- [Narrator] It's where we wash our cars.
It spins.
It sprays.
It's powerful enough to suck up a bowling ball.
How about some tips for doing it yourself?
Or a challenge to clean this stuff off a $160,000 Porsche?
And how do you clean a train that carries radioactive waste?
It's time to clean up,
Car Wash Tech on "Modern Marvels."
(upbeat music)
(gears grinding)
(water spraying)
Why do we wash our cars anyway?
- It drives better when it's clean.
- It's a pride thing.
I don't really like to drive a dirty car.
- You just feel better about the car and your appearance.
- You get up in the morning and take a shower, don't you?
(laughing)
- [Narrator] Every weekend,
millions steer their dirty vehicles
into one of the 60,000
car washes across America.
- All my potential clients take a nice look
at my shiny black truck.
- I'm graduating tomorrow with a bachelor's degree,
so I want it to look really nice
when my mom and everybody comes in.
- [Narrator] The car wash industry washes
nearly 8 million passenger vehicles per day.
And more than 2 billion cars are washed
by professional car washes every year.
- Have somebody else do it, you know, and save your nails.
(upbeat music)
- Car ready!
- [Narrator] It's a business whose owners clean up
with 14 billion a year in annual sales.
The options:
full serve,
self serve,
and in bay automatics.
(upbeat music)
Quite a success story for an industry that began in 1914
with a couple of employees
washing cars by hand.
Today, the Bucky's car wash in Katy, Texas
gets the Guinness World Record
as the world's longest car wash.
(cars driving)
But one of the earliest industry leaders
and the envy of car washes everywhere,
was Cloister Car Wash,
located 80 miles outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
The owners have moved on to new ventures,
but in its heyday,
Cloister's innovative services were so numerous and unique.
- Number one and number two.
- [Narrator] People traveled from around the world
to experience a wash,
drive a motorcycle,
ride it onto the bike bay,
plop your front wheel on the slot,
get it up on the rise platform,
and commence washing.
(water spraying)
Got a dirty dog?
No problem.
That's what the Cloister Pet Wash was made for.
(soft music)
If you felt the need to cleanse your soul,
you could take a moment in their chapel
or stroll through their old time miniature town.
You could get a haircut,
check your email,
or grab a free cup of Joe.
(upbeat music)
But the majority of motorists
come for a ride through one of
the cleanest, friendliest,
and most advanced tunnel wash systems in the industry.
Despite its size and cutting edge technology,
Cloister's tunnel system
was built like most others,
from the ground up.
A standard tunnel wash starts with a 4 x 150 foot long pit.
Concrete lines the pit and creates the car wash foundation.
The pit has a 30 degree slope to the side,
and is six and a half feet deep on one end
and two and a half on the other.
This allows a trough to carry water
and sludge away for drainage.
A pipe at the end of the trough attaches
to holding tanks outside.
Encased electrical wiring runs the length of the pit.
A tunnel covers the pit.
And finally a conveyor pushes the cars through the wash.
Wash and soap barges are ready to do the work.
Now let's wash some cars.
- When we bring the vehicle in,
we load it onto a loading belt
and that's much easier for the customer,
that way they don't have to put their tire into
a small conveyor track.
We'll take care of that mechanically for them.
We'll spray it down first with an alpha line material
that helps to start the pre-cleaning,
and it'll also help to break down any bugs
that are on the vehicle.
Next it is treated with high pressure rinsing
that is used primarily to clean any hard to clean areas
in the areas around the windshield.
And it also helps remove the alkaline cleaner
that we've already put on.
As the car comes down,
it will self load into the conveyor
by means of the correlator and a sled
that'll allow the car to move freely.
It'll push the vehicle without any harm to the wheel
or the tire onto the conveyor.
- (Narrator) In the 1950s,
conveyors helped automate the car wash industry.
And one of the largest and old oldest names in the business
is the Jim Coleman Company,
located in Houston, Texas.
Today it's part of the Coleman Hanna Company
and they produce approximately 100 different
automated conveyor systems.
- This is a standard heavy duty car wash conveyor.
