I didn’t own a car nice enough warrant being wary of automated car washes until I finally got a Car I Really Wanted: a 2012 Mustang GT just like the one below, brand new, complete with Coyote engine and frankly not much else.
For the same $25,000 or so, thanks to my X-Plan discount, I could either get a 6-cylinder Mustang with all the niceties of the Premium package, or a base GT with 412 all-American horsepower, cloth seats, and a radio (even a single-disc CD player, as I recall). I didn’t even consider the six-cylinder, and yes, I got manual – but if I could go back, I think I would have had more fun with the auto. The gearbox wasn’t particularly good, and I found it a little too easy to money-shift the thing.
Anyway, I resolved to hand-wash the Mustang, but I probably only broke out the buckets and sponges three or four times before I was over it and just went to the car wash down the street. It never seemed to harm my wife’s RAV4, and I figured any harm it might do could just be polished out – if I noticed at all, ’cause the red paint was bright. For the record, Kona Blue was my first choice, but I was extremely OK with red. And it really helped the police do their jobs, you’re welcome the police.
Now, I should explain that my local Trademark Car Wash is very nice car wash. Not touchless, but nice. That doesn’t make it any less likely grit trapped in those slappy fabric belt things will goof up my paint, but the vibe is good.
On the other hand, I would not run my Mustang (or my wife’s RAV4, for that matter) through the very sketchy car wash at the 7-Eleven on the corner. I’m pretty sure I saw sparks shooting out of the doors once, I swear. But the Honda Civic I was driving before the Mustang? I would roll the dice on 7-Eleven. I don’t see how it could have made that beater any worse, but the whole point is moot, as I really never washed it. It was silver, I live in Texas, it was fine.
And now here’s Griffin, since he piped in on Slack and has a cool car. Sighhh … I remember having a cool car.
I don’t auto wash anymore. I stopped after getting my Corvette, as the turning radius is so bad it can be scary trying to get into the drive-thru washes, and I worry about the clearance of the guide rails. Now that I have an apartment with a substantial outdoor space, I can hand-wash my cars, usually once a week. I save money, have fun in the sun, and listen to “Summertime” by Will Smith. Happy Sunday.
Mercedes Streeter
I can’t wash cars at home unless I want to piss off my condo association in the summer or freeze in the winter, so I go to those wash bays with high-pressure wands. The cool thing about wash bays is that you can bring whatever tools you want. That said, if it’s a daily or beater I don’t care that much about, I’ll go to an automatic wash with brushes.
If you live in the Midwest or the East, I don’t recommend the old-school sponge and bucket hand wash job as your only form of washing. You have to get the underbody, too. Road salt has a nasty way of getting into places that you will just never get with a simple hand wash. Go to a touchless automatic wash that has an underbody blaster, go to a wash bay, or get a power sprayer and do it yourself. Either way, just clean that crap off of the bottom of your car! There are just too many cars here in the Midwest with pretty bodies that are completely rotted out underneath.
OK, your turn: What’s Your Automated Car Wash Policy?
Top graphic image: still, Breaking Bad/Sony Pictures Television
It’s illegal to wash your car in the street where I live, so it’s either $15 automatic washes or pay someone at a detailing place like $200 to do it for me.
If I go to an automatic car wash, it is only the touchless type. Generally, I avoid car washes (or they avoid me…the closest one is 135 miles away). We live 300 miles from the Arctic Circle and do a lot of car-washing outside down to -20F. You learn a lot of tricks at those temperatures such as hot water to the spigot, heat trace on the water lines, lots of water to warm up sheet metal to keep the water forming an ice barrier between the dirt and my wash-towel, drying the door jambs, and bringing the hose inside when it’s not in use.
Right now, it is getting above freezing and the roads are a mess, so we wash the vehicles weekly. December – March usually only merits washing 1x/month because cars don’t get too dirty.
thanks for sharing that perspective…i have never thought about washing a car in a location like that – fascinating!
The van (Odyssey) goes through the auto wash once in a while as does my wife’s X7-she has a monthly subscription and needs a clean car for work/family business. I shudder each time though, thinking of the microscopic layer of clearcoat I imagine being flayed off. Older M5 has only been washed by me and we have ‘a 72 2002 that I have actually never washed in the 23 years I’ve owned it. Just keep it wiped down with various potions and microfiber
I have some thoughts…
I actually owned a (brushless) car wash in Southeast Texas for four years at the advice of my now ex-wife. She thought it would be a self-sustaining business and great investment while the acre of commercial land would appreciate in value. Over that time frame, it didn’t and when we sold it, we had pumped $250K into keeping it running. So, in the end, it wasn’t a Breaking Bad business. And it was also not the cause of our divorce. It just made it more painful, financially.
The climate down there is very hard on all the stuff that makes carwashes work. 3000 PSI pumps, solenoids and all the high-pressure hoses that connect everything. Even the coin machines and credit card readers. High heat. High humidity. It was a lot of work and labor to keep it working optimally. (And I don’t want to think what it takes to keep one running in Minnesota.)
