Honda and Saturn rolling ahead of rollers

I have only had this happen a few times but some Hondas and Saturns roll while in neutral on the track. Then when I send a roller they still roll ahead and miss half of the wash and just roll through. Just wondering if anyone has seen this before.

I have seen the same thing many times before. I had to train my guys to look closely before thinking they were in drive. We run a rear push conveyor. I dont' know of that has anything to do with it or not but have no fear you are not alone. Jeremy

I have it happen occassionally. several things that cause this;

1. Improver layout of the wash. The concrete should be poured from the entrance - exit on an incline of no less that 1/4" per 10 feet. This keeps the car in contact with the roller. My contractor miss poured my tunnel LEVEL so some cars roll ahead of the rollers. For a 100' tunnel the exit should be 2 1/2" higher then the entrance.

2. Wrap brushes spinning too fast or have too much pressure on the surface of the vehicle. Mine will on occassion act like a HOT WHEEL motorize track and shot cars forward. I have to keep an eye on how many revolutions/min my wraps run (they speed up by themselves at times). This can be a problem if I run my car spacing too close. My roller spacing is 3'6".

3. People keeping their foot on the brake initally removing slack on the chain. This launches the cars forward initally until they slow down

Michael,

This happens to us with Honda's. I have never noticed Saturns before. But I own an accord, and most washes I go to my car rolls ahead of the roller.

Hope that helps.

We have this happening significantly at our newest location. I is with Hondas and Acuras only not Saturns. It is only at the guide on of on of our three locations, so I think that faulty flat work is to blame as "benscarwash" explained earlier. Strangely it is only the Honda production vehicles that do this. It is enough that we have had a couple of damage claims do to this drifting of the vehicle. To help control this we laid down fatigue mats (the thick rubber mats used in Kitchens) to slow them down and if it is not as apparent as what I have to deal with train your loader to keep the tire in contact with the inside guide rail. This should slow them down.

You can create a "Ladder" of metal stock. To provide some rolling resistance . I reccomend NOT mounting it direct to the concrete because it will wear it over time. If it is only in certain areas of the tunnel you need not so thewhole thing. Use a 24 inch wide piece of diamond plate however long, mout that to the floor and weld some falt stock to it (Thickness will depend on what you need to stop the rolling) every foot.

Try a smal section, say 6 feet first to see what thickness of stock you will need to weld to the diamonfd plate to create sufficeint rolling resistance. You may need to go to Bar staock. In one place I have lengths of 1/2 inch angle welded point up.

I thought too about doing this but I have a question.... what happens when it rolls of the stock?

Have them turn the ignition off.

We had the same problems with Hondas and some other light imports. Our first wrap would literally slingshot the vehicles into our mitter curtain where it would hopefully stop rolling, then the 2nd wrap slung it forward again.

We eliminated 95% of that problem by adding 30 feet of steel tracking bars to the passenger side of the concrete. Sonny's sent them to us. They run paralell to the rail, under the passenger side tire. The friction holds the vehicle in place. They work similar to the mats described in an earlier post.

We used to make those vehicles hold the inside rail very tight, usually resulting in stressed out drivers. Not any more. We can center load a Honda CRV and watch it track with the rollers as intended. Very cool.

Thanks for all the info! I was always curious about this, it had never happened at the full serve location I managed for 5 years, but just noticed it when I bought my Express exterior. Thanks for all the input

Mike

Thanks for the info guys...I've watched hondas roll foward of the pusher and even stopped the conveyor and questioned customers if they had it in drive. But have not seen any saturns do it.

Good discussion. thanks..

I have only seen one Saturn do it, it was brand new and was the SUV they have, i made double sure she was in neutral too. It seems to mostly 97-2000 honda civics that roll too.

I know this is an old post, but I'm sure its not an old problem. Having full service locations, there are no customers in the cars as they are going thru the tunnel (they walk thru the hallway). I had the same problem at one of my locations, and until I was able to get the tracking bars installed (which do work very well) I needed a short-term quick fix to this rolling problem. What we were doing was pulling up on the emergency brake just 1 or 2 clicks as the employee exits the car after putting it on the conveyer. The driver on the other end will take it off and the customer is none the wiser. Worked like a charm, but again this was a temporary fix.