Newbie Needs Help!!!

[CLEARVIEW CARWASH]

Guys,
Please forgive me for asking stupid questions, but I really need help.
I have a D&S 5000. I am having a few issues I could use some help with.
First issue is that when presoak is being applied two of the jets on the passenger side seem to be dripping the presoak as opposed to spraying. The car gets really soaked, but I think it's wasting the presoak. The problem is that the last time I had my chemical supplier/repair company there is when this started happening. Now they are telling me I need some kind of pump to the tune of 7-800 dollars. Apparently, I don't know what happened, but it wasn't doing that before. They also supply my chemicals so I am a little leary about asking them for advice right now. I guess I would like to know if there is a way to correct this myself. I have tried adjusting the pressure on the presoak applications, but i don't see any change.
The next concern is that I am going to try and shut down my spot free rinse. I have been told it wastes one gallon of fresh water for every gallon of spot free it makes. That seems extremely wasteful. I am in Georgia, and we have a drought situation, so I am going to try something different. I have ordered Kleen Seal with teflon from Kleen-Rite. I was using berry dry. I would like to know how to incorporate the Kleen seal into my rinse if I don't use the spot free.
I really need some help here guys. Please walk me through this.
Also can anyone offer some advice on what pressures the regulators on the board should be set to for all applications?

 

[lag]

Don't stop using spot free. Capture the waste water ,and reuse it. There was a thread no long ago, about how many of us reuse the reject water.

 

[MEP001]

One of the things I always disliked about the D&S 5000 is that the hoses are longer running to one side, which makes it difficult to get the side spinners covering evenly. Your service guy probably turned the air down. The line about a new pump sounds like a big fat lie, since a failing pump means less liquid on the car, therefore less chance of dripping. In my opinion you want some soap running off the car, but if they lowered the air pressure too much it will use more liquid, which benefits them.

lag is right about capturing and reusing the reject water. It's still soft and should be recycled into the rinse pass instead of wasting it.

 

[borumrm]

When you say two of the jets on the passenger side do you mean all four of the tips on the sidespinners or are you saying of the four tips only two of them seem to drip. What type of pump to you have that is applying the presoak....what pressure is it showing when it is pumping? I see a small difference in the amount of presoak from the driver side to the passenger side but not much.

 

[borumrm]

The air pressure setting you asked about show the following recommended settings in the manual:
100 PSI for the air treadle
35 - 40 psi for pre-soak (or where desired foaming is achieved
10 - 40 psi for the Power Gloss (foam wax) or where desired foaming is desired.

Something we did to get the cars a bit cleaner - is under a normal setup presoak comes out of all 8 top nozzels. We changed it so it only comes out of 1 set but we do two passes. That basically increases the dwell time a bit. Seems to work better for us. We use JBS presoak product with a yellow hydrominder tip.

 

[CLEARVIEW CARWASH]

Thanks Guys,
To answer one of the questions. Of the 8 nozzles, two of the front 4 put out a stream as opposed to a spray. It wasn't like that before. I agree that the line about the pump seems like a lie. Do i just need to adjust the pressure on the pre-soak? It has a presoak1 and a presoak2. If so what should the pressures be set to?
I would also like to slow the machine down to increase dwell time. They told me the only way to do it was to turn down the water pressure thereby slowing the machine. That doesn't seem right. Any ideas on how to do this? My supplier had "slowed it down", but the pressure was really poor, so I asked him to put it back where it was.
My final question is how would I go about hooking the Kleen Seal up in place of the berry dry/spot free. I saw a post about some people using rain-x and or weather-x instead of berry dry. How do I do that?

 

[Baywash]

I recapture all my RO waste water and reuse in the rinse tanks of the automatics. Simple to build and plumb yourself. Get some plastic 50 gal barrels, hose and fittings and locate somewhere above the reseviors for gravity feed. Set up a float valve to feed the reseviors from the barrels. One of the cheapest cost savers you can do!

FYI...I have a D&S 5000 and if you have a older model, you might need to increase the size of your teal pump for best proformance. The newer models have the larger capacity pumps.

 

[Baywash]

I just read your post about slowing the unit down. Sounds like your supplier does not know what he is doing. You adjust the gantry speed with the hydrolic valves on your power pack. It is not hard to do. If you have your presoak titrated correctly, you should have plenty of dwell time even with the wash set up for fast thru-put. You should not take more than 6 min. for your top wash.......just my experiance.

 

[borumrm]

Funny....decrease the water pressure to slow down the gantry to increase the dwell time....are these guys for real? The gantry is not powered by water pressure. You need to call D&S in St Louis and ask them to send you an operators manual for your machine. It will show you how to make adjustments etc. It will even give you information on some of the service items. On the tips that seem not to spray right....perhaps you can change the tips and see if that makes a difference....or maybe while you have D&S on the phone asking about a manual say....hey I have a question about why these spray tips don't seem to spray right can you connect me to Warren in service (I think he is still there)....they may have some other suggestions for you.

 

[borumrm]

Hey did you ever get this figured out? What did it turn out to be?

 

[petitemoose]

As for your spot free dilemma, I understand wanting to save from wasting water. You may want to look into installing a DI (De- Ionization ) system. Have a DI supplier install the resin tanks in the back room and plumb the fresh water feeding them. The tanks are 12" in diameter and stand 60" tall and are plumbed side by side. The output of the resin tanks goes into your current RO water storage tank. Turn off the RO producer and let the delivery pump send the DI water out to the wash. Looking at your location, I can see that you are in a good spot for some competative pricing so it should not be cost prohibitive for you.