“Not Responsible For Damage To Customer’s Vehicle.”
You’ve all seen the signs outside of the automatic car washes. When they are talking about “damage,” they are not just talking about broken antennas! That includes scratches and swirls, as well as dings and dents.
After your house, your vehicle is probably the most expensive piece of property that you own. Like your house, your vehicle needs to be properly maintained in order for it to keep its value and protect your investment. You wouldn’t sand blast your house to clean it because it would remove all of the paint from your house. Why should you allow your car to be sand blasted by taking it to a high pressure touch-less automatic car wash?
Let me explain. The Clean Water Act prohibits water run off from all car washes from entering into the sewer system, and thereby entering into our waterways and polluting them. That leaves automatic car washes a couple of choices for dealing with water run off:
A) They can collect their waste water in tanks and pay to truck it away to a recycling center; or
B) They can filter and then recycle the water.
Hauling the waste water away is a hassle and in most cases, is prohibitively costly. Therefore, most car washes filters and recycle their water. (Recycling the water also cuts down on the sewer bills, thereby lowering the automatic car wash owner’s overhead.) Recycling the water means that any road dirt, sand, and grit missed by the filtering system will affect how much dirt is being sandblasted back on your car at up to 1000 psi during the wash and rinse cycles.
To remove salt, road dirt, and grit without agitation (brushes) requires the use of very strong chemical cleaners. That is why automatic car washes use high-pressure water and strong alkaline detergent to clean vehicles which strip your vehicle’s protective coating of wax or sealant. If you use automatic car washes, be prepared to apply wax or sealant more often to ensure your painted surfaces are properly protected.
As for the automatic / drive through car washes which use rotating brushes to scrub the dirt off of your paint, they will get your car clean for the price of damaging your paint by inducing micro-marring and swirls in your automobile’s finish, making the finish look dull and unsightly. Avoid them like the plague!
Let’s not forget about the soft cloth washes. While at first blush these types of washes would seem to be just the ticket, they also have their own pitfalls. Just imagine it’s a nice day and the
car wash has had a line outside it all day. You get off of work, get gas, and decide to go through the soft cloth car wash at the station before you go home. As those soft cloths are “gently” dragged (slapped) across your vehicle, they are actually scratching your car with the dirt, sand, and road grime that becomes embedded in the cloth from all of the previous cars that were washed before yours, as well as all of the grit and road grime that was left on your car during the first rinse.
So, the choice is yours.
