Okay let’s talk about High Shear Kits in general and the Evolution high shear kit specifically. Here’s the Evolution 13. I’ve made probably a couple of hundred of these for guys It’s really worked well. Let’s see. Here’s the template hardware I made for it. I add arc brackets, four jet spray bar, sell it as a complete assembly along with a supply line for 110 bucks I believe.
All a guy’s gotta do is turn a wrench to put it on. Pretty sweet deal. The only thing it needs other than this is a teflon glide, we’ll talk about that in a minute. Let’s look at this wand. This is a heck of a good wand. I love this wand. A lot of guys like it. It’s, with the addition of the high shear, I can’t even get under it low enough to show you what’s going on. But you can sort of get the idea, if you’ve ever known this wand.
Look at that general bend. It’s one of the sweetest wands made man, other than it’s plastic. It holds up, except for that aluminum plate down there, we’ll talk about that. So anyway, if you know this wand, you remember it had two jets, now it’s got four. The four are low, much lower, well about half the distance, they were about two and three-quarters, now they’re about one and a half. Somewhere between one and a quarter, one and a half. Anyway it’s a four jet. We’ve tried five jet, four seems to be the sweet spot, 13 inch wide wand is kind of irregular, unusual compared to what we stick with in the industry, but it’s still a great wand.
All the shear kits do the same thing. They lower the jets, they give you a more evenly spaced, broader distribution, hot water, closer to the carpet, better penetration of the droplets, and reach all the way out to the end. As opposed to the two jet, it’s made by a company that’s conservative by nature. They’re always losing an inch on either side. C’mon man. 13 inch is now an 11 inch cleaning path, hello, that ain’t good.
Anyway, Evolution 13, four jet wand, beautiful. Here’s why everybody likes it. It comes already assembled, ready to go. Here’s one, or two actually, for a Frank Viola in Fairfield New Jersey. First time I’ve heard from this guy. He’s buying two of them. Two Evolution High Shear kits, just let me name what he needs. I’m going pretty much medium flow and medium everything across the board. He’s getting a few swivel sets and some JoeValves. Thanks Frank.
He opens his priority flat rate envelope he’ll get in a about three days, sorry I’m behind making it, he should’ve already had it but tough luck, Frank. This is what he sees. He gets the high shear kit. These outta be on the store, it’s my fault, thought I’d send a few to Jonathan, let him get ’em, do his fancy photographs, but there’s what it looks like sorta. You get a supply line all ready to go. You get a eight inch QUD. And you get this assembly. It’s all stainless except for that brass fitting from Foster. You get that hardware I was telling you about. You get all stainless fittings on the back. It’s one of the better high shear kits I’ve made. All stainless hardware. Okay.
Now, we’re kind of going backwards. I showed you the wand with it sort of on there, or a guy putting it on. And then I showed you what it looks like when Frank gets it, so he can put it on. Now let’s talk about actually making it. See how it’s made, why it’s made the way it is, and why everybody likes it.
Yeah I wanted to show you the spray jets. You can see them on the store, but here they are up close, four jet, five jet, six jet. Four jets spray bar typically used for the 12 inch heads. Five jets typically for the 14 or the 15. Seems to be real popular with the [Mythai 00:04:45] 15. I just raised the jets up a little bit higher. Typically they’re one and a quarter inches off the floor. These are one and a half inch. And then you got the six jet which is your 15 and 16 inch hit.
And course all of these take the ultimate V jet. You can see here I make them all up for you. They’re all ready to go. This one we’re doing now is the Evolution 13. It’s using the one 10 or one five jets. And made up some fresh jet cleaning tools. So we’re ready there for more action. I’m going through those pretty quick.
Here’s some of the things you’ll see in a high shear kit. A protractor of all things, a nice ruler, Allen wrench, floor simulator, there’s the evolution kit, some calipers, messy, coxy, goop up mess there. Okay, so and then course over here we’ve got that high shear kit assembly that I was showing ya.
Okay, so here’s the Evolution Wand, in the position I like to work on it. Wanted to show you what’s involved with getting it ready to rock and roll for somebody. I’ve got this old used Evolution 13 I used to install the assembly, make sure everything’s positioned right, adjusted right. So you can see the U-shaped hardware in the back, the arc brackets, wing nuts, spray bar, QUD there.
