JUMPING OFF CONVEYOR

Hey we have had quite a few cars jumping off the conveyor lately and cant figure out why. In all instances the car is being pushed by the front wheel (which means they jumped rollers at the entrance), and about half way down they would just go over the inside rail. We took a couple of links out of the chain and when this happened again, no problems. On Saturday, same scenario, lady jumped inside rail, hit my wheel blaster, broke a part on it, put car in reverse and damaged her right front bumper. When my employee went up to her window, after shutting down wash, he noticed she had her 1yr old in her lap. My thought is that the child was playing with the steering wheel and caused the problem, I say this only because it jumped the rail 30feet before all the others have in the past. Do you guys have this problem?, and if you have see this, how do you handle this issue?, when EVERY customer says they DID NOT touch the steering wheel. Signed "Tired of incompitent drivers"

We don't push by the front tire for that very reason. We tell the customer to hold their brakes until we can get a pusher behind a rear tire.

well we have done that too, and that does fix it...i guess we will have to make sure we dont push by the front at all...it was pushing off only large vehicles (SUV) but has done a couple small cars...thanks for the input

Due to larger tire size SUV's will climb over more easily.

Unfortuneately it is a basic human reaction. The car moves toward the rail and when the tire hits it, the sterring wheel spins away from that dierection and the person thinks they are helping by pushing it back the other way forcing it toward the rail.

Aside from waiting for a roller to come up behind the rear wheel, if you see it happen close to the entrance you can watch it go thru and or tell the people to KEEP THEIR HANDS OFF THE WHEEL.

Another help is 3'6" roller spacing if you have 7' spacing so you get 2-3 wacks at the rear wheel before the front is engaged.

We are a 150' front whell pull conveyor and our problems with vehicle jumping initially was contributed to the fact that the new conveyor we got from Sonnys needed to havde the UHMW plastic on the wall of the insideguide rail. once that was done, another problem we enocuntered was the uneveness of our concrete in places due to the fact that concrete was added to fill in the pits from the hand washers we employed back in the 1960s who had to get down in the pits to bring them down to the level of the vehicle. To combat this uneveness we identified those are and cut out frames if the you and laid 1/2" steel plate in those areas to correct those problems.

Another problem we've identified has to do with our using 3'6" roller spacing. On large SUVs we've noticed that there are times when the rear safety roller can be literally right up against the rear wheel. The if the vehicle starts to jump the first roller, the second one is at the very same timegoing under the rear wheel, in effect lifting the enitre vehicle off the track. If that sitautaion occurs we simply tell the customer to place their foot on the brake so that the safety roller now becomes the pulling roller and then we bring up another safety roller.

The third scenario involves customers inadvertently hitting their brakes and at the same time they are providing just enough resistence the jump the roller the wheel turns and as the roller goes underneath the foot comes off the brake, the car lunges forward and off the track we go. To be absolved from responsibility on this one we've installed 4 cameras in the tunnel (actually, 3-4 more are needed). 3 of these are reverse angled to catch the people putting their feet on the brakes. It's helped out with that as well as a few who have put their car in drive and driven through the wash, sometimes hitting the vehicle in front of them going about 10-15 mph! In an exterior, care, custody and control of a customer's vehicle is my responsibility up to the point where the customer refuses to follow the policies set forth and takes over the care, customer and control of their vehicle.

I am in the process now of placing 3, 3'(H) X 2'(W) signs that read
Having A Problem
Going Through Wash?

HONK HORN FOR ATTENDANT

Underneath this will be PR N D3L with The N in red. Under it it will read "Stay In Neutral".

Benath that to the left of the PRND3L will be a caricature of of foot being applied to the brake with the customer red circle around it an a red line going through it. Below that it read "Do Not Brake".

To the right will be a caricature of a steering wheel again with a red circle and red line through it. Under it reads "Do Not Steer Wheel.

I will be placing these just prior to the car entering the wash process, after the first cloth mtter in the middle and just after our pre-rinse arch. We already have a sign that hangs down as they enter the tunnel that tells them the same thing. These will just re-iterate the rules and tell them what to do if there is a problem.

I was going to put "If you get stuck, please panic and drive through the wash .... JUST KIDDING.

Tried to copy and paste one of my signs, but it did not work.

Basicaly it has a white background for

P R N D L with each letter in a Black square border and the universal circle with line "No" symbol thru the P R D , and the N is on a green square.

Also above the N are 2 Green Smiley faces and above the others 3 red frown faces

At the very top above the faces it says "Neutral Please" and at the bottom "Foot off brake Pedal".

I've got signs inside and before the tunnel that say "NO Brakes, No Steer, Honk to stop wash"...I wish that worked all the time.

I've just started a safety program at all my conveyors. We are handing out a 8.5 x11 sheet of car wash safety instructions. At the bottom of the page we offer a free fragrance wafer if they tell us they read the rules. We are set to had out 12,000 sheets over the next month. Maybe that will help a little.

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I had the same problem, I installed sonny's tracking bars, so far so good. I installed them a month or so ago, and have not had a car jump since. Its a very easy install, and fairly inexpensive.

