2 Alkaline Presoak Passes or one Stronger Pass

[bigleo48]

All,

Looking to increase throughput on my M5. Currently I run 2 alkaline presoak passes. I was thinking of going to 1 stronger and slower pass with a little longer dwell time.

I have tested this (time wise) and I would save about 20 seconds per car. That and a few other mods, I hope to increase my hourly throughput by 2 cars...or $20/hr during my busy times

Comments & Suggestions?

 

[Waxman]

Try it and see! Maybe one strong pass and say 15-17 sec. dwell would be good?

 

[PEI]

We did this a few years back and found that you have to explain to your customers what you are doing, because they noticed when they only got one soap pass. Once we explained that we were actually putting on the same amount of soap with less water, and that it would save them some time, most were happy that we did it. They perceived that it cleaned better. We did to save on water and sewer costs and to get more through put. It worked on both accounts.

 

[briteauto]

You might also want to try foaming up the chemical a bit more to allow it to stick to the car better/longer, since there will not be a follow-up pass and the dwell will be longer.

In addition to explaining it to your customers, the added foam will also be perceived as a compensation for the removal of one pass.

You should be able to balance the strength of the chemical with the slower speed of the pass and increased foam and dwell, so that you don't have to exactly double it for the one pass. You might find yourself only using 1.5 - 1.8 times the chemical (within one pass) and with the slower application and longer dwell, you might actually save chemical, while maintaing quality - you'll have to experiment and see.

Good luck.

 

[Greg Pack]

If you decide to continue with two passes of alkaline you may want to try this combo and see how it works. In the past we have done a very strong alkaline first pass, brief dwell, then follow up by a much weaker "show" pass without a dwell. In my estimation the first pass does 90% of the cleaning work. The show pass doesn't seem to reduce the cleaning performance and serves as a sort of an additional dwell time for the wash. Ours is a gantry model, which means that we have to put the second pass back on top of where we just laid the first pass. On a laser, you're going around the car in circles, so you could possibly try eliminating the dwell after the first pass altogether and let the second show pass serve as your dwell.