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CHASSIS CLEANERS ON TRIAL
Page 80
Page 81
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CM tests steam, hot-water and cold-water vehicle cleaners in identical conditions and evaluates their performance.
TO ASCERTAIN the relevant values of different methods ' of vehicle cleaning I recently laid on an exercise in which a steam cleaner, a high-pressure hot-water washer and a high-pressure cold-water washer were each used to clean identical vehicles, all of which were in about the same state. The machines were each run for one hour, at the end of which time I inspected the results. At the conclusion of the trials it was obvious that any of the machines, no matter what their cost, can do an equally good job of cleaning. But the significant discovery was that as the size and complexity of the machine increased, so the time taken to do the job and achieve similar results decreased accordingly.
When choosing vehicles for one's fleet the first question one must ask oneself is: "What am I trying to do with:the machine I intend to buy?" It should be the same with cleaning equipment. That a very expensive steam cleaner will knock off a highly satisfactory job, perfectly suitable for MoT inspection, in about 80 minutes, and to a
by Ron Cater, AMInstBE
level clean enough to repaint the vehicle in about half a day would be of little economic value to the owner who could find use for it on only one day per week. Conversely, to purchase a cheap, low-powered, cold-water washer which would take about 10 times as long to do the MoT cleaning job and could , probably never clean sufficiently well on its own for a repainting job, would be an equally foolish investment.
Cleaning agent The effectiveness of any cleaner depends on the quantity and velocity of the cleaning agent, be it steam; hot or cold water. Steam has the advantage of quickly raising the temperature of and either liquefying or emulsifying grease and oil. Hot water does a similar job but rather more slowly. For some applications it is advisable to use neither hot water nor steam and here is the application for cold water. The ideal machine is that which combines all of these three. But even then the economics of it depend entirely on the degree of utilization achieved.
The trials were carried out at the site of Amalgamated Roadstone Corporation (Eastern) Ltd's MoT test preparation centre near Earith, Hunts. Amalgamated Roadstone had placed three of its Foden eight-wheeled tippers at our disposal. The machines used in the trials were a Wickham Universal heavy-duty steam cleaner, a Kismet Champion high-pressure hot water washer and a Kismet Powermaster high-pressure cold water washer. The trials were not designed to pit the capabilities of one make of machine against another but to evaluate the relative systems. To prove or disprove the fact that a greater throughput of water gives proportionately better results, two other machines both of Wickham manufacture, one using hot, the other cold water at high pressure were given a short period of operation.
At the end of the first hour of the tests the vehicle being cleaned by the steam cleaner was in a high condition of cleanliness. The outsides of its chassis frame were clean enough for repainting and most of grease and oil deposits around springs, steering and tipping gear had been removed. The enginewas quite clean as were the axles, gearbox and wheels. There was still a considerable amount of grease-bound dirt on the insides of the chassis frame and the undersides of the front wings had not been cleaned. A further 20min work completed the cleaning of this vehicle to an adequate stage for MoT inspection and I considered that it would have required not more than two more hours to have prepared it for painting. Hot-water tests
At the end of the first hour, the lower-capacity hot-water washer had succeeded in cleaning its subject to a stage which I considered was about acceptable for normal operational cleanliness. The operator had managed to get right round the chassis from the second-steer axle on the nearside round the back to the second-steer on the offside. A noticeable point was that the operator had suffered a large amount of blow-back from his gun. He had not managed to tackle either the engine or the front axle or the surrounding chassis and there were still large concentrations of grease-bound dirt on the axles while the gearbox was virtually untouched.
I now set the operator to work with the, higher performance, hot-water washer and while this was obviously working at a quicker rate than the smaller machine I considered that the result was about the same. I calculated that the total time required to clean the vehicle sufficiently for MoT test would have been 44 hours with the smaller machine against three hours with the larger one. I was doubtful whether either one would have cleaned the vehicle sufficiently for painting.
The third vehicle to be cleaned was tackled by the two cold-water' machines. The smaller of the two employed a detergent fed into the cleaning jet while the larger machine was used with pure water, an emulsifying liquid being sprayed on the areas to be cleaned before the job was started. Once again the level of cleanliness achieved was good but it was obvious after each machine had worked for 30min that to clean the vehicle anything like so thoroughly as the steam cleaner had done would have taken several hours. I particularly noticed that this method of cleaning appeared to dislodge large areas of paint from the vehicle, and to remove any large deposits of spoil from the chassis the operator had to aim virtually at each individual collection. There seemed to be little spread of effect around the area upon which the jet was aimed so cleaning a large area took considerable time.
The two machines barely managed to clean one side of the chassis in their collective hour on the job and, frankly, I was not impressed with the results.
When the steam cleaner had finished its job the chassis was dry and could have been taken straight into a shop for fitting work. Neither of the other types presented a finished job that would have been popular in this respect.