How many passes are you doing?

[oznola38]

I think a lot of people are giving really good advice, but I will throw in mine.
Out of the few water wizards I have seen, i think they all have run the rocker pannel blasters on the second presoak pass. I like that you run tire and wheel cleaner too, thats especially good at removing bugs from what I have seen. I also really like that you do the extra hp passes on the front of the car. Keep that. I would say doing it on the back of the car is likely unnecessary though. Yes some cars get dusty on the back, but from what I have seen its seldom hard to get off.
Do you know what your tripple foam actually does? Our two older roll overs where special ordered at the time because the triple foam, served no purpose to the customer. The machines never had that equipment installed. It seems you are already running wax, so even if the tripple foam is a wax for you, from your chemical distributor, it may be pointless to run it and wax. That could save you 2 passes right their pending your situation. Or, if you want to keep the triple foam for the show, can you put it in at the same time as wax?
You may also be loosing time to your dryers, but that may be worth it for you.
Also, if it where me, especially in a cold climate, i would offer undercarriage on every wash. Costs nearly nothing, great benefit to the customer.
If you don’t sacrifice on your presoak, and wash pass speeds, i think wash quality should be great. I do think a minimum of two hp passes is good though. Sometimes our machine struggles to get all the soap off with just one pass. If you machine can though, more power to ya!
Our wash configuration:
Bronze: Presoak, wash, wash, SFR
Silver: Presoak, presoak, wash, wash, wash, SFR, dryers
Gold: Presoak, presoak, wash, wax, wash, SFR, dryers
Platinum: presoak, presoak, wash, wash, wash, wax, wash, SFR, dryers
One of our machines used to have onboard dryers like your water wizard, but they where removed because of the wear and tear they where doing to the arch and the wheels. Back then, the bronze was the same, but the silver was two wash passes instead of three, and one pass with the dryers. The gold and platnum where the same, but with two dryer passes.
On your lower wash you may be able to turn on the dryers at the end of the wash so the customers drive through on their own. I will say though, this will track more water out of the bay, so could cause ice issues pending how your wash is set up.
Hopefully that gives you a little insight.

From my understanding of the Water Wizard settings if I turn on "bug pass" (which is what gets the boom to drop twice) it will do it on both the front and back of the vehicle if the boom is set to drop for both. The work around would be if I have 2 HP rinse passes I could put the front drop only on one pass with the "bug pass" double drop, and no rear drop. Then on the next pass put both a front and rear boom drop with no bug pass. This would help shave off some time and should not hurt the wash quality.

The triple foam is McClean Foam Tricolor 200. The packaging gives me no indication about its function. Their website was no more help: "McClean's standard for high dye, high fragrance tricolor foam conditioning." I asked our chemical guy and he said its "technically a polish. It helps lower PH for better drying and adds shine". Not sure if if that is true - McClean's site makes it sound like its just color and fragrance.

If Foam Tricolor 200 and Clearcoat Protectant 100 will work together I could apply them simultaneously. It would have to be a back to front pass so that the clearcoat protectant is applied first (from the boom rain bar) and then the foam on top of it. Otherwise the foam would be rinsed off instantly. But this would leave my SPR going front to back so then would only leave 1 pass for the dryer. Unless I did a HP Rinse after the foam/clearcoat then SPR and the 2 dryer passes.

I'm concerned if we add undercarriage to all of the packages we will see more customers take the cheaper packages. I think through the winter a lot of people are most concerned with getting the salt off. They don't really care about the triple foam or clearcoat protectant - they will go with the least expensive option that gets most of the salt off.

I will have to play with the settings to see if I can run dryers on exit. Not sure I want to do that during the winter but could be an option during warm weather. We have heated concrete aprons but have had a little bit of water running off it creating ice.

 

[oznola38]

HP wash on a standard wizard does not have soap injected. That would have to be an option. The only thing it does on mine is change the sign from "rinsing" to "washing"

I ran the test function for the HP wash and HP rinse today. You are right - it seems this only changes the sign and does not inject soap.

 

[Greg Pack]

High foaming conditioners are typically anionc and polishes/waxes are cationics. Unless it is some sort of specialty product the two are not compatible. Your chemical rep should know this about chemicals. You could try putting the triple foam on top of your presoak on pass three and rinsing it all off on pass four(Only downside is the profiling just works on the leading edge of vehicles so I prefer the HP pass to start with an odd number). Pass 5 LP wax and pass six SFR. Try pass 7 fast dryer and then pass 8 regular speed dryer.

One slower pass will clean better than two regular speed passes and be quicker, and one slow HP pass is all you need on the vast majority of vehicles. I'm not trying to clean or even encourage muddy vehicles in my touch free wash. There is 5-10% of vehicles on the road you can't clean, and I'm not going to slow my wash down 20% for everyone just to try clean the outliers. But I am in the suburbs, not a rural area so that philosophy works.

You should have a static dryer option in programming but that can cause customer confusion if it's been the other way for years. But they will learn.