It's manufactured with heavy duty,
steel with rollers, chain and a hydraulic motor.
When a computer senses the car is in the right position,
a roller will pop up
and it takes about one horsepower to be
able to push a vehicle through the car wash.
This conveyor will push the car all the way
through the wash,
rinse, wax and drying process.
We have this plastic rail here
to protect the outside of the tire.
When the car exits the tunnel,
this roller here will go below the surface
to be reused again.
- (Narrator) The conveyor first pushes vehicles
through an optical sensor,
which signals the computer to start the wash cycle.
(water spraying)
- As the vehicle comes down,
the soap is applied
and it goes into what's called a mitter.
This is a cloth that is scratch free
and what it does is create enough friction
along with the soap to clean the surface.
Next piece of equipment is a wrap around.
Again, it's a felt like material
that's used to clean the front,
side and rear surfaces of the vehicle.
(upbeat music)
- (Narrator) The Hannah Coleman company makes their brushes
out of both cloth and foam,
each designed for a specific purpose.
- This is where all the brush manufacturing
starts right here.
We buy rolls of material.
This machine cuts the material.
We use a cloth material that we call a textile
that absorbs the water and it provides
very good cleaning results on the surface of the car.
We cut in small fingers
to be able to wash the car effectively.
We also have available a foam material
that uses more water and more chemicals,
but it's a closed cell foam
that's softer and more gentle to the surface of the vehicle.
- (Narrator) Manufacturers have designed
different sized brushes to cover
every inch of a car's exterior.
- This material is an extra wide cut,
so when it drags across the surface of the vehicle,
it provides gentle cleaning ability.
Whereas this material is for the sides of the vehicle.
It's a very lightweight material
and it's designed to clean under mirrors,
around mirrors, door handles and stuff like that.
Around license plate frames.
(sewing machines)
- (Narrator) Workers sew the brushes to plastic liners,
which are then inserted into an aluminum brush core.
- Just slide it into the segments.
This brush core is spinning inside of a car wash,
where it is washing the surface of the vehicle.
(upbeat music)
- (Narrator) And once they're in action,
the brushes will last for about 150,000 washes
before they need to be replaced.
Next comes a dousing of polish from above,
and then some scrubbing down below.
- And what this white wall brush will do is spin
hydraulically and air will engage it
to push it into the raised white letters
or the white walls of this vehicle.
It's a nylon material, nylon bristles.
It'll engage into the tire
cleaning the raised white letters or the white walls.
(upbeat music)
- (Narrator) A second series of brushes
removes the suds in preparation for rinsing.
(water spraying)
A high pressure nozzle rinses off most of the soap
while the wheels are under some pressure of their own.
- This is the wheel cleaner.
It uses high pressure with zero degree nozzles to apply
high pressure directly to the rim of the vehicle,
cleaning it.
The wheel blaster is hydraulically driven
and the computer will keep track of the position
of the wheel
in relationship to the length of the body of the car.
So it knows where the wheel is on every vehicle.
(water spraying)
- (Narrator) And finally,
a rain bar drops a high volume of water onto the car
rinsing any last residue from the vehicle
before it enters the first of two drying rooms.
Total water used per vehicle,
43 gallons.
Some car washers use more, some less,
but that's still less than we use to take an average bath.
Today America's car washes use
1.3 million gallons of water per year,
making the need for a more eco-friendly system that uses
less water and puts out less waste.
Many like the Cloister car wash
rely on a recycled water system.
- And it all starts here
with the water main that comes in from the city.
And this water is pumped up
and placed in these holding tanks
to be used out on the line as needed.
This is the hydraulic pack that drives everything
hydraulically driven on the conveyor.
These are the high pressure pumps and motors that drive all
of the high pressure water out to the conveyor itself.
These are the chemicals in the different pumping units
that will mix and blend the chemical
and send it out to the conveyor
to properly wash the vehicle.
These are the water softeners.
We soften the water
because soft water will adhere better to the soap
and allow it to lather better.
- (Narrator) The hard water pumped in from the city
contains calcium and magnesium,
minerals that don't bind well with soap.
