To Padlock or Not Padlock Your WashSelect II's Door?

[Carl]

Last night someone tried drilling into both medeco locks of my WashSelect II's door. I'm having a professional locksmith try and remove the damaged locks after my ordered replacement locks and housings arrive. So the locksmith says to me, "After you see how easily I will remove those damaged locks you will be wanting to padlock your doors from then on!"

In the past I had thought about padlocking those doors at both of those holes that Unitec has made available for the door just for this purpose but I decided against doing it since I thought padlocks there would oddly protrude out from the auto cashier's edge creating a 'scratch hazard' for cars which drive too closely to the paystation.

Do any of you padlock your WashSelect II's door? Why or why not?

Thanks so much,

Carl

 

[I.B. Washincars]

Yeah, the Medeco plugs are easy to get out. I wish you had come here first. We could have saved you a couple hundred bucks. Regarding the padlocks: I can open one of them without the key almost as fast as with the key.

I would add this too. It's shown on a Hamilton, but I think it will work.

http://www.ralock.com/products/specialtylocks/

 

[Carl]

The RA-Lock you linked to looks great for beefing up the WashSelect II's security most especially the Medeco locks w/ that "puck". Thanks so much for the great idea. I'll definitely be looking into this. The padlocks the locksmith wanted to sell me are $45.00/each and I would have needed four of them. Like you said, those can be defeated pretty easily so I'm very interested in the "triple-security" added protection that the RA-Lock offers if they can adapt onto the WashSelect IIs. Lastly...the padlocks would look so "ghetto" whereas the RA-Locks look really great because customers won't notice them but the "bad guys" might be further deterred when they notice the Medeco locks not even visible anymore. Great idea...thank you! - Carl

 

[Randy]

The RA lock kit is a pretty good option. The problem with those is you can get a pry bar behind the hockey puck lock and pry on it. There are a couple other options, you can get a spinner Medeco that spins when you try to drill it. Another option is to replace the locking bolt inside the ACW so you have to use a special tool to turn it, not an Allen wrench. I have to agree padlock would look pretty “Ghetto” Neither one of these options are cheap. We have all of our ACW’s alarmed so they start banging on it the alarm goes off. It's been a long time since we've had any problems with security with our equipment.

 

[I.B. Washincars]

I wrote an article in SSCWN last year, showing what I did with my Hamiltons. On top of installing the Ra-Lock kits, I changed the bolts, ground the flats out of the door and double nutted. This way, if a crook tries to pry or twist on it, it will spin in the door. Hopefully, this will be frustrating enough and also delay them, to have them move on down the road to your competitor’s wash. Remember, you don’t have to outrun the bear, just your buddy.