Has anyone with an older Oasis Typhoon eliminated their floor tredle?

[GoBuckeyes]

I have an Oasis Typhoon manufactured in 2001 that currently uses two floor tire pads to activate the wash. The car's front tire must be on both pads for the wash to start. Has anyone made their own 'virtual tredle'? Oasis doesn't make any retrofit. What I mean by 'virtual tredle' is to eliminate any floor steel and pressure pads and just use photo eyes. The current set up works ok, but I am finding that the quality of Recora's psi pads is very spotty as of late and my floor steel will need a major overhaul by the end of the summer. Rather than spend money welding up a new tredle, I'd rather make it easier for my customers to get into the wash.

Thanks for any ideas.

 

[mac]

One of the things you can do to ease your issue is simply rewire the floor pads so that it only takes one to start the machine. Needing to have both activated at once seems stupid. It is fairly straightforward to replace the things with photo eyes. You will need an emitter, receiver, and most likely an amplifier, placed just above floor level to detect the tires and not the car body.

 

[GoBuckeyes]

One of the things you can do to ease your issue is simply rewire the floor pads so that it only takes one to start the machine. Needing to have both activated at once seems stupid. It is fairly straightforward to replace the things with photo eyes. You will need an emitter, receiver, and most likely an amplifier, placed just above floor level to detect the tires and not the car body.

Thanks Mac. Acutally, setting up the eyes and so forth is the simple part. I have eliminated floor plates and pads in all of my other autos years ago. The problem with the Typhoon is working within Oasis' logic. When we were busy and had a pad fail, we have a toggle switch to jump the pads together so in effect, only one pad needed to be on for the wash to work. The problem is with the directional signs and saftey.

The wash logic, as far as I can figure, works like this: The wash will illuminate the drive forward light. The first pad is also for the drive forward light. The second pad will input the back up light. So, if you drove in and parked on the first pad the drive forward light would stay illuminated. If you continued to drive forward off the first pad, hit the second pad and went a bit too far, the back up light would illuminate. If you then backed up too far,the last input would have been the first pad, which would illuminate the drive forward light again. When both pads are on, the stop light will illuminate.
(continued)

 

[GoBuckeyes]

After a two second delay, the wash will start. After that two second delay, if you were to lose one the pad inputs the wash will continue to run. Thats so if someone hadn't put the car in park yet or did something that caused the car to move just a bit, the wash won't stop. If you lose both pad inputs, the wash will stop. The pads are situated in a cradle or 'v' shape that holds the tire fairly well. I should also mention there is a length optic that is probably 5 feet before the pads. That has to be blocked for the wash to start as well. That prevents the wash from starting if the customer somehow winds up with their back tire on both pads.

You mentioned positioning the eyes low to sense the tire. On paper, that would work fairly well. Two sets of eyes could be mounted 6 inches apart, one set of eyes replacing one pad. The problem with that is two fold. My wash bay has 4" concrete curbs down each side and we're located in the snow belt. Too many things such as wheel well 'iceburgs' etc could be on the ground falsely blocking the eyes.

I think I am close to figuring it out. A few sets of relays, an interval timer, and a few delay timers. I just need to work through all possible scenarios. Its a bit more complicated than I wanted but unless I'm missing something, I can't seem to simplify it any.

 

[mac]

Maybe this will help. The distance from the front of most vehicles to the tire is fairly constant. Yes it will change between a Smart car and a F350 dually, but not by much. Would mounting the eyes higher up work?

 

[gearhead]

Photo eye location

PDQ M5s are located on the bridge and look for the front of the car as it enters. They work great.

 

[GoBuckeyes]

I talked to Oasis and I believe I'll be able to change the start delay timer parameter of 2 seconds to whatever I want. If thats true, this will be much simpler than I thought. Time to order some photoeyes.