Pressure Washer Surface Cleaner Troubleshooting Tips

If you recently purchased a pressure washer surface cleaner from The ROP Shop, you’re probably eager to get to work and start saving time with your cleaning.

We want you to get the most out of our products. So, in the event that your surface cleaner isn’t performing as you’d hoped, here are our troubleshooting tips so you can get back to work.

If you prefer, we have a video covering this subject that you can watch. You can find it here or at the bottom of the page.

Our pressure washer surface cleaners require that your pressure washer produces at least 2800 PSI. If this is not the case for your equipment, then you may not be able to produce enough pressure to make the arms spin.

Recommended tools for The ROP Shop’s pressure washer surface cleaner

• 5 mm Allen wrench (underside center bolt)
• 6 mm wrench (adjusting or replacing spray tips)
• Welder’s tip cleaner (cleaning spray tips)
• Small flathead screwdriver (removing filter from quick disconnect)
• 1 5/16” wrench (large center bolt; for completely disassembling product)

Tips out of alignment with the bar

If your unit was just shipped to you, it’s possible that the tips became misaligned during transportation. This can even happen for units that have been in use for an extended period of time.

Use a 6 mm wrench to correct the tip positioning.

If you’re having trouble keeping it in place, you can try using a blue thread lock.

Checking spray tips for clogs

Doing this before starting to clean can help to avoid downtime in the middle of a job.

Simply hold the spinner bar and slowly release the trigger on the gun to check for clogs. Make sure you’re spraying away from yourself (and anyone else) while you test.

If you find that the tips are clogged, you can clean them using a welder’s tip cleaner. These are available at welding supply stores.

Leaving lines during cleaning

It’s frustrating to go to the effort of using a surface cleaner only to discover that it’s leaving lines behind as you work.

If this is happening to you, there could be multiple reasons.

• Sometimes it’s simply that the surface you’re cleaning is extremely dirty. In this case, you’ll need to make multiple passes to remove all of the lines and get that sparkling finish.
• You could also check your spray tips for clogs that are causing lines to appear. See our above advice for cleaning out clogs in your spray tip.
• The arms may not be at the correct degree for operation. Arms that are pointing straight down will create lines and not provide as good of a spread, and they can potentially stop spinning altogether.
  • Fix this problem by putting the arms at an angle, but ensure that you don’t overcompensate by putting them too far to the left or the right.

Insufficient pressure with surface cleaner

If you don’t feel that you’re getting the pressure you should be with your surface cleaner, it could be that the filter in the cleaner’s quick disconnect has become clogged.

To fix this, you’ll need to remove the filter using a small flathead screwdriver and then clean it.

In the future, always rinse out your equipment after using soap in your surface cleaner so that the filter does not become gummed up.

Wrapping up

We hope these bite-sized tips have been helpful as you troubleshoot your pressure washer surface cleaner. If you’re still experiencing frustrations with our product, feel free to reach out to our customer service department, and they’ll help you out.