Spot Free Rinse

Anyone recomend a perticular spot free rinse system? I am a full service so we do dry off the cars, but I want to purchase the mirror blasters from sonny's to eliminate spotty run off after a customer pulls away and all the water that is stuck behind the mirror blows out. The problem I have is I do not have a lot of room to play with, my back room is pretty much already packed from wall to wall. Is there a compact system with a compact holding tank or one that does not have a holding tank at all?

We have a con-serve. We installed a pallet shelving system over the unit.This allowed us to stack two 300 gallon tanks on top. It saved a lot of room. It is something to consider if you have a high ceiling.

What about an air trigger system to blow the water out?

We used air triggers years ago when we were full service. Not only did they not eliminate the problem of water in the mirror housing, the pressure actually popped off mirrors on some of your cheapr compact cars. They will certainly help the problem, but will not eliminate it.

As for spot free, try getting a de-ioniztion system on loan from say Culligan or Kinetico and see if you can get the water to bead up and then also see if yiou can get your towels to absorb the water. At the few tunnels I've seen it used at, beading was totally inhibited and the water would not be absorbed even by well broken in, damp towels.

The problem of streaking is particularly severe for us in the winter with all of the road slat that is used. This problem all but disappears once winter is over.

Inject a small amount of drying agent into the mirror rinse. A rinse (as opposed to a flush) of DI or RO will only reduce the TDS, not eliminate it. Drying agent will counter the detergent solids and displace water from the mirror housing. Easy enough to try out.

From my experiences of using different manufactures, there is really nothing you can do about it to prevent the water leaving marks on the glass 100%. We have few, and I mean very few customers who even mention or complain about that problem. There is no such thing as "spot free rinse" that will 100% completely leave the car spotless from water. Best thing to do imo is to explain to the customers if you do have any customers that complain about it.

I have been using R/o water as a final rinse for about 5 years now. It does make drying a little more difficult, but not impossible. The key is to get as much water off the car as possible before applying the R/O. Any water that is laying in the recessed areas around the bumpers, windshield wipers or mirros will fly out and leave spots. The reason I use it is so that if one of my employees misses a section of glass or if the car starts to dry before we can wipe it down we get a better result. Is it perfect, no, but is is a big improvement. BTW the TDS of my water after the softner is around 700 ppm.

Thanks very much for all the information. You all have great ideas and input and I will definitely be taking it all into account. I will keep you all posted on the status.

I use a single line rain bar first then mist on my drying agent then a mist of RO spotfree and my car beads right up and drys mint I have a sonnys 120hp blower and run a track speed of 70-80 cars per hour. The only time I hav a prob is winter when salt blows out of molding and emblems but I can't fix that