The water softener removes them.
But where does all the grimy polluted water go
after each wash?
That would be in the water trough,
under the conveyor.
- The conveyor pit is at its deepest point here.
All of the water that is generated will flow
into this deepest portion.
And as you can see,
there's a metal grate over the pipes
that would stop any large solids.
This is designed this way to flush any solids down
to this particular area
where it will go out to separation tanks
and the solids will be separated from the water.
(upbeat music)
- [Narrator] A six inch pipe transports the sludge water
to a 2000 gallon sediment tank,
where about 80% of the solids sink to the bottom.
The water continues onto a second tank
where another 15% of the waste is separated out.
The water then enters a final tank.
There a third of it is filtered and piped back
into the car wash to be reused.
The remaining water flows out into the sewer pipes.
The captured solid waste will be vacuumed out for disposal.
Thanks to the Federal Clean Water Act,
operators must monitor water pollutants.
- If they exceed acceptable levels,
the water must be treated before it can be released
into the sewer system.
After the final rinse,
the car enters the drying rooms.
The first drying room shoots air onto the vehicle
to push the water off the surface.
Each blower produces 54,000 cubic feet
per minute of airflow,
or the equivalent of 1800 home hair dryers.
The car travels into a second drying room
through a set of airtight doors.
- We close the doors in order
to keep the ambient temperature
of the room high enough to effectively
evaporate the water off the surface.
(upbeat music)
- [Narrator] Then the Cloister car wash experience
continues with a drive over to the interior cleaning area.
- This is where your car will have the windows washed
and the interior vacuumed
while it rides on the conveyor belt
that moves the vehicle and the employees at the same time.
The employees will vacuum with vacuums
that are actuated by sensors
that only turn on once the employee
has picked the vacuum nozzle up off of it's holder.
- [Narrator] Once a worker lifts the nozzle,
it triggers a torrent of suction
operated by a high powered vacuum.
High powered is an understatement.
- We have a 20 horsepower motor,
a vacuum producer,
a filter bag,
a dirt collector.
This unit is capable of handling eight vacuum cleaners
at one time.
It is so strong it can hold a 16 pound bowling ball.
Turn it on.
(vacuum running)
This vacuum cleaner can suck up anything outta your car.
Sucks out all the nooks, crannies,
all your typical dirt and debris
that you normally would have.
As you can see it's so strong
it's hard for me to even pull the bowling ball
off of the suction.
It's one of the most powerful vacuums in the world.
(upbeat music)
- [Narrator] Fear not, employees are careful
with all that power in their hands.
- What I'm looking for when I'm doing this is any debris,
any dirt, any thing from outside,
any dog hair,
any loose food debris like that.
We try to avoid vacuuming any valuables,
anything that's of perceived value like change.
And cars that have children in them
often is a lot of Cheerios,
french fries, candy,
that sort of thing.
- [Narrator] And finally it's time
to make your car smell new again.
Of course you could pick up one of those colorful trees
hanging on a rack in the lobby,
or you could head on over to the fragrance machine.
- On this machine you've got your choice
of three fragrances,
cherry, baby powder, and of course new car smell.
Here's how it works on the inside.
We have three,
one gallon containers for each fragrance.
We have an air compressor that will pump air out through a
small tubing that will come to a head
that is designed to be sprayed into the carpet.
The oil base fragrance lasts about one week.
It's a new car fragrance,
it's the most popular
because everybody loves the way a new car smells.
(upbeat music)
- [Narrator] To get that new car smell,
fragrance manufacturers combine wood, vanilla, and citrus
with chemicals designed to smell like leather and carpet.
(upbeat music)
If you don't have the 30 minutes
most of our car washes require
to make your car sparkling clean,
and you're looking to save a few bucks,
there's the so-called all in one in bay automatic.
Just pull in, park, let the car wash move around you
as water nozzles sweep across your car.
- The way we developed this machine
is we looked at how people wash their cars.
We know that when you wash your car
you scrub down,
you go back and forth.
