Car Wash Blog / Self Serve Industry Blog and Forum
When I want high quality tools there is only one place to go….. Dollar Tree! I want to make a new face plate for my Hamilton ACW-5 because I don’t want to give any more of my money to Hamilton. So I purchased the fine tape measure today. I love the Warning “Always wear protective which complies with current ansi standards”. WHY?
Do you know when you get the “Unexpected Coin Drop” error randomly that the Hamilton techs tell you to unplug the wire harness from the coin dispenser and plug it back in a couple times?
I also called Randy Nix who is a Hamilton rep and he told me that there was crap on the counter switch and that was the problem.
Guess which one was correct? You know I really like Hamilton changers and I for some reason really want to like this acw-5. But it is a true POS. (and I don’t mean “Point of Sale”)…… I also hate Hamilton support. I really believe that at least 1/2 the time they give you the wrong advice. I know for a fact that one jerk told me to purchase the main wire harness (cost me around $100 and takes about 1-2 hours to install) then Heidi another tech said there was no way that was the problem. Oh and if you have a problem she is the person to talk to.
I drove by the Morgan Road Car Wash today. Greg purchased it a couple days ago. They have put in another automatic and gone up on there self-serve prices from $2.00 to $2.50! So since December 10th, 2005 they have only gone up $.50….. inflation definately has not hit the self-serve market!
If you are interested, the wash has 2 Jim Coleman Water Wizards: 1 is the original while the other is a new 2.0 non-profiling. It has 2 Hamilton entry units and also a Jim Coleman Space Saver pumping unit for the self-serve bays.
Greg left me a message telling me that 19th Street had been broken into so I drove by today and took some pictures. He said that they broke into the equipment room, the Hamilton changer and into the Unitec. Just in time for Christmas! I was surprised that the carwash was closed though.
Well my plan today was to get my credit card acceptor to work in my Hamilton ACW-5 and to talk to Heidi, a Hamilton tech. I actually achieved both my goals! But they do not know why my credit card acceptor is working now. Let me explain…..
First off Heidi today told me I did not need to install the main wire harness so I wasted $125 on that because some tech did not know what he was talking about, so that is pretty crappy! Heidi went through some trouble shooting stuff and she wanted me to confirm that the credit card acceptor still worked (I have to take it out of the machine) and she needed to do some more research. So I took the credit card acceptor out of the machine tested in everything worked fine. Then I put it back in the machine and everything worked fine. How annoying is that? Well, I called back Heidi and she also came up with a solution to try and that was to put a folder or cardboard under the credit card computer. Apparently the credit card computer and the main case touching can cause some voltage problems on older models of the ACW-5. So I will have to try this folder trick but I am kind of scared to touch the machine now because everything works again.
I installed the other half of the main wire harness for my Hamilton ACW-5 and I want to kill someone now! I am very mad at the tech at Hamilton that told me the main wire harness would fix the problem. Obviously my problem is not fixed! I called Hamilton and tried to talk to Heidi (which Randy Nix told me to talk to the first time) again they would not let me talk to her. I left a message with a random person and talked to another tech without a clue and decide to wait till tomorrow.
It rained all day! So nothing happened at the carwash and I did not open the Hamilton ACW-5 entry unit to repair it in the rain.
I got my main wire harness from Hamilton (48-1011 $112.99) and I decided to install only half today since it takes so long to install. This better work because this has got to be the biggest pain in the butt.
Talked to a Hamilton tech support guy today about my broken credit card acceptor (acw-5) and they informed me that I have a bad main ground and need to replace the main wire harness (48-1011 $112.99). This is going to really take forever to change out and I hope they know what they are talking about!
I installed a new Hamilton credit card reader (acw-5) today and that reader did not work either. I called Hamilton tech support and they said it was a bad card reader. Later I noticed that when either card reader was outside of the housing the reader would work. Randy Nix of Eagle Car Wash told me there must be a ground issue and he was going to talk to a Hamilton tech tomorrow.