Two of my touch free autos still have the old metal treadles, and I'd say that 95% of the calls I get are from people that don't stop in the correct spot. I'm thinking of just replacing the treadle with two photoeyes, one on each wall that see each other .. when the beam is broken by the front of the car, the stop light comes on and wash begins. It seems simple enough to get the eyes that send the signal when the beam is broken -- although I don't think I'll be able to keep the backup feature. Do you guys see any other problems beside the occasional 'challenged' driver that may keep rolling even though the stop light and horn come on?
Homemade Virtual Treadle
- Thread starter bigjws
- Start date
Ryko CS
Active member
During the wash, in most systems it should be that simple. You may run into issues at the end of the wash though when the PLC is trying to recognize the vehicle has left the bay and is ready for the coinbox to arm for the next vehicle in line. On Ryko equipment, we use the loss of bayplate as one of those signals, and we have to lose the signal before pulsing the tire photoeye and backup airswitch. If the bayplate were held "ON", it wouldn't detect loss of vehicle properly, and the system would have to "timeout" before enabling the machine to receive another arming signal. Other manufacturers would likely have similar logic if they are using a physical treadle.
soapy
Senior Member
I replaced treadles on a old Monarch once with a couple of wide pressure pads. Behind the pads I added a small plate that had angle iron so when a car got on the pads it was kind of sandwiched in between the old front treadle stop pad and the rear angle iron. Solved all those treadle problems and has worked for over 20 years.
I was thinking that once the vehicle left the bay, the eyes would once again see each other and the wash would go back to ready mode..just like driving off the treadle. Are you thinking there may be a delay problem since it would take longer to exit the 'treadle'? The wash is an old Specialty Equipment 'Revolution' series.
I think I saw an older post of yours about doing this, and have definitely considered it. How has your reliability been with the mats? I know the floor switches I use for backup and undercarriage (just the 5x24 size) seem to fail more often than I'd like. What size mats are you using and how often have you had to replace them?
soapy
Senior Member
U use entrance pads also and they have lasted for years. I think I have replaced the wife treacle pads maybe twice each in 20 years.
Ryko CS
Active member
On a Ryko, we are looking for the loss of the bayplate before we see the tire and backup airswitch pulses. This is how we can tell direction of travel, and if that sequence occurs twice, we know the vehicle has exited. We did have to modify our program logic when we developed a photoeye treadle system to account for the bayplate signal remaining while the vehicle exited. Not sure how the Specialty Equipment Revolution handles it though.