You want the high pressure to hit the surface of the car
and get a cutting effect,
cleaning that dirt,
pushing that dirt off the car.
The way we do that
is that we have a motor that is turning round and round.
But what happens is through the linkage,
we're able to take that high pressure
and we're able to make motion go up and down like this,
to be able to clean the car.
- [Narrator] The nozzles sit inside an arch or gantry
which sizes up your car as it rinses, soaps and dries it,
all in just five minutes.
- On our gantry we have four electric eyes.
These eyes are used to be able to
measure the height of the vehicle,
and that allows this boom to come down
and keep a safe distance from the vehicle
to ensure that we have good cleaning results
on every square inch of the vehicle.
- [Narrator] Not only is the in bay automatic system fast,
it requires little maintenance,
except when it comes time to clean the sludge pit.
- This pit contains all the oils, greases, dirt, trash,
and everything that's washed off of
the cars and trucks and undercarriage.
This is where it all comes down to,
the heavy solids,
the soils, the dirt,
grime, grease, grit.
It all goes into the sludge pit.
Thousands of cars have accumulated dirt here.
We have a vacuum truck that sucks it out
and have it taken to a EPA approved dump site.
- [Narrator] Like every other commercial car wash,
the automatic all in one must adhere
to the federal clean water act.
But there's one car washing exception,
home washing.
(upbeat music)
The federal government says
we can use as much water as we want.
And once we've cleaned our car,
we can dump it into the storm drain.
And of course, that doesn't mean we should.
- According to the International Car Wash Association,
a standard garden hose that runs for 30 minutes
puts out 150 gallons of water.
That's three times more than a trip
through the Cloister tunnel wash.
And it all goes right down the storm drain.
For some environmentally friendly home cleaning ideas,
Victor Scalco,
who is the head detailer at Mother's Waxes and Washes,
Huntington Beach, California,
has some tips.
Let's start with an easy one, no dish soap.
- It has degreasers in it to clean off the dishes.
It'll pull the wax off the car,
stripping your car of its wax
and shortening the life of the paint job.
What you want to use is a PH balanced car wash.
- [Narrator] Car wash soaps contain specialty surfactants.
These surfactants loosen the dirt from the paint surface
and suspend these particulates in the soap suds
where they can be safely rinsed away
without removing the wax.
And remember whatever the soap,
(buzzing sound)
you have to get rid of it,
and it could end up in a river.
Thankfully, soap manufacturers
offer biodegradable alternatives.
The surfactants of biodegradable soaps are made
from chains of carbon and hydrogen molecules.
After they are disposed of
the surfactants are flushed from the vehicle,
then eaten by naturally occurring bacteria
and converted into carbon dioxide, water and nutrients.
Next, don't give into the temptation to use any abrasive
scrub washes on your car's paint.
(buzzing sound)
That's going to take off the wax and scratch the paint.
The sponge side is better,
but it's still not the best.
- You're gonna wanna wash your car
with a formulated car wash mitt.
something that's soft,
that's been designed to wash your car finish
without scratching it.
Sponges trap dirt and particles
where wash mitts will let them flow freely
out of the mitt into the wash bucket
as you clean them out.
- [Narrator] Our next tip has to do with those white spots
in your windows or paint.
Those are minerals inside city water.
Distilled water and vinegar takes them right off.
- The distilled vinegar and water will break it down without
damaging any paint, chrome or glass.
- [Narrator] Here's a surprising tip.
Think twice before you use a chamois to dry your car.
(buzzing sound)
- Shammys drag particles across the surface of the paint.
As they drag across the surface of the paint,
they're also pulling waxes off.
- [Narrator] Reusable microfiber drying towels work best.
The pores in the material are tight enough to keep out dirt,
but wide enough to absorb water.
And they're available at most auto care stores.
Now hand drying is a good thing.
There's hand devices like Mr. Clean's
all in one auto dry car wash,
handheld devices that
attach to your garden hose.
Release the handle and the water saving nozzle closes.
Flip the wash into the fly soap.
But where does the drying part come in?
The manufacturer says a filter
removes all the minerals in the water,
just rinse and let mother nature dry your car.
