Re: Mechanical Car Wascher
Posted by Leeedy On 2016/11/13 9:48:43
~Quote:
Guscha wrote:
The time has come to wash off the salt, cement or whatsoever. As you will see later, parts of the apparatus are still manually operated, possibly to govern press-down time or to use human sensors instead of limit switches.
The car wash installation isn't brand-new as the condition of the hose pipe indicates (red marked).
source: Time Inc.
As for "human sensors instead of limit switches"... again, "automatic" or "auto-matic" was merely a term used to describe this kind of car wash, but it didn't mean that they were fully automatic. There wasn't one such car wash in Detroit in those days that didn't employ numerous workers doing hand labor in "automatic" car washes.
Even today's supposed fully automatic car washes still just don't get the job done without any human involvement. And the mere fact that a guy had to be there to manually hook up the drag-along also meant another guy had to be on the other end to un-hook it. By definition, this refutes the notion of fully automatic. But... that's what people called these washes and they were considered marvels of the age.
There were several of these car washes around Detroit by the late 1940s/early 1950s. There was one on Gratiot near Grand Blvd. not far from the big Packard Plant. And another on East Warren Avenue that was not far from the new Packard Plant on Warren and Conner. For whatever reason on Fridays, you could see a group of 1955-56 Four Hundred hardtops and Patrician sedans being washed there.This Post was from: https://packardinfo.com/xoops/html/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?post_id=184476