Quote Originally Posted by Iceman7997 View Post
Hoshizakis, "the ice dragons" / or Cadillac of the ice machine world. Well I guess it more lack of competition than anything. Yeah ok they take a while to clean but they are not even close to as touchy and apt to break down on the weekends than scotsman iceomatic Manitowoc etc. Plain and simple. They may take awhile to drop a batch but when the ice starts dropping its like it never ends. Bigger batches=longer freeze cycle=less cycles per full cycle=less chance of something not operating correctly. They are simple and it don't try to use all sorts of complicated sensors that obviously are gonna screw up with the water quality of all the machines out there. Just make sure you carry a few bin tstats, and a float switch and a control board and you're probably gonna get it up in running in a few minutes.
Yeah separated plates are a problem caused by LOM but hey they still kick out a good amount of ice in most cases that you will get by, and hopefully. Or you can buy a few Manitowoc and tell the customer to buy two so when there touchy ice thickness sensor needs a few trips from a service company to correctly set. Yeah I'm obviously being a drama queen but it fun to pick on ice machines cause I hate watching them make ice unless the waitresses are interested. haha
Yeah, you know, I can hardly find a good thing to say about Hoshizaki's cubers. 99% of problems with manitowocs can be solved by either cleaning the machine (which should have been done anyways, so chalk it up to a lack of maintenance), maybe change a ice thickness or water level probe, and occasionally a curtain switch. Just because a Hoshizaki can run even when the inside looks like a cave with snotsickles hanging everywhere doesn't make it a better machine, it just makes it more likely to not have its regular cleanings, which is understandable, since its nearly an all day affair. I'd rather crawl through a crawlspace full of broken glass and razor blades than clean a Hoshi, since I'll probably come out with less cuts and scrapes anyways. With a Manitowoc, once it slimes up, the thickness probe will usually short out, and then everything is easily accessible in the front of the machine, including the evaporator, water trough, water pump, and all the hoses. Manitowoc has really gotten rid of nearly all the cracks and crevices where slime likes to hide, something that I can't really say for Hoshi. I've never seen a Manitowoc water pump leak either, and a failed water inlet valve won't destroy an evaporator. A lot of "parts-changer" techs will replace the ice thickness probe instead of cleaning it, but most probes and sensors that get replaced really only needed to be cleaned. Sorry about the rant, I just can't stand walking into a service call and finding a Hoshizaki. Don't even get me started on a Scotsman Prodigy though...