No hands, no spots.
And our final bit of advice, wax.
- If you protect your car with a good hand applied
or machine applied wax,
you will protect your car for longevity
more than you'll ever get at a local car wash.
- Auto wax.
The manufacturer of some of the industry's most popular
detailing products may have changed their name
to Auto Magic,
but they haven't changed the ingredients they use.
The same natural wax and dental floss
is still found on their products today.
- This is carnauba wax.
This comes from a Brazilian Palm tree.
It's a very dense,
very non-water soluble wax.
- [Narrator] Too brittle to use by itself,
workers must melt the carnauba wax
into a hot kettle of silicon and solvent,
blending them all together.
And they have preservatives to preserve the wax and dye
to give it color.
- Now that we've transferred everything into the large vat,
it will spin for about four hours
while everything's blended together.
Then we'll have the finished product
that'll be ready to be packaged.
- [Narrator] On a car,
a layer of wax repels water,
and protects the paint against contaminants.
It should last for about eight washes.
Okay, detailer guy, thanks for the info.
Now how about a challenge?
Plaster on tar?
Glue?
Bird dung.
Egg.
Paint.
The works.
Now let's do it to a $160,000 Porsche
to make things interesting.
A hand wash in the driveway
or a trip through the local car wash
takes care of most of the dirt we get on our cars.
What about the heavier debris
like road tar or tree sap?
And what about those birds?
Ever try to get that stuff off?
Then maybe it's time to revisit our master detailer,
Victor Scalco.
- There's two big differences between a car wash
and a detailer.
Our car wash is there to get as many cars
through the day as fast as they can.
If you love your car and you want it to look the same as it
did when it was new and came off the showroom floor,
you need a detailer.
- [Narrator] Okay, let's see what a good detailer can do.
Victor has agreed to a Modern Marvels challenge.
We're going to plaster this $160,000 Porsche
with some of the toughest debris we could think of.
Oh, by the way, it's not Victor's car.
Victor is then going to show us how to remove it,
or so he hopes.
Our challenge starts with a crack of an egg.
- Egg, egg damages the paint under the sun.
Here we have road tar stuck to paint,
especially when the sun gets it evaporates and dries,
it's gonna be real hard to get off.
What a mess, paint balls.
- [Narrator] Some simulated bird dung brings texture.
- You know what?
Just all of it flat out.
Get it all on there.
It's gonna eat through the paint.
Nice blotch underneath.
Can't wait.
- [Narrator] We'll call this sticky glob of glue tree sap.
Add a bucket full of mud, pine needles, oil, and sticky soda
with its phosphoric acid gives us a nice overcoat.
- We're gonna pour this all over the car.
Let's get it on.
How you gonna get that off?
That's gonna be tough.
- [Narrator] Let's make it tougher
and bake it for a while in the 100 degree sun.
(western music)
Take it away Mr. Detailer.
(water spray)
- First step is get the big contaminants off.
Simply do that with a hose, soap and water.
The large particulates,
the large particles that are there
will scratch the paint surface.
- [Narrator] The pressurized water
makes quick work of most of the stuff from the bucket.
The pink paint comes off too.
That's a surprise.
However, if the egg stays on much longer,
the acids inside will etch the paint.
- You can see how stuck it is to the paint.
And now we have a etching
that's occurring into the paint surface.
We need to pull that off there.
The only way we're gonna get that off there
is with a liquid instant detailer.
By applying this, it softens the egg yoke
without damaging the paint.
You can run your towel over this while it's dry,
you can run your wash mitt,
but you're gonna scratch the paint surfaces.
- [Narrator] The liquid detailer contains
water soluble solvents that soften the elements
and liquid polymers that protect the paint
and prevent scratching.
- You can see how I'm spreading this around.
The egg yoke is really sticky.
It's not gonna come off by itself,
it's gonna need assistance.
You can see here I'm almost done,
but I can't get it all off.
So now I need to go to our clay bar.
- [Narrator] Since clay is abrasive,
using it might seem counterintuitive,
but when clay bars are made,
they're mixed with a rubberized compound,
which keeps them from scratching or damaging
the paint surface.
