Lesson learned, make sure you drain it when you're done using it. I usually blow mine out with my tire compressor after using it but it started to rain last weekend. I thought it wasn't going to get that cold anyways so I didn't get a chance to do it, then the temperature dropped to 15 degrees a couple of nights ago. I ended up with two cracked barrels and containers. $200 lesson. I started looking into a new one and ran into this:

http://www.costco.com/CR-SPOTLESS-De....11762647.html

It's a good deal if anyone is looking for one.

 

Always been curious about these, can you really just rinse and leave it ? Does it leave any water marks that need to be dried or wiped ?

 

Bummer, sorry about that..

The costo is a good deal for the larger DIC-20 unit.... although I ended up getting the smaller single 20" cartridge DI-120 model which quite a bit cheaper at about $250..

Its rated for 100 gal for the esin, (as opposed to 300 for the DIC-20 listed) and it doesn't have the wheels, but it is lighter so it doesn't need a cart as well as being more compact..

Other than having 3X the resin capacity I couldn't see the reason for the larger models. The main cost is in the resin replacement anyway and that's proportional to how much resin it holds So unless you are detailer don't really see the benefits of a larger unit.

But you should drain it anyway unless you use it continuously as you will quickly get algae and other things and waste $90 worth of resin..

I just open mine up, dump the water out and then stand the cartridge up (in the sun if possible) and let it all drain out out for a about half an hour to get the moisture out of the resin. Then put it back together..

 

They work great..

I don't let mine just dry, although you can.. But I use an Airmax to blow it dry.. mainly to get all the knooks and crannys dry..

the thing is you normally use normal tap water and just your final rinse with the CR to save cost.. But if you don't blow it dry, the runs will often still have mineral in it and you get some spots from that. So blowing it dry solves all problems.

Nice part is you can wash in the hot sun and not have it all spotted up before you can start drying..

 

I have a commercial leaf blower I use currently, figured if I could just leave it to air dry on its own then it's worth buying but if it really needs to be supplemented with extra drying I may as we'll keep leaf blowing it

 

Thank you...ordered

 

Glad you could use it.

 

It never gets cold enough here for me to worry about that, but I love the CR spotless. I've got a pressure washer that I attach to it and I've been using it for 2 years now and I'm still on my first set of chemicals (it comes with one replacement). That's with 3 cars that I wash fairly regularly. It helps that I have softened water in the house, so I can fill up the buckets first inside.

 

Great, now we have to maintain the maintenance equipment. It's pathetic what we're willing to do for our cars.

 

The leaf blower seems to work well for me too!!

 

Thanks for the link ma991.
I will be ordering one.

 

Have tried both

The Leaf blower doesn't have near the velocity that the Airmax has.. Also with the hose it's much easier to maneuver and almost paint the car.. There is almost an atomizing effect.. Also leaf blower doesn't have filtering so you risk projecting airborne objects at the paint.

Blower works and is about a 4 where the Airmax is a 10..

 

I bought the one from COSTCO and it works great. I use it for the entire wash including water in the bucket instead of just using it for the final rinse. Using it for the complete wash leaves the car spotless with no towel drying needed. Wont ever wash a car any other way now. My C4S is red and water spots used to show up even after drying, on anything I didn't completely get dried or missed.

 

You must have got a deal, no extra resin packs in the standard product. I've started buying 3rd party resin though that works just as well for about 1/2 the cost of CR's

 

Filling the buckets is a lot of extra water. That's like 10 gallons (which is significant for my system (I have the DI-120) which is rated at 100 gal per charge.

The conventional wisdom is use tap for everything and then just do your final rinse with the CR (and with a pressure washer it works best). This setup has been working great for me and I can go a very long time on my Resin. I've washed about 9 cars on on charge.

Also the Costco unit is a good price for that unit. But it is the larger and heavier unit.. But the reality is, for most of us doing low volume, the smaller and cheaper DI-120 ($250) works just fine and is much more portable and doesn't need the rolling stand you are paying an extra $50 for. You just change the smaller amount of resin more frequently, but the cost is neutral since it's less resin..