 

[Mr. Dude with a face]

@oznola38 Sounds like that machine has a lot of configuration! Hopefully you can get it to do what you want. And, that is kind of the crap thing about roll overs is you have to make a wash with an even number of passes, so I get the challenges of programing them. I don't like some of our wash packages because of that very same reason. And, on the undercarriage, at our washes we do it on all 4. From my understanding it has always been that way, and I still see the VAST majority of people pick one of the top two washes. So, me personally I would not be worried about it driving people to get the cheaper wash, but, also, you do you! Can't say one way is wrong and the other is right.
And @Greg Pack , is absolutely right, their is a fraction of your customers that you just can't do a good job cleaning in the auto. In my opinion, thats what the self serve bays are for. Now, I am 100% in favor of giving the best experience possible in the auto, but I don't see a need for a 10 minute 150 gallon wash for those customers who really would be better served out in a bay.
Also, you have a huge advantage if you can adjust the speed of your individual passes. On our slightly newer machine, the controls are different and we can change the speed of each individual pass. We choose to run that machine pretty slow on the presoak passes, and the main wash passes. For wax, final rinse (with the drying aid injected in it) and SFR, we crank it up. Our older one is not so flexible so every pass is somewhat of a compromise, but it works out all right I think.

 

[Greg Pack]

oznola, one other thought is that since you are doing the same product for both passes is that you could try just one pass with good dwell, then second pass tricolor with or without rocker panel. Since the tricolor coats the windows the customer gets the same effect from inside the vehicle. After years of experimenting and doing mostly high-high my supplier has a low pH that actually works great for me, but I have to apply a high pass after it.

petit machines are the latest hotness in the industry right now. Watch the videos of what these guys are doing to give you some insight into that mindset. For example, many petit owners use pass two as a tricolor "presoak" and of course there is no rocker panel blaster that costs them 30 seconds. Then find a good compromise that works for you. How much time you can shave depends on what you have to do to clean your "cleanable" customers' car well.

 

[AnalyticWash]

petit machines are the latest hotness in the industry right now. Watch the videos of what these guys are doing to give you some insight into that mindset. For example, many petit owners use pass two as a tricolor "presoak"

The mindset that Petit is pushing is throughput (which I agree with if you are buying a machine that is capable of speed). Synergy chemical is the go-to for this setup (single stage presoak + tri-color presoak) and it can certainly be applied to other equipment to maximize throughput and lower cpc.

No one wants a 10 minute car wash. Aim for 5/6 min or less with everything (UC + Wash + Dry) on your top wash. Bottom wash should be significantly less.

 

[washnshine]

Is the tri- color presoak you are referencing really a presoak, or just a colored neutral pH foaming product? It seems like if someone were using the trifoam as a legitimate presoak ( high or low pH), it doesn’t have the coverage to make it effective on the whole car.

 

[oznola38]

Is the tri- color presoak you are referencing really a presoak, or just a colored neutral pH foaming product? It seems like if someone were using the trifoam as a legitimate presoak ( high or low pH), it doesn’t have the coverage to make it effective on the whole car.

The foam is McClean Foam Tricolor 200. I am trying to find out more about it.

We hired a contractor to do a bunch of repairs. When we bought the wash a few months ago the equipment hadn't been touched in 5 years so had lots of repairs needed. The contractor brought in a chemical guy and we were not asked for any input and none of the chemicals were explained to us. I'm trying to learn more about them and see if we need to make any changes.

 

[oznola38]

@oznola38 Sounds like that machine has a lot of configuration! Hopefully you can get it to do what you want. And, that is kind of the crap thing about roll overs is you have to make a wash with an even number of passes, so I get the challenges of programing them. I don't like some of our wash packages because of that very same reason. And, on the undercarriage, at our washes we do it on all 4. From my understanding it has always been that way, and I still see the VAST majority of people pick one of the top two washes. So, me personally I would not be worried about it driving people to get the cheaper wash, but, also, you do you! Can't say one way is wrong and the other is right.
And @Greg Pack , is absolutely right, their is a fraction of your customers that you just can't do a good job cleaning in the auto. In my opinion, thats what the self serve bays are for. Now, I am 100% in favor of giving the best experience possible in the auto, but I don't see a need for a 10 minute 150 gallon wash for those customers who really would be better served out in a bay.
Also, you have a huge advantage if you can adjust the speed of your individual passes. On our slightly newer machine, the controls are different and we can change the speed of each individual pass. We choose to run that machine pretty slow on the presoak passes, and the main wash passes. For wax, final rinse (with the drying aid injected in it) and SFR, we crank it up. Our older one is not so flexible so every pass is somewhat of a compromise, but it works out all right I think.

I might try the undercarriage on all for awhile and see if that effects what is being selected.

The WaterWizard 2.0 has 4 speeds we can choose from on each pass. Right now the presoaks are either at standard speed or slow speed. I might try some at the ultra slow speed to help with coverage and dwell time. I can also set a dwell time at the start or end of each pass.

 

[Greg Pack]

I might try the undercarriage on all for awhile and see if that effects what is being selected.

The WaterWizard 2.0 has 4 speeds we can choose from on each pass. Right now the presoaks are either at standard speed or slow speed. I might try some at the ultra slow speed to help with coverage and dwell time. I can also set a dwell time at the start or end of each pass.

You came here with a complaint is the time it takes to do a wash. You're going the wrong direction. Ultra slow is not needed for anything except possibly a HP pass with heavy Ice and mud buildup. I put my presoak on at fast speed.

 

[oznola38]

You came here with a complaint is the time it takes to do a wash. You're going the wrong direction. Ultra slow is not needed for anything except possibly a HP pass with heavy Ice and mud buildup. I put my presoak on at fast speed.

I left out my thought on using the ultra slow was if I removed a pass. I was thinking the ultra slow might give similar coverage to 2 passes while still cutting out some time - but I have not experimented with the ultra slow yet to see how much time a pass takes. Currently I have no passes on the ultra slow setting.