- The clay is a blend of polymers
that will actually adhere to the contamination
that's in your clear coat finish
and pull that contamination up out of your clear coat.
And you can see the stuff that comes up out of the vehicle.
- [Narrator] A lubricant allows the bar
to slide over the surface.
Clay is composed of mineral particles
which shear off contaminants.
Then they adhere to the rubberized compounds in the bar.
- Using our lubricant,
we once again spray onto the paint surface
to remove and lift any products that may be stuck there,
and in doing so we can use the clay
to remove the final contaminants.
I've just about got that.
I'll go ahead and clean that off.
As you can see,
the egg is now completely removed
from the surface without damaging.
- [Narrator] Okay. Let's tackle the dried glue on the hood,
but Victor knew this part of the challenge was over before
it even started.
- Wax preparation is key.
If you take it on a good wax
that filled the pores of the paint,
you can see,
you can peel the glue right off the paint surface.
Because I have a good layer of wax underneath,
as you can see,
the glue is coming completely off.
The wax fills the pores of the paint,
not allowing any glue to stick to the paint surface.
- [Narrator] If you park under a tree,
you better make sure your car has a good wax.
And then there's the road tar.
This stuff has some powerful adhesive properties
and getting it off will require something with some bite.
- I am worried about this tar,
so we're gonna get right to it.
The bug and tar remover uses a chemical
to remove the tar.
Let that sit a moment
and then you should be able to pull off your tar
without damaging the paint below.
As the tar starts to break down,
you can see how it smears on the vehicle.
It starts to smear off into the towel.
And it's at this point
that I can continue breaking that tar down.
- [Narrator] The solvents in the tar remover home in
on there in intended target
without causing any collateral damage.
- Paint by nature is a hardened substance.
This tar that's on top of the paint is a softer substance
that's hardened on top of the paint surface.
So what we have here is a situation where chemicals have
been designed strictly for removing a contaminant,
such as road tar,
that don't hurt the paint surface.
And last but not least,
the dreaded bird dropping.
How many times have you come out and seen that?
Two products.
This will remove the contaminants from the bird poop,
and this will remove the damage done by the bird poop.
All right,
first thing you wanna do very similar to the egg
is you wanna remove the heavy contaminants
off the surface.
In doing so,
you're gonna soften it up with the spray wax.
The reason we're using your spray wax.
Anything else is you need a good lubricant to have the
product slide off the paint without damaging the paint
surface.
So as you can see here,
we've got the dung pretty much out of the way,
The bird poop.
We're gonna discard of that.
- [Narrator] After Victor has removed the lubricated dung,
he clears the leftovers with a cleaner wax.
Made of synthetic polishes and waxes,
it removes any markings left from the dung.
Next, a thorough wash
and a good waxing
leaves it bright and shiny.
(upbeat music)
Victor can return the Porsche to the unsuspecting owner
better than before.
This is the Clive Utah disposal facility.
One of several federally funded sites across the US
where low level radioactive waste from excavated soil
is sent to die.
Specialized train cars hold the contaminated earth
from a variety of locations
scattered around the US.
It's up to workers to remove it,
store it,
and then clean the rail cars
so that they can return for another pickup.
Welcome to the nuclear car wash.
- These rail cars,
they're basically filled with soils that were contaminated
during the research and development of nuclear weapons
during the Cold War.
- [Narrator] Before these rail cars can be cleaned,
the radioactive waste has to be removed.
During the winter months,
the rail cars travel through subzero temperatures,
which freezes the contaminated soil into blocks of ice.
So when they arrive,
a locomotive pushes the cars into the
specialty designed thaw room.
- Waste comes in and it's frozen to a point
where it cannot be dumped out of the rail car.
We've developed this thaw building
to remove the ice from the soils,
which enable it to be dumped.
This thaw building consists of 84 high infrared heaters
that heat the car from both the sides
and the bottom of the rail car.
To give you an idea,
two of these heaters that heat the sides of the car
could actually heat a 2,500 square foot home.