I have this problem too. Alway when a roller gets under the front wheel. This pulls the front wheel inward toward the rail. It usually jumps in the middle and hits the side blasters. I also identified that DODGE DURANGOS WITH LOW TIRE PRESSURE in the front driver side WILL ALMOST ALWAY JUMP THE RAIL. I repaired 2 in 2 months at $800 each to repaint the front frender/quarter panel where they hit the side blaster.

Watch the car move past the pre-soak arch BEFORE WALKING AWAY FROM THE TUNNEL so you know that the customer did not hit the brake or jump a roller. This solves most of my problem.

I have a surface front wheel pull conveyor. We had similar problems for years. I considered tracking bars, angling in the rollers, etc. We finally found a local shop that had built conveyors for years and knew how to correct the problem. The passenger side needs to be a little higher than the driver side - I believe it's around 1". It costs me around $10K, but I haven't had a jumper or a vehicle even close to jumping the rail since it was done 8 years ago. If I had to do it over again, I would opt for tracking bars as a 1st option.

Joe
www.crowncarwashinc.com

Most of you guys are too young to remember when radial belted tires started taking the place of bias tires. Radials take corners better because they turn into the slope. That why rear wheel push conveyors should be 1 to 2" higher(1.75" mine) on the driver's side than passenger and front wheel push conveyors must be lower on ds verses ps. So when the customer causes a front wheel push situation, the front tire has even more tendancy to climb out to the passenger side. On medium to light vehicles, it happens very easily. On heavy vehicles it may not happen or it may bind and loose that pusher. I have 3 locations...no tracking bars.

Old conveyor from 1980 had tracking bars. replaced 5 years ago and had the drivers side 1.5 inches highier. The only thing that jumps is Dodge Durangos maybe a handful a year. the height on the conveyor keeps them from jumping, Good luck!

I have a 3/4" round stainless bar welded on the inside top full length of the conveyor. It is very hard for a tire to climb the inside rail with this bar,
since it is very shiny (slippery). My vehicles all track to the inside so I never have a problem.

Joe

Ryko makes their own McNeil style conveyor and I have found proper concrete work is the key to either a front wheel pull or a rear wheel push system. The only vehicle I have consistently seen having problems is the Ford Explorer. This may have only been with an earlier model since we rarely see a car jump the track anymore. Most of the sites we service are unattended and have minimal signage. I know our success relates directly to the concrete work and the time we spend with the contractor during construction. I have written the exact specs before and will again if someone needs them.
You can see the diference in the Ryko entrance section, no rubber flap, regular prox switches for roller up and chain stretch(not shown) and no round rails with plastic sliders and grease lines. Ryko uses stainless rails with a four wheel idler take up drum trolly.
Thank you,
Mark

I have spoken to many other car wash owners around our area whom have different operators/brand of conveyor. More than the conveyor itself, it is pretty much the customers in my opinion who jumps on the roller. Most of our customers are hispanics who can't read or speak english at all. I also have an uncle who owns an express car wash where majority of the customers are Caucasians and he has similar problems too. We have 3 cameras inside the tunnel, and everytime someone jumps a roller inside and causes problems, they flat out deny that it was their fault and blames in on the "machine". When we go and check on the camera, you can see their break lights lighting up in the middle of the tunnel which caused them to jump the rollers. Other common thing I notice is that a lot of people drive with their emergency break up/on which drives me insane. And probably the BIGGEST reason in my opinion is that it is just people's habit to press the break while they are inside the car. They may have put the car in Neutral and let their foot off the breaks, but once the car is inside the tunnel, they usually don't pay attention and could mistakenly slam on the break since the car is moving while they focus on other things. Everytime we had a problem with cars jumping on the roller, I would send the car through the tunnel again WITH ME on the driver seat and we never had any problems which = to dumb / just not paying attention customers fault.

we converted our wash from old traditional full-serv to flex-serv.We have Mcniel's front wheel 150' conveyor we replaced everything but conveyor.Before switching it over to flex we were having the same problem cars jumping off the track.So when we did the renovation we added TRACKING BARS.Since then washed over 30k and not even single car jumping off,even though customer stays in the car.I think we are lucky so far(no customer errors).And by the way we push big vans and trucks from the back.

Here are a few pictures of my tracking bars installed....

I find that alot of drivvers have a problem with the concept of their car moving and not having their hands on the steering wheel. Over and over I load them, give them instruction(nuetral, don't brake or steer) and watch them instinctivly put their hands right back on the wheel as soon as the car starts rolling. You yell out "No Steering" and they look at you with a puzzled look for a second and then realize they do have the wheel in their hands. I've had 2 incidents where the customer told me after we put their car back on the conveyor, that they felt a need to help steer while traveling down the conveyor. Oh the joys of carwashing!

All you need is the UHMW plastic on the inside guide rail. Once that goes on your jumping will stop except for teh idots who brake. Cameras inside the tunnel will catch them doing it and also avoid liability for them as well as the idiots who knock thei vehicle into drive and take off down the tunnel. Tracking guides are great in you've got relatively new concrete. Our concrete is 48 years old and we have a rut and/ or plates down the tunnel which makes getting the proper level for the conveyor intsall next to impossible. Once the plastci is on the inside rail 99.99% of your jumping will cease.