anyone else HATE going through automatic carwashes?
 

I can hardly stand to do it, but the thought of all that road crap caked everywhere is even worse. Drove it straight home and into the garage which stays around 45 degrees. Dried everything off including door & tailgate jambs.

Snow in the forecast Friday, Saturday, Sunday & Monday. Oh well - at least she's clean for the next 18 hours or so!

Hope everyone has a great Christmas.

I agree. Mostly because they never do a good job, are more expensive than by hand (coin op.), and are not nearly as personally satisfying.

Luckily most manual washing stations are still open here, unless it is -30 with inches of snow.

Yes the manual stations in ithaca have the same thing, hot water and are always open! i love it


sad that when i'm home in NJ i'd have to travel 50 miles to make it to a self serve

I dont mind. The one i use is touchless. Uses pressure wash and surprisingly its pretty good.

There's nothing more satisfying than seeing your "X" looking so fresh and clean. :D

I wouldn't dream of letting one of those 'instant scratch' providers we seem to have in the UK anywhere near either my X5 or X6!!

SWMBO has an E46 330Cd M-Sport convertible which never goes near an auto-wash. I do all three of ours by hand and always have.

Perhaps we have a much lower standard of car wash technology, or may be it's just worse maintenance of the machinery. Whatever the cause, no autowashes in this garage :confused:

Years ago I would NEVER run my car through a car wash, but lately old age is creeping up, besides I can't reach the top of the roof.
There is a wash that just opened here in Ft Lauderdale that I have used at least once a week for the past few months and I just today polished the sides of the X5, mind you its Black Saphire..probably the worst for showing hairline scratches, after all of that mechanical washing I did not notice any scratch damage.
Best part.....if you opt for the cheap, it's $3.00 and it even gets the wheels fairly clean.
After you come out of the "tunnel" there are very powerful vacuums you can use and I always carry a few microweave towels to finish up drying...not bad....
Granted the Boxster will NEVER see one of those washers....

Hand car wash at our condo most of the time, it is a dedicated hand wash bay with high pressure hose and good lighting, underground and heated.

Coin operated wand wash when travelling, as it is easy.

Touchless car wash when I need a drive through, no contact with the vehicle, although I am sure the soaps they use are pretty harsh.

I can't remember using a drive-through car wash with brushes, at least in the last 10 or so years. I remember using one 12 years ago, in South America. It ripped the rear wiper off the my wife's wagon. Do they still have those types of washes?

They do here in Australia but they give you a little plastic sleeve to put over your rear wiper so there's less chance that it will get ripped off. Still doesn't mean the brushes won't scratch the paintwork though.

I feel the same way, if I can avoid them I don't use them. Lately with all the salt on the roads, I have to, its too darn cold to wash by hand. First signs of spring... I'll be polishing and waxing that baby all over again. Its like a 7 hour spa for her!!

Hmmm, haven't seen those. The brush car wash was in Chile, and the cars got covered in dust (we were in the Atacama desert). My wife didn't see the brush damage the wiper, but we lost the wiper, and found it back at the car wash (Subara Legacy wagon).

My vehicle got washed by hand every day at work (execs apparently weren't allowed to have dusty cars). Since they used one bucket of water to wash and rinse an Expedition, I am pretty sure I didn't avoid any scratches that way.

We take so many things for granted in North America. I don't think we have any car washes that even recycle water here.

Required by law here now that commercial car washes recycle the water. Hopefully they have effective filter systems.

The environmentalist in me understands that completely. And, there are many places in North America with a lack of water. However, in Vancouver we don't even meter water for most users, and we spill all the extra over the three dams we have (on 3 separate rivers) for the city water supply.

I remember doing 24 hour witness tests on 18 large diesel generator sets (which were bound for Western Australia). We cooled the separate-circuit aftercoolers with heat exchangers connected to city water, dumping it at the outflow. The heat exhangers had about a 4" inlet on the raw water side. The customer's engineers (Australian) wondered how we could afford the water.

Australia is normally very dry and water supply is a big problem. Households have to pay for the water they get from the water authorities and things like washing your car or washing down hard surfaces (like driveways etc) are often illegal in some areas. There are often restrictions on watering your garden such as no sprinklers, only hand watering and then only at certain times during the day.
Mind you, in the last month, most of Eastern Australia has received some of the highest rainfalls on record so some areas have gone straight from drought to flood.

yeah I am glad I live in an area where we almost never see road salt, or even snow for that matter (except for today, we are getting "hammered" with the white stuff). But from 2007-late 2009 we had a pretty bad drought and there was no car washing...seeing OPs salt covered x makes me cringe.