It takes about 48 minutes to go all the way down
through this process.
- [Narrator] Once the radioactive soil is thawed,
the car is rolled into a gigantic cylinder,
the rotary dump.
The top is lifted off
and a 75 horsepower motor drives a set of gears,
which flip the quarter million pound train car on its side.
- Each ring has 80,000 pounds of counterweight
on the top of the ring.
- [Narrator] That weight balances out
the weight of the rail car,
which allows the 75 horsepower motor to turn the car over.
(water spraying)
Now it's time to begin
the first stage of the rail car washing.
Workers unleash high pressure water cannons
on the cars interior.
- The water cannon operates at 300 gallons a minute and 90 PSI.
It gives us the ability to clean the radio activity
and soil from the rail car.
If you'll notice, all it takes is water.
It doesn't take any chemicals
to release that radio activity.
We're not trying to break down the radio activity,
we're just trying to wash it out and clean the rail car
for future use.
- [Narrator] An underground pipe system
carries the water used to clean the train car
to a lined holding pond.
As for the radioactive dirt,
trucks haul it to an isolated area on the compound
where it will sit for a hundred years while it decays.
With the inside water blasted clean,
the outside of the train car is now ready to be washed.
Similar to the car wash,
the train is transported on a conveyor
and all of the cleaning functions are activated.
- The automatic wash is triggered by the photo eye.
When the exterior of the vehicle
crosses this photo eye here,
the wash system will activate
and the chemical arch will start up.
It connects itself to the indexer,
which is our conveyor for the vehicle
through the automatic wash.
The chemical is applied in an efficient manner by
determining how much water and soap it takes to cover the
surface as it goes by at one foot per second.
This space between the chemical arch
and the spinner arch is designed to allow the chemical
the time it takes to clean the soils off of the surface of
the vehicle.
The spinner is gonna apply high pressure,
high volume water to the surface of the vehicle
to efficiently clean the vehicle
of all of the contaminated surfaces.
The blowers are gonna come on after the spinners
and the blowers are gonna blow the water off.
- [Narrator] Finally, the conveyor moves the rail car
through radiation detectors.
If the detectors register a level safe enough
to transport food,
the train car exits the building
and hits the rail for another pickup.
(water spraying)
The stakes aren't quite as high
for this industrial wash system.
Although a truck's lifespan depends on it,
it's a tire and undercarriage wash,
built by Stanton Systems
to clean the trucks that dump salt on the highway during a
snow storm to hasten melting.
Salt can literally destroy a truck's underside,
so getting it off is crucial.
- This is a salt truck just in after salting.
As you can see,
it's loaded with salt it all over the place,
under the vehicle,
up through all the equipment,
corroding it,
eating it,
destroying the truck.
This is the plow.
As you can see the salts all over it too.
- [Narrator] The wash design is simple enough.
A 2,400 gallon water tank sits below the wash.
A pump sends water from the tank through its 70 jets
that line the wash area.
After the jets rinse wash off the salt,
the water falls through grates
and into a sloped catch basin.
Solids move to the bottom of the basin
while pipes recycle the water back to the water tank.
- The water contains no soap.
It has a chemical in it to buffer out the corrosive nature
of the salt.
The pressure of the wash is around 60 PSI
and about 600 gallons a minute.
Enough to wash salt off this moving vehicle.
- [Narrator] That's a lot of water, but it's all recycled.
When it turns milky white with salt,
usually after a couple of heavy snowstorms,
the water is replaced.
- As the truck goes in, the plow is washed first.
The sides of the trucks are washed.
The undercarriage then is washed.
All the equipment on the side of the truck,
the underneath of the truck,
all the harnesses,
the eye beams,
and all the hardware on back of the truck are washed.
- [Narrator] Stanton also makes portable systems.
It can be up and running in less than a day.
Of course, most of us don't need an industrial wash.
But would you believe car manufacturers are designing cars
with a car wash in mind.
(upbeat music)
Modern cars aren't just designed to weather the elements,
they're also designed to survive the car wash.
