Ele. Motors

[Tom Thumb]

Looking for advise from other car wash owners, I have two WW (Coleman) touchfree IBA, it seems that the drive motors do not last as long as I feel they should.
Was wondering if other owners have had better results with other brand motors, at present we are using the Baldor 1/2 HP original brand .
Any advise or experience with other brand motors would be very helpful.

 

[Greg Pack]

I've used the chinese stainless motors, but it's too early to tell if the last longer.

Are you removing the drain plugs from the motors? Do you still use the covers?

 

[mac]

Motors come in several different flavors. You want at least wash down ones. Stainless is better, but I don’t buy anything from China unless that’s all there is. Good advise on drain plugs. Look to see that you don’t have leaks inside gantry spraying them.

 

[cmawash]

Baldor quality has gone down hill over the last several years, when to lesson motors then we had several failures at about a year and half, looks like start winding. would like to find information on quality levels for lesson motors, Information says Mexico mfg. and company info says brazil. know they make different levels such as farm duty, red color, blue color, grey color not sure what that means. they also make one that is called EDGE, were are cursed with single phase only, wish we had 3 phase power

 

[Tom Thumb]

I've used the chinese stainless motors, but it's too early to tell if the last longer.

Are you removing the drain plugs from the motors? Do you still use the covers?

yes on drain plugs, and yes on covers

 

[Tom Thumb]

Motors come in several different flavors. You want at least wash down ones. Stainless is better, but I don’t buy anything from China unless that’s all there is. Good advise on drain plugs. Look to see that you don’t have leaks inside gantry spraying them.

All motors are washdown series, so far only used from J C Coleman. ?????

 

[Legends]

I have a roughly 5 year old a PDQ Tandem. When I purchased the wash in August of 2018, I immediately had numerous motor issues over the course of the next 2 years. Talking an average of a new motor every other month..After dealing with AEP and a good local electrical contractor, checked everything possible to do with the possible problem. Determined that brownout/blackouts cause premature Death to various motors. Put a whole house surge protector on at a cost of about $3500, but I haven't changed a motor since. Wished I would of been more aggressive at the beginning, but I've learned and I now feel I'm protected moving forward. Good luck, definitely look into that.

 

[Greg Pack]

I think I've used both weg and elektrim motors after talking to a guy that has had good luck with them. They are imported and before the tariffs started they were cheaper than baldor motors. I think they are more now. I only used them a couple of years and haven't had to replace one yet. As you probably know moisture intrusion is the main problem with these motors but my local baldor dealer motor shop will dissemble them and dry them in a oven if they are otherwise OK. A tech I trust believed that the covers actually accelerated the baldor motor housing failure. Since the imported ones are stainless I actually would run them with the covers on since I wasn't worried about the housings corroding. I felt like the covers offered a layer of splash protection. So this is counter to what you would think makes sense- I cover the stainless motors and don't cover the Baldors.