And let’s talk about the protractor. Protractor standard one, glide surface, put it across the surface like it was simulating the floor. And then you can sort of approximate, visualizing the path of the water leaving the jet. You can visualize what the shear angle’s gonna be. That’s what we’re talking here with high shear kits: What is the shear angle? It’s around 50 degrees at this setting.
One of the cool things I do with these kits is use a curved arc bracket. Allows you to adjust the spray bar in or out and that changes the angle from here to, that’s not very much shear, that’s 40 degrees. Actually it is, for most wands, that’s very high shear already. It’s a very high shear wand at any setting. This is super high shear. But I usually set it about like this for the guys from 40 degrees. 45’s kind of the ideal shear angle. Greenie had it at about 47 on his green horn. I do about the same on a VT, which is a real similar wand. Eric, I think his is at 45.
And one of the first wands to ever do high shear, getting the jets low and multiple jets, and the spacing correctly, was the big brother to this wand, right? The Evolution 16 High Shear. Goes back to the HydraMaster Upholstery tool. That was one of the first tools that featured high shear. Now most of the wands have ’em. No more two jets like this wand used to have, way up here. Now they’re four, evenly spaced, closer, hotter water, broader coverage, more even spacing, means better cleaning, and faster dry times. The hotter the water, the faster it evaporates, right?
Okay, so we’ve kind of gone backwards looking at one finished, coming out of the envelope, end user installing it real easily. Let’s see how that went together. Basically we’re starting with this U-shaped bracket, okay. And the arc brackets that are installed, see the curvature. I used all stainless screws and nuts, locking nuts. Back here is rubber so they won’t move around on you. Okay, so this one’s pretty much made and ready to go.
And we’ve got this spray bar itself. Cool thing about these high shear kits is you can change out the entire jet flow of your system. These are one ten O one five jets, let’s say you wanted one ten O one’s, just pull off the whole spray bar with one ten O ones in ’em. Real easy. And if you wanna change the jets you just put the whole spray bar in the vice and use a half inch ratchet wrench and pull out the jets, put in the new ones. So it’s real quick and easy.
I use calipers to ensure that the jets are leaving the high shear kit right about the same spot, same distance from the, yep, same distance from the arc brackets. So if my, if you think about it, if all my jets are approximately same distance from the back of the spray bar to the front of the jet, then they’re all gonna be the same distance from the arc bracket down to the floor, which is what you want. And I did two kits for this guy, Frank.
There’s his other one. And you could see the same distance is what I was shooting for, about 38.5 millimeters on all four jets. So here’s one kit he’s got ready and I’m about to finish up the other one. I mean it was pretty much finished. I just wanted to put it on the wand to make sure it was right. But let’s keep going backwards. Doesn’t go this way, goes this way. I kind of standardize these high shear kits with the spray bar over on the right. If the wand was right side up the spray bar fitting connection that is, it’d be over here.
So you can get at these tiny little number two Allen screws, which you use these cool little tools here for. Which are made by this company here. These people oughta get a gold medal for the best tools around man. We should throw away Philips and regular screws and go to this Bondhus. This is a big one that you could use to adjust, to tighten on, like the old style Westpac handles to their wands. Super durable. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen these guys, but they’re amazing little screws. I’ve got two of these, been using them for seven years now. You can’t wear them out. You’ll lose ’em before you ever break ’em.
Anyway, these is used to tighten these little tiny screws. After we have, I’m gonna loose it. We’re gonna kind of go backwards, okay. I’m gonna show you how you can adjust this. Let’s say two years down the road your tech’s kind of messed everything up and it ain’t exactly hanging on the wand right. One day you walk out in the shop and that’s what your high shear kit looks like. No problem. Get your little Allen wrench, that’s all these are is fancy Allen wrenches. I give you one of these when you buy the high shear kit. I just like to use mine because it’s much more functional and useful and easy to use.
All you do is just sort of eyeball it, get it back the way you think it ought to be, and you’ll be close. Hello. Nope. Sorry. Let me grab it. Ain’t the first time I’ve dropped this spray bar. I’m still not right. Just get it kind of close. So it goes on there. Get it kind of tight so it’s sort of where it’s supposed to be. And you can see it’s still way off right. So just slide it one way or the other till you feel like it’s in the right place, and then either tighten it down or actually get out a ruler and measure it. I’ll measure it.