That means manufacturers like Hyundai
in Montgomery, Alabama
have to secure cars, every nook and cranny.
And that starts inside the paint shop
where robotic arms coat cars with four layers of paint,
a primer,
two color coats,
and a final acrylic layer called the clear coat.
- And that's really there to product against scratching,
and miring the wire brushes,
the cloth brushes,
any mechanism that rolls against
the surface of the car, that's what the clear coat protects.
- [Narrator] Next workers start closing up any gaps.
Take the sunroof, for example.
- The two elements in a car wash
that we're trying to control is air and water.
So the critical feature of a sunroof
to control air and water from entering the cabin
is the seal.
You can see the seal along the glass.
It meets up to the body and that prevents water and air from
intruding into the cabin
while we're moving through the car wash.
- [Narrator] Hyundai designers have built a gutter
around the sunroof to collect water.
Plastic tubing takes it from there.
- The tubing that you see is designed to carry the water
away from the sunroof out of the gutter
and out through the body,
as it's threaded through the body
and out to the natural environment.
- [Narrator] There was a time when automakers
used to put wipers high up on the windshield.
- Today we try to design the windshield wipers
so they're tucked underneath the surface of the hood.
So any of the brushes or the mechanisms in a car wash
don't have an opportunity to grab the wiper,
yank it off the glass,
or destroy the structure of the wiper.
So when we put the hood down,
that's where you can really see that this surface sits above
the top of the windshield
so when the wiper blades come or the washing blades come,
it can't catch below the wiper.
- [Narrator] Then there's that graded area
between the top of the hood
and the base of the windshield.
That's the air intake for the heating and air conditioning
systems and a potential water collection area.
- The water runs down the windshield.
It'll go through the grill feature in the cover cowl top.
So the cowl inner is designed to carry the water away
from the air conditioning and heater opening
so that we don't suck water into those systems.
So we have a drain designed that has an opening
on the right hand side and left hand side.
The water flows through there,
out onto the ground and not into the cabin where the
customer is. That is specifically designed to protect
against the car wash environment.
- [Narrator] Remember those steel bumpers
that protruded beyond the body frame,
not good inside a car wash.
- The brushes in the car wash on the older cars could get
caught in that bumper system.
So today you have a plastic,
what we call a fascia
that covers the actual bumper structure.
So there aren't any exposed corners
or exposed features that a brush could catch.
- [Narrator] And let's not forget
these old inflexible side mirrors.
The spinning side brushes
could break them right off the car.
- Structure of the mirror is absolutely something that we
consider and we design for in the car wash environment.
We have three connection points.
This provides a three point base.
That's the strongest base that you can have.
You always wanna have kind of a tripod type design.
And then on the exterior,
we have a molded in plastic base and housing that covers the
actual physical structure of the mirror,
but both of these elements
are designed so that it won't fracture,
it won't move, won't vibrate,
won't cause any problems in the car wash.
- [Narrator] The underbelly has its own
set of car wash obstacles.
- With the high pressure spray,
any of the components under the vehicle,
especially wire harnesses like we have here,
you wanna make sure they're water tight.
These brake lines,
you can see they're tucked in underneath the structure.
Then we have a plastic protector to cover them as well.
We have plugs that come in here.
We have a sealant that goes under the body.
Those are all designed to protect against
conveyor systems, high pressure spray,
make sure everything's water tight and protected.
- [Narrator] Once everything is assembled,
Hyundai tests their vehicles inside their very own car wash.
The water pressure is intense.
It's nearly three times that of a typical car wash.
- Shower test is where theory meets practice.
There's 400 high pressure heads
that spray water on the vehicle,
and we wanna make sure that everything is sealed,
there's no electrical shortages.
All the features that we design into the vehicle
to protect against the car wash environment,
this is where we judge
and make sure it's running the way we want it.
- [Narrator] After a thorough dry glove inspection,
the vehicle gets the green light.
Good to go.
It's now safe to enter that modern institution called
the car wash.
It may not make your car go faster,
or get you better mileage,
but if cleanliness is indeed next to godliness,
then all hail the car wash.
- Car ready!