scratching rims on conveyor

Seems that we are scratching rims at entrance and exit of conveyor...any thought on what I can do with conveyor to stop this...I heard some guys actually bend conveyor...others use rollers at correlator?

Mark,
Can you post some pictures of your drive on guides, correlator and conveyor rails at the entrance and exit? Who made your conveyor? This will help answer your question.

Danny
www.WASHWAYUSA.com

Do you have the plastic guides on the conveyor? Are you scratching factory and non factory rims? Is it just rims or hubcaps to? The only prob I have is when a customers pulls the car on and jack knifes the wheels towrads the d-side and chews the hubcap up on a corrola or some other hubcaps that sticks out further then the tire. But for me we do state we are not responsible for any non-factory rims on our disclaimer. Never had a prob but for me all the kids like to put 50dollar rims from pepboys on or something and god only knows what they are made of. Ide rather be safe then sorry but sonnys conveyor and no probs. Also whats your wheel washer brushes made of. I have non-marring from erie. i had to go up a tip size on our hydrominder for whitewall but the wheelwashers are called on when the wash includes tire shine 50 percent of our wash menu includes Tire shine so another safe then sorry for me on that. The new wash across the city for me had the supper agressive wheelwasher inserts and ruined 10,000 dollars worth of rims on opening week. "

Mark,

Do you have UMHW covering over the entire length of the conveyor? If you're a front wheel pull and the tire is being dragged against the DS part of the rail you can damage certain types of wheels. Those most common are known as possitive face where the rim sticks out farther than the tire. Rim guard timres can help prevent the damage, but not all vehicles with this type of wheel have them. My wife drives a new Odyssey and the rims are wider near the center than at the tire, this causes problems in certain washes for me.
The covering is a very hard, but slippery plastic that will reduce the chance of damage and allows the vehicle to track through smoothly.
Just my thoughts.

Mark:

I had the same problem untill I installed the plastic guides that everyone else is talking about. I posted a picture of mine, also, as you can see we bent the guide rail out about 6" after the tire brush as well as after the ninja brush. The plastic guide is a very wise investment, we have not scratched a rim since installation.

How do you like the Ninja? How many cars do you get out of the brush?

thx,

Hey Jim,

Not recommended. I put it in all three of my places and I was somewhat dissapointed with it. From what I hear the poodle brushes work much better. Ninjas just don't clean like they are supposed to, there is still alot of dirt left on the rims. I also installed sonny's foaming tire showerhead applicators and sonny's wheel omni's as you can see below. End result? Dirty Rims. Needless to say, we are still doing manual wheel cleaning in the back with thumb guns and pressure guns.

Sorry, I meant MacNeil Elilminators, not sonny's. Although I do have sonnys wheel spinners at another location and they are just the same as the ones from MacNeil. I think they are more for show than anything else.

Why not run a shot shot of acid just before the Eliminators or spinners? If you use acid in the tunnel, the rims are cooled at that point and no interaction with the line employee.

Hey Doc...we actually do. We use a shot of acid thru sonny's foaming shower head applicators which covers the entire wheel great and its applied just a little bit before the ninjas. Actually we installed another set of shower heads before the eliminators and we still have dirty rims.

33,

I would have to see what the set up is. I have a couple of friends who use an alkaline thru the thumb guns followed up with prep guns. NO tire brushes to create any damage. They have Macneil Eliminators with a hot shot of acid a couple of feet before thr units. End result 98-99% clean rims. They will spray acid by hand in the back for EXTREMELY bad wheels.
You may need to see what your actual ph at the nozzle is, collect samples and run ph test strips or get a digital reader to determine what is going on. It may be that you created a "neutral" agent in the tunnel which offers no help.
Good Luck!

I've used acid in spray bottles and on line in the tunnel. But there are products on the market now (although more expensive) that will shine wheels without acid. I'm a rep for Qual chem and their's works great. Ask your chemical rep for alternatives. PC&D and the ICA reports Mike's Car Washes in IN getting bad publicity for using HF.

I limit our HF use to cleaning the equipment. Be sure to keep Calgonate on hand, if you have any HF on site.

Just a quick update...the Kirikian crew brought us down a two new ninja brushes. Majorly improved, many more bristles, much more cleaning power resulting in a much cleaner wheel. Most of the problem we were having was chemical, speed and pressure related. We were able to work out the kinks and we are getting a much better finished product. Once again, we have not been dissapointed with sonny's as well as neoglide! Their customer service is unbelievable to say the least.

I've heard they'll last 200k cars. And, that you need to run them faster than you do bristle. I'll be trying them on my next change out.

thx Chad,

Jimmy

That 200K figure is pretty accurate. They should be spinning at around 400 rpms. The original set I had was 8 "brushes" or "fingers" as I call them, per section. Sonny's doubled that to make it 16 fingers per section, and the difference is remarkable. If you get a good shot of chemical, the right rpm's and the correct air pressure (mine is set at 25psi) then the brushes are worth their weight in gold. It looks like the ones pictured on sonny's website are the old style (8 fingers per section) I will snap a few pics of the new 16 finger style tomorow and post them here.