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Tire shine

R

Ric

Cantree Member
Anyone using a tire shine applicator in their tunnel? Would you do it again? High maintenance?
 
When they first camee out I went to see them at the ICA show. With 4 EE Tunnels I was looking for the lease maintenance intensive unit. Bought a Viper unit. After a 6 month test at one location I bought 3 more.

After hearing maintenance issues with all the pad type units I am glad this is what I chose. Down side is cost per application due to volume of product used. Runs about 50 cents a car. Pad and now brush type units can run as low as 10 cents a car. Higher volume sales can seemingly reduce product used on the other types of units. Upside is virtualy zero maintenance. Every year or so one of the tapeswitches or a solenoid valve may go bad (Of course a flow jet may die priodicaly). If there is a rainy stretch a nozzle may get clogged. Cost is about $10,000 less than the other types of units, There is no pad replacement cost. So, If you sell 25,000 applications you make the extra cost of the other units back less of course the cost of any pad and brush replacement and operational / maintenance costs for electric and hydraulic drives.

For me, the lack of needed maintenance was the deciding factor. It bumps my top package $2.00 of the $4.00 bump. . Very few sell a la carte for $3.00
 
For my situation where I prefer not to monitor another item on a regular basis to see if any tweaks are needed and I prefer not to have to delegate this to anyone the extra cost per application is well worth the equipment savings and hands off long term operation.
 
Another thing I like about the Viper unit is the few parts that do have a (very long) life span like tape switches and solenoid valves are off the shelf parts.
 
Earl, how happy have your customers been with the results? Did you do any hand dressing before putting in the vipershine? Any problems with the spraying not covering larger tires or spraying onto the rims of smaller tires? The results from the videos you posted look pretty good.
 
No hand application. From large SUV to compacts good coverage I would not recommended for aftermarket low profile tires. No complaints
 
For the last 10 years we have used a rotating tire shiner application. With few problems (bearings), and have the advantage of using just about any tire dressing we choose. If you are frugal, you could make it from a used tire brush, we buy used tire shinners from other washes even bought 2 used ones from Benny's, and with normal maintenance they are still producing shinny tires. They are not pretty, but do a pretty good job.
 
At my wash we have rotating bristle brushes set up as well as the cars are being dried. At first they worked well, but as time goes on the applications are getting spotty. Sometimes too much, sometimes too little. I wish the brush was longer so that it could get some extra spins on the tires. Also, the tire shine we use dribbles down the off ramp at the end of the wash, dries up, and leaves ugly stains that need to be power washed frequently. I would like to really examine how a pad brush works differently and how evenly it applies the product to get a good comparison
 
Hey Jimmy, have you ever used the bristle brush for your rotating tire shine brush? We have a Sonnys rotating tire shine brush that we bought with the bristle brush and we've used a number of different types of tire shine but no tire shine seems to really stick to the bristles of the brush very well. I wanted to know if you could make a comparison from the bristle brush to the cloth brush?
 
We prefer water base tire dressing and the best material to apply it is a cloth type, we apply dressing at 50 psi for 0.3 seconds each tire.
 
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