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IBA Winter Settings

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Bubbles Galore

Active member
This is my first full winter with my automatic and was looking for some tips for how each of you adjust your machine to optimize cleaning in the winter months? While all tips are welcome, I'm mainly looking for feedback from those operators that deal with road salt.

Thanks!
 
Bubbles Galore said:
This is my first full winter with my automatic and was looking for some tips for how each of you adjust your machine to optimize cleaning in the winter months? While all tips are welcome, I'm mainly looking for feedback from those operators that deal with road salt.

Thanks!
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One thing I do is to run my triple foam through my arch. I have a LW4000 and the triple foam freezes. yes, they do sell expensive methanol based triple foam but it freezes too. All the freezing causes the triple foam applicators to fall off or break. I run blue triple foam through a HP pass. The customer can still see that the triple foam is being applied. I rarely get a complaint.

Road salt is a lot easier to remove than baked on bugs. I make sure the undercarriage is blasting well because most people want to get the salt off the underside of their car.
 
I don't think I have that capability with my Razor without some substantial re-plumbing...good idea though. Can you be more specific about your under carriage? What do you check?
 
I think you have that capability with a razor. It is just a question of whether you use it or not. all I am talking about doing is another HP pass with colored wax instead of a triple foam pass. I cannot get the triple foam to apply reliably in the cold winter months.

As for the undercarriage, I check the nozzles. I make sure that they are aimed appropriately. I make sure that they are not worn out and needing replaced. I turn on the undercarriage and make sure it is spraying hard enough to blow loosely attached items off the underside of the car. Unfortunately, as a result, I do end up with some license plates and underbody panels which should have been secured to the vehicle.
 
Bubbles,

Winter & spring for me is busiest. When the weather turns nice and the roads dry up for a bit, it can get very busy with long lineups. Fortunately, the cars are relatively easy to clean in the winter and within hours are dirty again with sand and road salt.

So, I try to make hay while the sun shines when demand exceeds capacity. So my washes in the winter can be as much as 30 seconds faster (on avg). I speed everything up, drop the soap strengths (as just rinse gets them almost clean). I usually can get one to two extra cars per hr.
 
bigleo48 said:
Bubbles,

Winter & spring for me is busiest. When the weather turns nice and the roads dry up for a bit, it can get very busy with long lineups. Fortunately, the cars are relatively easy to clean in the winter and within hours are dirty again with sand and road salt.

So, I try to make hay while the sun shines when demand exceeds capacity. So my washes in the winter can be as much as 30 seconds faster (on avg). I speed everything up, drop the soap strengths (as just rinse gets them almost clean). I usually can get one to two extra cars per hr.
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Yeah, that too. I turn off one pass of hp rinse to make it go faster. I would like to get 1-2 extra cars per hour.
 
Bubbles, If your bay is not heated, or if you don't have the heat/weep for the triple foam, this is what I would do:

I would run antifreeze through the triple foam system, so the lines, distribution block, nor the heads could freeze and break.

I would change the triple foam pass in the wash programming to the polish pass. You can put whatever color on you wish.

The laserwash 4000, only has one out put for polish. It is either foam polish, or triple foam, whichever is programmed into the hardware/plumbing options. with a Washworld, you can switch between these two passes whenever you want.

Some operators will switch to putting the low ph pass first, and a high ph pass second to battle salt, and winter dirt.
 
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