If the vacuum hulls aren’t all carved up from 27 years of use I’d remove the decals and acid wash the vacuums with NU-wall, they’ll come out looking almost like new. We have a spare set of vacuum bags so once a year we remove the bags wash them and make that set our spare bags.
The bag is only accessible from the bottom cleanout door, and it is so filthy/clogged that you can see nothing as far as how it is attached or comes out. I should have learned to remove the bag when they were installed, but no one bothered to mention it way back then.
Post a picture, I am sure someone here can help identify the model and how to replace the bags. They are probably attached on top where the motors are. You can certainly replace the bags. No need to spend thousands on new vacuums.
OP's question is about replacing the vacuums because of the bags, not the quality of the stainless steel. Why do you feel the need to post irrelevant information in bold font right along with the disclaimer that you basically don't know what you're talking about?
Getting back to the relevancy of the older vacs having more durable stainless steel (gauge thickness or other quality factor); Golden Eagle may even eventually have a better vacuum than some brand new ones if he finds a way to follow Randy & Earl's suggestion.
I have the same 100002-3 vacuum with Nayax. The vacuum is pulling 22amps. What relay did you use with the Nayax? I'm using a 20amp RIB relay. But want to find a model with more than 22amps that works with Nayax.We own and operate 4 SS/IBA car washes in our local market, and we just did a revamp of one of our older sites. We were previously just giving away free Vacuum service. But we decided to pony up, buy some better equipment, and start charging. It's done a lot for improving the experience and curb appeal of our site (we also did a complete site makeover).
So far, we've been very happy with the vacs we bought. They're working like a charm and we felt the price was right:
IVS PowerVac 3-Motor Commercial Vacuum
3-Motor Vacuum with Stainless Steel Dome | IVS PowerVac | 100002-3
Reliable, easy-to-operate, and extra powerful, the IVS PowerVac 100002-3 commercial vacuum with three motors tackles the toughest cleaning jobs. Kleen-Rite brings you the most powerful vacuums available for the car wash industry, at the lowest prices around!www.kleen-ritecorp.com
As an additional cost saver, we use Nayax card readers, which work as timers. So we saved the cost of buying a timer and the vac that has the reader and assembly. We just picked up the vacuum and used the timer on the Nayax readers.
I hope this helps. Good luck!
Have you considered how much revenue a tank of Shampoo or Gallon of Fragrance Generates? If Shampoo is $3 per vend and uses 8 ounces That is about $240 in revenue per tank plus if people do it right they need to vacuum both before and after the shampoo. At $1.00 per vac that is another $100 or so, so while not huge, that is over $100 per month (f it needs refill after 3 months) for people using the machine for that reason.
