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Touch/touchless auto

What I have is nice but no longer offered by the mfg.

If I bought a new touchless today I'd look real hard at the new Washworld machines.
 
We're running a Vector and I like it. There's been no major repair needs in six years, and there's almost no maintenance.
 
I love my Ryko units, but you really need to be looking at the distributor/reps that are around you. A bad installation or bad service WILL break you. Look for length in business, how long they have rep'd that particular line and most definitely ask for references. Good luck!
 
We operate a multiple in-bay facility with a touch and touchfree units. The Autec soft touch unit is by far a rolls royce machine. 3yrs old 60,000 plus washes, basically maintenance free, what a work horse. It cleans extremely well and out washes the touch free by 2 to 1. Furthermore, it looks just as new as the day we installed it. So pleased that we are building another facility with 2 Autec soft touch units side by side. Can't say enough about Autec customer service. Exceptional. Oasis XP on the other hand took alot of tweaks, fine tuning, and alot of patience!! thankfully we have a great distributor. This unit is finally kicking some butt!! Special thanks to Michael M.(Unipump)
 
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Waxman said:
What I have is nice but no longer offered by the mfg.

If I bought a new touchless today I'd look real hard at the new Washworld machines.
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I could not agree with you more. I worked for Ryko for many years, as a service technition, service supervisor, and technical advisor and I wouldn't buy a machine from them now unless you plan on letting them work on it, they will not support you with technical info (ask DiamondWash how many times I told him I couldn't help him on the tech support line). I recently had to beg and threaten to get d-timers on a machine program that was 10 years old. If Ryko plans to stay in business they need to see what other manufacturers are doing as far as customer service goes.

I now work for a WashWorld distributor and I really like the machines.
 
I'm very happy with my WashWorld.

I agree with captain cw that a good distributor/rep is important. Good, direct factory tech support is also important.
 
We have a Ryko Monarch Touchfree and Ryko Soft Gloss Friction that we bought with our business, and both were in rough shape. Both are getting older with 200K + washes on them, and NOW work pretty well.

Up until five months ago we trusted our local Ryko distributor (Nationwide Carwash Systems) for maintenance, which was a serious mistake as they raked us for tens of thousands of dollars over the course of 14 months in "necessary fixes". The problem was the machines never did run issue-free for more then a week as Nationwide swore they would. Almost every time Nationwide worked on the washes, the machines would be broke again inside of days. After this butt-kicking, we finally fired them and hired an independent maintenance company to get the machines back up to speed (for less then $2000) and they have worked great ever since. Am I going to buy Rykos when I replace them in the next year or two? No.
 
Go with the Robo Wash. You can offer each customer efficient windshield wiper and loose trim removal at no additional cost.
 
Ric said:
Robo? Are there any of those still around?
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I don't think so. I can remember as a kid when my parents went through the Robo Wash in Dodge City, Kansas a lot, and us kids putting our tongues on the inside of the windows as the brushes slapped the crap out of the car. I'm not sure why we put our tongues on the glass as the brush came by - just seemed like the thing to do at the time.
 
I don't see any brushes, it seems to be just a touchless system looks like it would blow Washworld, Pdq, Ryko out of the water for the advanced equipment package it offers LOL, and it would seem that the "Robo Wash" concept was picked up from Super Wash Inc and converted to an overhead design
 
The original Robo wash was a drive thru with brushes. They were not touchless since there was no such animal when they were around. These look a like the machine called a Turbo Wash by Southern Pride.
 
rph9168 said:
The original Robo wash was a drive thru with brushes. They were not touchless since there was no such animal when they were around. These look a like the machine called a Turbo Wash by Southern Pride.
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Many Southern Pride Turbo's are still in operation (like mine). I have often considered replacing but was never convinced I would get 100k more profit (which is my guess at what a new machine would cost) in a reasonable time frame.
 
I agree. I have seen several Turbos that do a great job. I did not intend to slam them if that is what you understood.
 
rph9168 said:
I agree. I have seen several Turbos that do a great job. I did not intend to slam them if that is what you understood.
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The rotating wand concept that the Southern Pride Wash systems have is not bad at all in fact Hydrospray uses that method, D&S uses that method on the Quicksilver and I now see Sonny's either bought the Cobra design from Hydrospray or they rebuilt the machine and called it their own but that method washes better then a standard inverted "L" style in my mind.
 
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