Original subtitles

- [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!