People bringing their mud-covered Jeeps, 4×4 pickups and side-by-side ATVs and spray them off in the self-serve bays and fill the sumps with material that even environmentally uncaring Texas considered toxic material cost a lot to dispose of. And it was not fun going there on a Monday and deal with the stinky remains of a crawfish boil dumped into the garbage cans only provided for people to get rid of Wrigley wrappers and stuff like that. Finding the occasional syringes in the parking lot was disturbing.
The local police were constantly going through the surveillance camera recordings to try to solve crimes, including a murder committed on the premises.
I have a buddy with a beautiful Audi S4 who always buckets it. Frequently. I’m kind of at the other end of the scale and while this was going on, the only time my car went through our carwash was to test a repair. I did bucket washes long before this.
Replacing hoses and wands in the self-serve bay that people ran over was an almost weekly chore (and expense). The local LEO weren’t really helpful in finding those people.
I’m back in the Pacific Northwest now, and it’s pointless to wash your car from late October to early July, because it’s going to rain and there will be stuff on the roads that will spray onto your car and dirty it up.
The good thing up here is that they don’t use salt, so the undercarriage is not going to corrode. Or at least not much. Instead, they use a mix of sand and potassium chloride to make roads passable during snow events. The KCl is pretty benign. The sand at a brush-based carwash could be a little rough.
But nothing like it was in Texas. And people don’t go mudding like they did in Texas.
There’s a local carwash chain here (Seattle-area, brush-using Brown Bear… you guys do a good job!) that has never scratched up my, by now, kind of beat-up Honda on the two times a year or so I go through.
And I guess that’s the benefit of owning an eight-year-old car that will never be a collector’s item. It’s just an appliance to transport you around to places public transit can’t.
TLDR: Be nice to your local carwashes, if you use them. It’s not easy.
I always do the brown bear touchless after driving the passes in the winter, just because.
That’s interesting, because the Brown Bear one I go through (in Federal Way) has brushes.
You can pick a touchless option as the mid-tier choice. On my daily beater I just use the cheap option with the brushes.
Which one are you going through? I miss the disappearing Pink Elephant sites around Seattle. I now live in Tacoma and the PE site there on Pacific Avenue has gone into decline.
Spent a lot of mornings at the Brown Bear in Fremont hand washing my Miata when the weather allowed. Wish they’d expand down to Portland!
My rule with automated car washes is the same as Emperor Kuzco- no touchy!
If they touch, they’ll throw off my groove.
Never use them with my Miata, as I’ve discovered that they sometimes spray water at a high enough pressure to defeat the seals for the windows. I’ll go the ones with the wand sprayer instead if Im not doing it at home. It’s such a small car that it takes longer to get a bucket and towels ready than the actual washing!
Yeah… if not using brushes, those jets have to hit it hard. (In case you missed it, I owned a brushless carwash.) My Accord never leaked doing the QA after a repair, but I can see how something a little more delicate could have problems.
In my humble and experienced opinion, if you’re going to go to a carwash, use the self-service bays, go after the dirty parts, rinse thoroughly and bring a few microfiber towels to dry it off.
Before that chapter of my life, I used to wash my car with a bucket of some car friendly suds, a very soft sponge and a chamois in my driveway.
At this point I can give no Fs about it. My car has been hit multiple times by people who didn’t leave “my bad” notes.
I just maintain it mechanically and not worry about its exterior perfection. Those days are long gone.
I loathe hand washing, I’d much rather live with the squirls than waste my time on that.
Pennsylvania resident, so undercarriage wash is important in the winter months. Plus I have no garage.
When I had my van–which was pretty from a distance but not perfect up close–and in my first few years of having this Prius v, I’d happily go through automated “soft touch” car washes. Hell, my friends described going through a car wash tunnel in the van as the trippiest experience they’d had without doing drugs. Some places turned it away because of the side skirts that were also fender flares, but the one or two that did take it did fine.
Now that I have extra bits sticking out of the Prius, I only take it to touchless car washes. Yeah, they don’t do a perfect job, but it’s still a vast improvement. Getting anything thorough done to the exterior feels like a waste of time. In spring and the summer, a nice rain squall will clear off most of the pollen and other detritus.
I get why some people would say “hand wash only” for their cars, though.
Side note, I hate that there’s no good equivalent to having squishy humans hand-towel the vehicle to dry it. Those damn nuclear-powered hair dryers for giants were constantly blowing the rain channel strips off my Prius and I had to have new ones installed recently, which took way longer than expected. But, they held up to those on the first time I washed since then, so here’s hoping they continue to stay put.
Never use auto washes. Back in the olden days (80s) when I bought a new Saab, I would drive it through the car wash at my preferred gas station at least weekly in the winter and less often in other seasons. This car wash had an underbody spray rack that you could select separate from the other wash options. It did a fine job of cleaning road debris from the bottom of the car and in the wheel wells. It was the quickest and cheapest wash option, too. This was in Germany. When I moved back to the states I could never find a car wash that offered the option of a bottom rack wash only. Other than that one exception, I’ve always hand washed my cars.
Hand wash only. But I find it therapeutic so there’s no reason to do anything else, especially in a place it very rarely snows and roads never see salt.
