeze ups take minutes. The hydrospray system is designed to weep them both independently of the other. But if you are located say in florida, you could simply take the high pressure hose out to the bay and put a 2 way splitter on it with 1 hose going to the underbody and one to the gun and just do it that way. The Customer would pick up whichever they need and pull the trigger.

 

[JGinther]

If you have an automatic, less can be more: Just put an ad sign up in the bay... Dirty undercarriage - try our automatic.

 

[Sparkleclean]

In southern climates you could use a 3 way flow diverter valve in bay to switch back and forth, but it wouldnt work if you needed weep.

https://hydraulicmegastore.com/product/3-way-open-centre-flow-diverter-valves/

 

[Jeff_L]

If you have an automatic, less can be more: Just put an ad sign up in the bay... Dirty undercarriage - try our automatic.

Agree with this, it’s a reason to use your automatic.

If I were to offer this in the self serve bays, I can only imagine the mess that might be created with those heavy mudders. It’s already tough enough to shovel their mud, think about shoveling while trying to miss the nozzles. For me, not worth it.

 

[Sparkleclean]

Agree with this, it’s a reason to use your automatic.

If I were to offer this in the self serve bays, I can only imagine the mess that might be created with those heavy mudders. It’s already tough enough to shovel their mud, think about shoveling while trying to miss the nozzles. For me, not worth it.

jeff its a wand that hangs from the wall, not something that is mounted to the floor. I get a lot of sand and mud in my ss bays as I am next door to a motorsports dealer so I get lots of customers rinsing off atv's, snowmobiles, dirt bikes, etc... I will get that mud no matter what. in my opinion the underbody doesn't add a lot of extra mud. most truck mud comes from wheel wells and fenders that I see and that gets washed off anyway..... in northern climate I think underbody is a must add.

 

[Jeff_L]

jeff its a wand that hangs from the wall, not something that is mounted to the floor. I get a lot of sand and mud in my ss bays as I am next door to a motorsports dealer so I get lots of customers rinsing off atv's, snowmobiles, dirt bikes, etc... I will get that mud no matter what. in my opinion the underbody doesn't add a lot of extra mud. most truck mud comes from wheel wells and fenders that I see and that gets washed off anyway..... in northern climate I think underbody is a must add.

Gotcha, never heard of that. Perhaps my opinion is now different, as you can avoid customers doing abnormal things with your wands to get up underneath the vehicles.

 

[MEP001]

I like the idea of this undercarriage wand, but there are several things I'd do different if I were to build one. I'd have the bar wider, I'd use wider tips, I wouldn't use a weep gun if at all possible (Wouldn't need to weep it here). I don't know how I'd switch it, might even be worth having a dedicated pump.

 

[2Biz]

I don't see how this could work if you had multiple tips on the undercarriage wand? Unless they were sized to give you the exact flow and pressure as the main wand (If sharing the bay pump). I would think the only way for it to work reliably is to have a separate pump for each bay? I can see all kinds of issues keeping me from doing something like this! From the plumbing all the way to operator errors!

 

[Sparkleclean]

there is probably a pressure difference, I don't know what it is at this exact moment, but it isn't significant. if I turn the underbody wand upside down and point the nozzles at the ground the entire wand will "levitate" or a better description is take off like a rocket, when I pull the trigger. I even use the underbody as a water broom at times to clean the bay. customers love it. like I said its just the ****ty signage that comes with it doesn't do a good job of conveying how it works.


mep, without weep it is easy to build. like I said before you could even just route your regular high pressure hose through a valve and with the right signage customers would hit rinse on the meter box and then switch between wand and underbody at the valve. but hydrosprays system allows the unit to be run off of its own meter box option making it more user friendly and less confusing. keep in mind a wider bar would mean customers spend less time cleaning the chassis. plus the more nozzles the less pressure. that's probably why hydrospray stopped at 3.

 

[jsoriano]

jeff its a wand that hangs from the wall, not something that is mounted to the floor. I get a lot of sand and mud in my ss bays as I am next door to a motorsports dealer so I get lots of customers rinsing off atv's, snowmobiles, dirt bikes, etc... I will get that mud no matter what. in my opinion the underbody doesn't add a lot of extra mud. most truck mud comes from wheel wells and fenders that I see and that gets washed off anyway..... in northern climate I think underbody is a must add.

Hi do you have a link for this?

Thnks

 

[Sparkleclean]

https://www.hydrospray.com/self-serve-underbody-system

 

[Sparkleclean]

https://www.kleen-ritecorp.com/c-1363-self-serve-under-body-system.aspx

 

[Jeff_L]

my customers would probably use this, but then just toss it aside on the floor for the next customer to drive over it.

 

[mjwalsh]

From the posts referring to just their automatic, I am wondering as to how great the automatic car washes do for undercarriage wash for possibly not much more extra dollars??? There are real close to 50 automatic car washes (pretty competitive gas station joined) in our area. Not sure if any or all offer an automatic undercarriage wash for our salted & beet juiced local streets & how effective are the auto car washes undercarriage compared to something like what is shown in Hydrospray's video showing the woman using the self service version?

Anybody care to share more facts on the Automatic undercarriage approach? That is before I try a KR version in one to three bays rerouting the high pressure. Maybe I can have a proximity switch that would trigger an attention getting blinking LED sign protected by lexan stating "Align Valve for Normal High Pressure" The prox switch would switch if the manual 3 way valve was not in its normal gun position.

I have used & still use six 3 way hi pressure stainless steel power plant valves for using more than one by for faster washdown ability .... so it is something that I am confident would work. The fact that one of us three co-workers are at the car wash most of the operating hours to show a first time user might help too. I am thinking it would be used way more during the winter & early spring than the summer though. Hopefully, the customers will hang it back up similar to what they do with the foaming brush handle etc. I agree signage would be very important. Possibly a video of a sweet young lady using it on our website & Facebook would also help.

 

[JGinther]

From the posts referring to just their automatic, I am wondering as to how great the automatic car washes do for undercarriage wash for possibly not much more extra dollars???

From a business perspective: No extra dollars if you have an auto already. Advertise for the service you already provide in the auto. A chunk of customers will use the auto just for the undercarriage to rinse off the corrosive road deicers. Effectiveness isn't part of the equation - its about selling and then upselling the rest of the wash on top.

From a car owners perspective: Does this part matter? If it did, I would think I would see a lot of the customers crawling under their car afterward to see how well it did. The steak or the sizzle.... They like seeing and hearing the blast of the undercarriage.

Salts are easy to rinse with just water. Mud - different story. Don't think I want to mix a car wash where a clean image sells with a quarry de-mudding system. You can make money in the mud business - just don't mix it with cars.

 

[mjwalsh]

JGinther & others,

How much extra do automatic car washes tend to charge when the "undercarriage wash" is selected in addition to the top of the vehicle?