I want to go from the hole in the jet, the orifice of the jet out to the end of the wand. And on this particular wand it’s about two and three quarters. Hope you guys can see that. See it’s about three the way I’ve got it so I need to move it a little bit this way. That’s getting about right. Do the same thing over here, from the orifice out, about two and three quarters. That’s what I want. No problem. How long did that take? A minute? Maybe a little bit longer using an Allen wrench, but not a big deal. If you see ’em out of adjustment, you want to get them adjusted. It’s that easy. Wing nut tight is usually pretty tight unless you ram it into a table.
I kind of think of my high shear kits as like a guitar. YOu’re gonna take a little better care of a decent guitar now. Yeah it had the two jets, you could have thrown it through the window and it still worked, but now we’ve got a little more of a high precision tool, let’s take care of it. Let’s be a little more careful. We don’t need to throw it from 10 feet away into the truck, okay.
So there it is. It’s pretty much ready to go. We’ve just adjusted the left and right. What I didn’t discuss is adjusting the strike which is the path the water follows leaving the jets, to the carpet. You can simulate that with the ruler, like this. Like that jet’s pointing about right there, about a half inch behind the glide. Not back here, it’s not hitting the glide, same here. Once they’re right, that’s about how you want ’em. Somewhere between a eighth and a half inch behind the glide.
And you can simulate the floor by taking another flat piece of metal or wood or cardboard or whatever, and putting the ruler in the jet to simulate the path of the water. And measure the distance to the floor. ‘Cause this here is representing the floor. The plane of the floor. Where the two intersect, you can measure and see what the distance is. And on these wands, with this high shear kit, you’re shooting for about one and a half inch, and that’s what we’ve got.
I’ve already done a little bit of playing with that. And to do that, it’s a pretty crude method but it works great, you just take a tube and bend the arc brackets up or down, just the slightest amount to change the strike. So I’ve already done that on this one. So all I’ve got to do is get this tight and take it off of the wand, put it in a package and ship it to the guy. Make him a supply line and that’s the Evolution 13 High Shear Kit. So when he gets it, all he’s gotta do is these two acorn nuts, right? Slide it on, tighten it down, install a supply line, which I’ve made complete for your guys, it goes right on there, and then this screws into, another good feature of these wands, they all come with the Westpac Soft Touch. So that screws right onto your soft touch trigger valve and you’re back in business with a high quality Parker Parflex 540N-3 supply line, about as good as it gets. It’s what I put on all my custom wands. And you got a good looking little High Shear Kit for a really good wand.
The only other thing to discuss here is this aluminum plate, whatever you call it, that goes across that’s designed to hold the glide. They’re using a delrin glide which is quite a lot of friction relative to teflon. I wish you’d guys had put teflon glides on here. That way it would relieve some of that friction of going back and forth so many thousand times throughout the life of the glide. If you do that, your wand is gonna last longer. If you keep this delrin on here, as some of you already know, it breaks loose from this plastic bond to the head. Looks super strong, but it isn’t. I mean, well it is, after three or four years it isn’t. So you’ve gotta do what you can to preserve the life and the wand. And the first thing’s that gonna go and you can’t fix it, is that bond between this aluminum, whatever you call it, and the head itself. Once that breaks loose, call the manufacture, you can’t replace that, buy a whole new wand. 700 bucks and whatever it is. You’ve gotta start all over.
Teflon glide on here, no problem. You’ll probably get another two or three years out of it anyway. And that’s probably good enough for the value that this wand is gonna give you. It’s a really good wand. It’s worth putting a high shear kit on. It’s worth putting a glide on. It’s already got the soft touch, get you a couple of rebuild kits, maybe get you a back up spray bar for different seasons or different types of jobs.
Remember, that’s low shear, that’s gonna give you better penetration. This is high shear, this is gonna skim the carpet. You use this in the lady’s family forum or room where it’s not even dirty. It’ll be dry before you’re done. Use this in your filthy apartments, okay? Simple matter of pushing it an pulling it, that’s the arc brac system.
You don’t want to go with O one five medium floor, you wanna go with super high flow? Fine. Pull off the whole spray bar and put on a second spray bar. You can buy ’em on the store. Okay?
So that’s it on the High Shear Kits. In general they’re all based on the same concept. I make the hardware for your wand, to allow you to put a spray bar on there that gives you the right height, distance that is, of the jets from the floor. The right spacing. So you get the broad coverage without ton of over spray. And all you gotta do is buy it and put it on and go back to work. Most of ’em come with a supply line if they need one. Some of ’em I try to make the kit so you don’t need one. You just use the existing spray supply line that it’s got. And you’re in business.
Hope you like ’em. 110 bucks, delivered. See ya.
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