I’m particular about my Mazda’s wimpy ass paint but a touchless car wash by itself doesn’t get off all the dried-on road salt. So in winter I actually do a combo: I do a super quick hand wash in the warm garage then I roll my soapy car down to the touchless automatic down the street to finish it off. That takes care of the undercarriage and blasts out all the crevices. The combination is still only half the effort of a full hand wash.
I’m too cheap to pay for something I am perfectly capable of doing in my driveway. I just got a new power washer and foam cannon and intend on getting a lot of use out of both of them.
Chrysler yes, Yukon yes. But only touch-free. The truck, I hand-wash because it leaks, and the MG is too narrow for the rails at most carwashes, and I wouldn’t consider it anyway.
I used to enjoy handwashing and because my family had too many cars I would spend an entire Sunday afternoon once a month or so doing all the cars. After college I had too many years of street parking and condo parking with no nearby water source so I got out of the habit (and got old) so now it seems like work.
Unfortunately in north NJ DIY wand washes are basically non-existent but the closest wash to me is a tunnel wash with automatic soap and rinse but with a couple guys with wash mitts instead of the swirling brushes. It’s still very affordable and they do a good job including a dash wipedown and interior windows to get rid of fingerprints on the touchscreen and dog nose prints from the back windows.
This is how every car wash should work. Two guys with soft soapy mitts, then an automatic touchless undercarriage-and-rinse. I’m jealous.
If I owned something that was very special/classic, hand wash.
Every single other car gets slappy slappy slappy in a carwash that isn’t touch-free…because all the touch-free ones I’ve used can’t get the winter grime off.
I use the automated one for my 24 GTI, cause I’m lazy and its paid off. Now, if I pull out the 86 Cabriolet to wash it by hand, I will go ahead and do the GTI too, because, well, everything is already out and they are small anyways. Plus I need to knock the dirt off the weathertechs with a hose occasionally.
I only visit auto washes 2-4 times per year, mostly during the winter to remove road salt when a multi-day stretch of nicer weather is forecast. My ten-year vehicle’s black finish has its share of scratches but so far no noticeable surface or undercarriage rust issues.
Usually a touchless wash. I’ve figured out which ones use enough pressure to at least knock most of the dirt off. They never get your car *clean* but hell, my daily is black so it looks dirty most of the time anyway.
I used to shrug and not care too much about the brush washes on my dailies, but when I got a “membership” to one that let me wash it whenever and started washing it every time a little salt got on the car, I started to notice swirlies in the paint. Not enough that a non car person would care, and it’d probably take 10 years or so to eat down below the paint but I’d rather keep things nice as long as possible.
I supplement the touchless wash with a full pro detail in the spring.
My truck doesn’t get car washes. It’s here for work.
My fun cars get hand washed.
No, unless I am vacation in Perham MN. They have a great touchless car wash that just saturates the car with an enormous amount of water. Use it once per year. I wish I was on vacation more often….
Perham MN is great town as well. I would recommend going there. Well staying on a lake near there and visiting it often.
I have taken my 4Runner to the automated car wash for the entire 6 years I’ve owned it and have not noticed any damage to the paint from the car wash. I regularly see people with very high end vehicles (Aston, Rolls, lots of Range Rovers and G Wagons) going through the same car wash.
I’m spoiled, if I want to I can just beg my way into the wash bay at the family lot. Usually I just dump a handful of quarters into the u-spray-bay 2 minutes from home for my Marea and MR2. I know where to point the spray to be gentle and where to get gangster on it. As for my Lancia, she’s a princess, so that’s more of a very gentle 2 bucket wash in the driveway once a year, then ONR wipe downs when needed.
I do the brush ones for my frs since I daily it in an area that dumps salt on the roads and I live in an apartment. I’d much rather deal with swirled paint than loads of lower body rust.
I also wash it once a week or so during the winter since the roads get so heavily salted by me that anything less would be inviting rust to set in. I’ve found that the coin op and touchless ones don’t really seem to do much about getting the salt off.
Touchless or do-it-yourself spray booth only, no exceptions. I will not subject even the worst beater to the flappy-spinny cloth strips of death.
Tunnel car washes are so fun though! Did you have a bad experience with them or something?
I’ve never lost anything to them and I went through them with van quite a lot.
It’s fun if it’s the kind where you stay in the car, especially if your car has a sunroof 😀
Get the cheapest wash that includes the underbody 🙂
Wash it after the snow and salt is done coming down, and maybe one other time during the year
One of our dogs loves watching the carwash through the pano-sunroof from the backseat and the other definitely just tolerates it. Neither of them particularly like the wind-tunnel blowdryer at the exit.
It’s automated touchless washing or nothing. I hate washing by hand, and fortunately no longer live in salt-happy New England.
Given how often it rains in Seattle, I’ve never washed a car more than 3x annually.
I moved from New England to Seattle too. No salt here, but all the pollen in the spring and moss slime in the winter mean just as frequent washes.
I avoid the automatic car washes. Sometimes I’ll bring my own brush to the pay-and-spray, but I usually just use a pressure washer in my driveway. It has a right-angle wand that makes cleaning the underside of the car easy.