Sparkleclean
Active member
You can easily replace that non weep gun with a weep gun. Other then that im not sure whatbyou mean by modifications? Are your doors open or closed? Do you weep?
Under carriage for SS Bay?
- Thread starter Roz
- Start date
You can easily replace that non weep gun with a weep gun. Other then that im not sure whatbyou mean by modifications? Are your doors open or closed? Do you weep?
mjwalsh
6 bay SS w/laundromat
I wonder if anybody has ever improvised making the needed weep "notch" described in the following tech sheet on their workbench? I remember the days of the flying wands ... not a good thing.
https://rm-suttner.com/freeze-stop-and-weep/?lang=fr
mjwalsh
6 bay SS w/laundromat
Sparkleclean,
Our existing guns do weep but they are they are angled guns & not straight thru like the Hydrospray's & Suttner's. Looking a bit more ... I see that both the Hydrospray & the Suttner have both the non weep & weep versions available for their lance portion. https://www.kleen-ritecorp.com/p-40644-self-serve-underbody-wand-assembly-non-weep.aspx
We have a weep system but do not use it. Below freezing ... the local newbie other car washes kind of make it so if we ran at below 32° like you do & like we have done (pre-competition) in the distant past with antifreeze foaming brush soap etc. ... it is clear that the newer self service competition with their automatic "as the customers approach & leave overhead doors" would make for too great of a loss of customers. Too many customers do not want to wash with the doors wide open below 32° like what is more the norm around the country like in your area. I guess every geographic location's setting of the local norm is a bit different.
As far as modifications ... it would be a bit along the line of what you suggested for the southern climate operators. The boom would have to be mounted so it would co-ordinate with our Mosmatic-Hydrospray Z- booms & blow dry wall boom. Because of our very large wall mount Mosmatic Blow Dry Booms & not high enough ceiling we would then be maxed out boom wise.
Last edited:
MEP001
Well-known member
I have, I was helping someone get a new car wash open for a potentially busy weekend, and he found at the last second that the guns he ordered were non-weep even though they had the blue trigger indicating weep guns. I took each gun apart and used an 1/8" cobalt bit to drill a notch into the seat. It wasn't perfectly consistent across the bays but it worked.
Wash Sire
Banned
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Hi,
Well, 3 years later not much advancements in the underbody wash technology. Price is sky high for a secret system where the only piece of equipment shown is the spray wand. No valves, no good signage, no installation instructions. Either a study was done that deemed it unprofitable, or it is too complicated. However we still have many customers a week crawling around washing the under side of the vehicle. Here in Central Illinois, we have no self serve bays with underspray option, let alone IBA's with a menu upgrade for an In Place Undercarriage wash. $1 Salt Shield upgrade to the undercarriage is a good price point thats hard to pass up. Some use up the 40 seconds, go back and fourth, and others shoot on through, the standard IBA spray bar at the entrance. $2 to $3 should make a profitable in place UC upgrade. These tunnel washes are taking the good customers, I can see why. Little to no self serves are upgrading or putting money back into the business. Gotta get their attention, most are shutting down, run down, dirty and neglected. Yet the blame is put on the new tunnels. Our area has not had a new self serve location built in prolly the last 8 to 10 years or better. Other areas may be different. We have more tax shelters disguised as car washes i think.
Has anyone installed or done any bay upgrades that have paid off and you are happy with. Seems the key to good bay upgrades are keeping the maintenance to a minimum and keeping it inline with the unmanned approach. Last thing needed is something else to babysit. The wand on the floor is kinda moot. Is the foam brush on the floor after every use? Just another tool in the tool box.
Any Under Carriage system installs, or new systems? 2 Dema 2200psi NC valves, On-On Toggle, and some elbow grease you have a UC system that has every function on your rotary or push buttons, at the flip of a $5 switch. Not really too complicated of a system. Maybe some LED light show action on the booms, indicating which boom is active, 2 pilot lights with labels. A lot of ways to have less then $1000 per bay with pretty much all existing equipment. Of course the wand, boom, and HP hose will be custom and needed per your location. Best to have your bypass plumbed back to the float tank, just incase of problems that would cause no valve to open. Possibly a Timer for the Toggle Togglers, who like to beep off the switches. a 5 sec delay. Operating within specs one should not be needed for pressure spikes, you may need a new regulator, and or bypass as that is the job of them, taking care of the pressure.
Just throwing this out to see what other operators may think.
Thanks
Well, 3 years later not much advancements in the underbody wash technology. Price is sky high for a secret system where the only piece of equipment shown is the spray wand. No valves, no good signage, no installation instructions. Either a study was done that deemed it unprofitable, or it is too complicated. However we still have many customers a week crawling around washing the under side of the vehicle. Here in Central Illinois, we have no self serve bays with underspray option, let alone IBA's with a menu upgrade for an In Place Undercarriage wash. $1 Salt Shield upgrade to the undercarriage is a good price point thats hard to pass up. Some use up the 40 seconds, go back and fourth, and others shoot on through, the standard IBA spray bar at the entrance. $2 to $3 should make a profitable in place UC upgrade. These tunnel washes are taking the good customers, I can see why. Little to no self serves are upgrading or putting money back into the business. Gotta get their attention, most are shutting down, run down, dirty and neglected. Yet the blame is put on the new tunnels. Our area has not had a new self serve location built in prolly the last 8 to 10 years or better. Other areas may be different. We have more tax shelters disguised as car washes i think.
Has anyone installed or done any bay upgrades that have paid off and you are happy with. Seems the key to good bay upgrades are keeping the maintenance to a minimum and keeping it inline with the unmanned approach. Last thing needed is something else to babysit. The wand on the floor is kinda moot. Is the foam brush on the floor after every use? Just another tool in the tool box.
Any Under Carriage system installs, or new systems? 2 Dema 2200psi NC valves, On-On Toggle, and some elbow grease you have a UC system that has every function on your rotary or push buttons, at the flip of a $5 switch. Not really too complicated of a system. Maybe some LED light show action on the booms, indicating which boom is active, 2 pilot lights with labels. A lot of ways to have less then $1000 per bay with pretty much all existing equipment. Of course the wand, boom, and HP hose will be custom and needed per your location. Best to have your bypass plumbed back to the float tank, just incase of problems that would cause no valve to open. Possibly a Timer for the Toggle Togglers, who like to beep off the switches. a 5 sec delay. Operating within specs one should not be needed for pressure spikes, you may need a new regulator, and or bypass as that is the job of them, taking care of the pressure.
Just throwing this out to see what other operators may think.
Thanks
washnshine
Well-known member
You could change the angle of the plumbing on one of these so that the nozzles aim up.
Sparkleclean
Active member
We added them at our washes, our customers love them. But they do present constant problems. Constant breaking between the wand and spray gun after people leave it on the ground and step on it. It was way overpriced but to sell something through a middle man things usually are. Unfortunately most self serve customers aren’t very educated about wash equipment so I decided against what you describe, adding a switch for wand/underbody activated by the customer. With the spraying systems underbody setup it all worked with factory functions in our bays. No extra signage needed. They found out when they tried to use a relay to switch between the two devices they would bind up, so they added a timer delay, one goes off, then the other goes on. That prevented the issue (though it still rears it’s head occasionally). We are glad we added them but I understand not wanting to drop $3k per bay to do it now! I think the bigger issue is there is no money to really be made in self serve anymore. We get $1 per minute. The most you could ever see off that bay would be $60 an hour and never actually hit that with customer pull in/out overlap… after expenses what’s left? Unless those washes are crazy busy I can’t see why anyone would ever invest in a new self serve wash!
