I was involved in 2 Tommy's washes and even brand new the tire shiners were hit and miss . They might do an excellent job on one car and the next not so good. It is also a constant battle to keep the chemical from stopping up the tubes. If you are going to be an absentee owner I would think long and hard about it. My 2 cents worth.
See my posts 6,14, 16. I think you have to appreciate some limitations like aftermarket low profile tires. Other than that the Viper unit is about as trouble free or less than most pieces of tunnel equipment.
Our distributor is looking into where around Ohio there is one of those Belanger shiners that Slash has. If we can't find one then we may have to take a road trip to try the ones Slash has. The only thing that I can say that might be an issue is that it deploys in so far that I'm speculating some people might be scared to drive through it. That design is also why it looks like it might work better though.
I've had several people get scared of driving through it. Sometimes someone is there to tell them it's ok, other times they just back out and leave. I did have a nightmare scenario 4 years ago where a customer backed out in the winter. Exit door stayed open since she never left from there and entrance door stayed open since she manually opened it. I noticed 3 hours later that doors were open and my soft gloss had frozen by then.