Hello, this is the craziest thing that has every happen. The Ryko Softglass Maxx and the side brushes this morning banged into the customer's vehicle at right front passenger panel, then into the passenger door, . . . and then continued down towards the center of the vehicle towards the rear panel and putting in dents into the vehicle. It caused a tremendous amount of damage. Everything shut down now. Can't access any codes. Everything on the left side looks fine. The side brush just went crazy on the right. What we see is the side brush hitting the car and rocking it so hard on each hit. The side brush bounced off and continued to hit the car. This is not just normal damage. How can that brush cause so much damage. The car was fine before the wash. Not a scam customer. In fact a repeat customer. Damage over $7000.00 on the car! What do you guys think is the problem? Thinking something to do with the arms holding the brushes and the torque of the motors. Something came loose..Nothing the customer did for sure... poor guy was freaking out. Called the insurance carrier... but wondering what the hell happen. Any clues on looking into this?
Side Brush damages customer car!
- Thread starter vachez
- Start date
Ryko CS
Active member
There are a lot of different things that could be possible. I would recommend you get an experienced tech out there to inspect the machine before you would reopen it to the public. The first thing I would recommend is that you try doing a brush wet down test in the test functions, and look at each of the brush shafts. Are they spinning true, or is one of them wobbling? That could indicate one of the shafts could have been bent. You could also look at the 4 brush shaft core mounting bolts. Are any of them loose, or have any pulled out? Grab from the bottom of each brush core to see if there is any play. Have you recently replaced any motors on that side where it's possible a brush could be spinning the wrong direction? If it was a front arm, is the front arm reducer mounting flange broken where it could indicate a prior strike? If that were loose, the brush would wobble a lot. Any of these would be areas to start looking.
Thanks for your reply. This looks like a goof on our part issue. Someone dropped the ball. Not happy at all. I am trying to find out more. I was told by the operator during incident said the side brush just kept bouncing off the car and swinging back into the car... as if the side brush was trying to go through the car... no stopping at all and the side brush kept spinning. I have no clue the arms could punch so hard. As to your questions... will post some reply soon. By the way, the system was all fine and dandy up to this incident so no prior issues. Cars were fine all prior to this one.
I'll be going there this weekend to get an update as someone might be out there by then that knows what they are doing. BTW, what can cause the side brush to bounce off the car and slam back into it? Something cut loose I think.
Ryko CS
Active member
The arms are brought in through the air cylinders based on the pressures they are set to. The labels on the regulators should always be considered as the maximum. They should be adjusted to they bring the arms in smooth, but soft. Most front and rear arms operate best with their "air in" settings somewhere between 32-37 PSI. Usually on the lower end of that. For the rear trailing air, that is usually 2-4 lbs. The arms need to be level, so when the air is off, they shouldn't really come in on their own, or swing away on their own. There should be no binding in the air cylinder clevis', and the clevis pins should be able to slide up/down.
If everything above is operating correctly, keep in mind the air pressures will keep trying to bring the arms in to those pressures. If something is causing the arm to bounce outward (bent shaft, broken shaft mounting bolt, broken reducer, etc.), then the air will still try to bring them in. I'm guessing you have something mechanical that has broken or is loose that is causing it to bounce away from the car, then the air pressure is bringing it back in. Keep in mind, the air is there just to help maintain a constant level of pressure and allow the arms to float softly as the FoamBrite tips clean the surface.
If everything above is operating correctly, keep in mind the air pressures will keep trying to bring the arms in to those pressures. If something is causing the arm to bounce outward (bent shaft, broken shaft mounting bolt, broken reducer, etc.), then the air will still try to bring them in. I'm guessing you have something mechanical that has broken or is loose that is causing it to bounce away from the car, then the air pressure is bringing it back in. Keep in mind, the air is there just to help maintain a constant level of pressure and allow the arms to float softly as the FoamBrite tips clean the surface.
garyinfla
New member
Just ran across similar issue. The high air in solenoid had failed open on the rear brushes. Replaced Mac valve.
Ryko CS
Active member
Make sure to use loctite on those bolts at the top of the brush core to ensure they stay firmly attached to the reducer flange. If you have customers running into the rear arm shafts, you may want to put bollards in place to help guide them more towards the center of the bay
Islandwash
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My Soft gloss is 3 to 4 years old. I bent the driver's side shaft at least a dozen times in the first 3 years. One time when the shaft was bent it did over $12,000 worth of damage. Finally, about 10 months ago a really good Ryko tech finally found the problem. I have a short bay kit and the program done in setup was wrong. Very simple fix, program change. The issue was to get the right experienced Ryko tech to my site. Since the fix I have had just one bent shaft. A contributing factor was 4 door Long Bed trucks. This long running issue cost me a lot of customers and money. EVERY Time I go to the wash . I check both Entrance brushes
