a question for you chemists

Four man team per car, impressive indeed. Your operation is obviously bigger than my little husband/wife team in a 40'x40' shop. This drying machine sounds interesting though.....

Gina is offering you detailers an opportunity to make good money and to do a truly professional job of "reconditioning" vehicles.

After all, in the automobile industry they often refer to detailing as "reconditioning."

But, in the retail realm we move into different definitions of the term.

Traditionally a dealer would not pay to have a detailer remove the carpets and clean them, just clean them. If the carpets were that badly stained or worn the dealer would just replace the carpets.

Detailers, on the other hand, traditionally have not gone to such an extent to clean carpets.

Personally I have long advocated that if a carpet was that dirty or oily the only real way to clean them was to remove them, clean them and replace in the vehicle.
or replace it with a new one.
These are new times for detailers, work smart, not hard.

Bud Abraham

It is called a turbo towel dryer... I am not very fond of it because it is cumbersome, big, loud and constantly breaking down but it is great in winter. I am not sure they still manufacturer the machine. You would be amazed what you could do in a 40x40 shop if were working on these types of vehicles all day.. you learn to adapt to the space you have and make it work.

Very true, we can cram five at a time in that shop so we keep things as compact as we can. Im always looking for better ways to do the job that take up no more space than what we do now. Our per person average is about 1.3-2 cars per day depending on how dirty they are. We have a big overhead shop heater that we crank up and a bunch of pedestal fans to set outside the doors of the cars. In this way we can dry everything overnite. We currently get out between 45-55 cars per month this way if we plan our day carefully; that is to say, if we shampoo everything in the afternoon and finish all the cars the next morning and continue this cycle.

A couple ways to accelerate drying is to wet vacuum after shampooing then use a big bath towel to rub out the seats and carpets as towels will absorb a lot of water.. or put two turbo dryers nozzle down on the carpet and that will help dry fast.

Good tip, we currently already do the big fluffy towell step, but Im gonna experiment with this hot air dryer idea of yours.

I use a 6.5 detachable rigid blower and also have a hose attached to the exhaust port of my extractor that blows warm air and will dry an interior very quicky.

If you can afford it and you have lots of vehicles to dry out at the same time you might want to go with Tes drying system.. where you can add a turbo dryer (blue) to top, to force the air (see in picture) it has several hoses that can run to different places to dry-out. Or simply purchase a few of the blue turbo dryers..I know there are also similar type heated units ..but I am never comfortable leaving a dryer on all night with heat in a vehicle besides the regular turbo blue dryers are left running for hours drying out homes and are never a problem

[www.tesdryingsystem.com]

The picture of the dryer shows the blower facing the floor (I would put a heavy towel under the blower)
[www.detailking.com]



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/25/2010 01:49PM by concoursgarage.

An interesting discussion about drying the interiors.

However, I have found that if you follow the cleaning procedures that I have suggested and do not saturate the carpets/upholstery with liquid the drying is not a problem.

A light pre-spray to emulsify the oily soil and a light extractor rinse; and a final vacuum.

In a full service detail shop you get the cars in the morning and return them in the evening and drying has never been a problem.

Even in our current express detail operation where we are doing 30 minute carpet/upholstery shampoos we are not having a problem with people taking their damp vehicles.

We give them a floormat and seat cover when they leave with instructions to remove these when they get home; crack the windows to allow moisture to evaporate and take the floormats out of the truck and lay out in the garage to dry.

A little discretion in the cleaning process and mechanical drying is not necessary in my opinion.

Regards
Bud Abraham

When a carpet cleaning service leaves our facility I want both the mats and carpets to be bone dray... customer experience and satisfaction is extremely important to me.

I do not want my customers to have to take out mats and remove seat covers or crack windows to dry them...why should they?

That being said I do not care what process you utilize you are going to have moisture in carpets, mats and seats (even professional carpet cleaners with truck mounts have this problem so they utilize air blowers to accelerate drying) the problem varies from one season to another and from one vehicle to another depending on the density of the carpet, pile etc....Suburbans retain more moisture, so do Mercedes, Bmws and Volvos and in the winter or heavy rains it takes longer for moisture to dissipate.

Some of the reasons I do not like them to leave with damp carpets, seats or mats is because you can have an unpleasant lingering malodor caused if the vehicle has not been dried out properly and possibly left closed up overnight.. This attention to detail is what separates us from other detailing establishments and it also allows to correct any stains migrating to surface after drying, deal with any lingering unpleasant odors thus controlling the final outcome and of the service we have sold.