It's all about budget. I'm not sure what you mean about side work, I'm booked into February working 65+ hours a week now and can't find an assistant to save my life.

To your point, any device that saves time is money well spent. I can envision it so easily with the vapor blaster. A hot water pressure washer takes a long time to amortize I think.

Dang it! I wish you would have posted pics of what you were fighting. I used some stuff called Black Jack that I bought from Lowes to remove some goo that was in my wheel wells. Just sprayed it on, let it sit for a while, hit with a wire brush and then pressure washed it off. And yeah a hot water washer would have made a difference on that. I don't think a turbo nozzle would have done much good as that stuff needs to be softened before it will come off. That's where the high heat comes in really handy. I can lower my pressure and crank up the heat and have it go to steam if I want to. I don't use it like that often as it's hard on the heating coil to get them that hot.

As a side note, I'd look into ZEP products. They have a citrus based cleaner that people in asphalt use to get the asphalt off of their skid loader and out of the bucket. I'll talk to my cousin if you want and get the name of the stuff. I have used it before and it works well.

this stuff? https://www.lowes.com/pd/BLACK-JACK-12-fl-oz-Masonry-Cleaner-for-Asphalt-Brick-Concrete-Mortar-Stucco/3333888

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How many hours did you spend using the cold water blaster? Time is money! What you need to do is move closer to me! That way you can put my son to work and use my pressure washer.. and all for the small small fee of making my car look better! :D

That's the stuff! Worked great when I was cleaning up my wheel wells. Someone had put some stuff in there that covered the original white paint. I was trying to be careful not to hurt the paint yet get the black stuff off.

The gas worked pretty well but I bet this would have been better. I couldn't find it at HD (2 miles away) and Lowes is 30+ minutes. Will see if corner hardware store has it.

as long as I get some beer in the deal. :)

3 hours total on the car. I bet with a hot water washer I could have done it in 1 hour. So that's $200 burned. And that's the problem, I don't do enough cars to justify the $2K+ for the hot washer.

I'd keep my eyes open on CL. I bought my Easy Kleen for 2K at an auction and it was new. I'd guess if you watch CL you'll find a decent one for around 1K. But then again, you live in the high rent district of the country :D. If you want I'll have my B.I.L on Nantucket keep his eye open for a deal. He's a CL junkie. I'd still want something capable of producing 3000 psi even with heat.

Yeah, ya can't drive 30 minutes even if the stuff did work better and I'm not 100% sure it would but with my experience using it, it worked well.

I will add it to my CL regimen though CL is getting expensive these days, accidentally bought another car 2 weeks ago.

Just thought of something else you might try if you still have some of that tar remaining. Citri Strip is a paint remover that is citrus based (obviously). It's thick and can be applied with a brush. If you put it on and let it soak for a bit, it might soften the tar the same way that Zep stuff does.

That is a good idea, I used to use that for removing window frame seals before I found brake cleaner works so much better.

It's not so much the psi that gets things done, it's the gpm.

Adding to madmmac's point, my Easy Kleen is a 4 gpm unit IIRC. But PSI doesn't hurt when I can crank it up to 4000 plus add high heat.
Pressure washers are kind of like leaf blowers. Most leaf blowers advertise their air speed in MPH but CFM is where the work gets done.

The good news is I just dropped off the tub to the body shop I work with/rent and the owner (ex-Paul Russell) liked the cleaning job. Definitely more cleaning/sanding to be done but I was afraid he was going to send it to a blasting service.

I think the net here is as Nick says, keep an eye on CL for a good deal on a hot tank washer.

Once every blue moon I come up with a good idea.. Well, maybe not that often. What you need to do is exactly what my brother does to me. He calls, asks my opinion on something and then generally does the exact opposite! I'm not sure how well it works for him, but he keeps doing it so it must work ok.

The hubs took me less than 5 minutes. Trailing arms are 5 minutes each. Trans is 10-15 because of all the books and crannies.
The crossmember was the typical tar covered old looking part. Less than 10 minutes to make it look like new. But our unit is one of the larger ones.

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What model do you have? Please post or PM me a link.

It was a lightly used model. Around $25K if new. Probably a bit bigger than we need but... uses a LOT of air.

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