You get a partial Car Wash tunnel remodel.
Last week, Denise and I spent a long, long, grueling week at our good Car Wash customers location in Bullhead city Arizona assisting them with a partial tunnel remodel.
I have been a part of a number of tunnel remodels, full Car Wash remodels, and outright new Car Wash constructions, and the remodels are always a huge time crunch, and very stressful, and this one would prove to be no different.
I wish pictures could do justice to the sheer insane chaos that is a Car Wash remodel. Imagine 20 to 30 people all trying to work on the same crap at the same time in what ends up being very crowded environment. The days are long. The rooms are hot and everybody’s trying to get their stuff done. There are always unexpected problems, people coming up with solutions on the fly, parts being frantically overnighted, and a lot of coffee and energy drinks being consumed.
This one would be no exception.
Denise and I were there in more of a support role as opposed to the role that we have played in the past as one of the prime contractors in a remodel. Our job was to basically cover anything that the Car Wash equipment company wasn’t going to do. That included primarily doing all of the electrical connections for the new equipment, but we would also end up working on the air and hydraulic systems, including building a bunch of new hydraulic lines for them.
Here is Denise buried shoulder deep in the ground, trying to repair a damaged underground conduit that was surrounded by concrete. This was one of those unexpected repairs that ended up happening on the fly and we had to come up with a creative solution so that we could pull new wire without having to saw cut a bunch of concrete.
Here’s a look down in the hole at the conduit that was never properly glued at the stub up and needed repaired.
Couple pictures of the Car Wash equipment crew installing some of their gear.
Here is Denise is wiring up the finishing touches on the photo eye sensors that control everything in the car wash once the car passes through the sensors.
This is me trying to hold my head together after somehow managing to literally RUN into an open door on the service truck with my forehead. It bounced me back about 15 feet and knocked me on my ass and I sorta blacked out for a second. 😬😬 I mean I really managed to kick my own ass.
A big cookie and a bag of ice on the large bump on my head made everything all better. 😄😄
At least for an hour or so. We had a lot to do so I powered through the pain, but as the day wound down I found I hurt in places I didn’t even know existed. My jaw was out of whack, my teeth were loose, my neck was jacked up, my back hurt and of course, my head really, really hurt. Turns out I would be sore from that event for about three days.😬😬
The Freightshaker, which is already struggling with a hurt engine, took this opportunity to decide to shit its air compressor out. While it is still pumping air, it’s also pumping just about the same amount of engine oil throughout the air system it would appear. This is a huge problem as not only is it making more mess than the Exxon Valdez, this can rapidly cause damage throughout the trucks entire air system and will require an immediate repair. Great. 🙄
This is the Mini MCC, or motor control center, for the Car Wash tunnel. This is what houses the computer that runs the tunnel, as well as all the relays and switches that turn on and off all of the devices in the tunnel. And yes, it is a disaster. This particular MCC has been remodeled a number of times and is well beyond its capacity. My job was to add even more stuff to it and also to try and clean it up some. It is a daunting task.😬
Here Denise is laying some power cable for new motors in the new cable tray and also letting me know that I am number one!😄😄😍
Some random pictures of some of the mess and stuff that we worked on.
By midday Wednesday, the scope of our work had more than doubled, and it became evident that we needed to do whatever we could to put as many hours into this job as possible in order to try and get the wash back up and running by the end of the week. So we elected to find a hotel room in Bullhead. Which is a great idea, except we were unprepared. So a trip to Walmart to buy some essential underwear and toothbrush type items made us look like hillbillies when we checked into the hotel with our plastic Walmart bags. 😄😄
We didn’t really care, though, we were too exhausted to give much of a crap about what anybody thought and we’re just needing a shower in a bed to crash for a few hours….