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Pat, Look for a bulb with a 5000 color rating. Sunlight is around 5500 in color. You can get bulbs with a whiter light but for realistic color look in the 5000 color range. SSCWN will have a article on lighting for the ICA show edition I think.

The regional car wash associations have been doing road shows for a few years now. Many are held around the country. The ones I have attended have been great. Last July I spent a day in Denver going to one hosted by the WCA. We visited several locations and had a great lunch at a car wash supply...

If your foamer uses a scotchbrite type of material in the foamers the scotchbrite might be plugged. This can lead to reduced foam at the brush isnce it can't be pushed through it. Also if your mixing air pressure to the foamer is too high and the flojet pressure is too low it could be keeping...

Like others have said you will loose around 50% of your business and will take over a year to regain the business volume you lost during that time.

I tried giving bonus tokens through the CC to token vendor. It made no difference. WHy not try just 2 bays at first setup for credit cards. Identify them as such and see what happens. Doing all the bays at once would be best but if you are concerned about money you could scale back at first.

I opened a location in 2003 and went with a credit card to token machine thinking that people could use the tokens for all the wash bays as well as vacs and vending. At other locations I went with the in bay CC readers and had considerably more CC sales. I finally broke down a couple of years...

If the machine is in the front of bay and the rear end prox input is on you have the machine too far forward and both front and rear end proxes are on. I can generally roll my gantry back by grabbing the arm and slowly pulling it towards the front or back.

You can use any motor that is rated for the same rpm, voltage etc. I have replaced these with baldor motors for example. Are you sure the motor is bad? Check the wires on the back of the switch that drives the machine. I have seen this switch get turned and pull the wires out of the back of the...

You should shoot for a 30% cost of labor per detail. It is a hard figure to attain but a good benchmark to strive for. IMO your detail labor should never go over 50% of the price charged. If you are paying someone $10 per hour and you add roughly 30% to that figure for taxes etc. you have a...

I will be sure to tell my favorite restaurant to charge me for the glass of water they bring me each time. Why should they give it away for free? Why does a EE wash give away free vac use?

A tokenote value will have one dollar amount. You can have several tokenotes that give out the same value. Coupon Discounts are where you enter up to 4 different values. The tricky thing of programing the token notes is that you first move the DIP switches as noted earlier. Then insert a...

It seems like everytime I take a trip I go out of my way to check out car washes along the way. It is always good to get a different perspective on things. I love to pull into and wash that has someone working around it so I can shoot the breeze with them. Yesterday at one such wash I had a good...

I try not to let them sell on my lots because as soon as I let one person park on the lot more show up daily. I have had as many as 3 show up overnight without permission to park on the lot and sell their cars. Eventually it would leave me no room to park. Most business insurance carriers...

Why Free? Because most SS washes are not fully attended. In a tunnel setting I agree that you should not give it away. In a SS setting it builds customer loyalty and provides a service to the customer when you can't be there.

I know Bill posted some pictures of my towel drying staion in another thread. I am not sure which thread it is in.

I have installed the wash gear setup on my newer ryko SS system. I have had it installed for 18 months and have not ever had a single problem. It is a simple install. If you go with washgear I would have them supply the computer for about $600. Then you have a plug and play system. If you go to...

Just talking to other operators and getting ideas makes it worth my time. I learn enough to pay for expense of being there. You never know what you might see.

Murphy visited me today Everyone knows Murphy's law I hope. Today I got a call that one of the vacs at a location was jambed with quarters. I was close so I went right over. Quarters were jambed in a old secure coin electronic mech so tight that the coin mech had to be removed from the face...

I had guy once come and dump all his garbage out in one of the bays and take off. We had the license plate so we called the police. They told the guy to come back and clean up the garbage within 1 hour or they would issue him a public dumping permit. He came back and cleaned it up.

I would think it is cheaper to add doors and heat to a automatic bay compared to weeping water through it all the time. My most expensive location for water and sewer is about 25% less than the original post. I have 3 other locations that are 50% less.