Ask the Best and Brightest: Tales of Car Wash Woe Please
At-home car wash season is upon us. I cringe every time I see someone cleansing their car by hand. I have never once observed a DIY auto scrubber use two buckets for the job (one for rinsing, one for soap). On the other hand, as an OCD sufferer, I don’t even crack the binding on the Griot’s Garage catalogue. Quite simply, if I started down that road, I’d never post here, ever. In fact, I’d probably start washing other people’s cars (my neighbors bless my snowblower). So, yes, I do wash and rinse my ride at an automated car wash. And then, sham wow! At one car wash I used to frequent, the owner showed me a secret stash of broken bits, mangled by the mechanical arms that put food on his table. Never went back there again. So, have you been a victim of a car wash? Or seen some poor fool get his clocked cleaned? Spill.
More by Robert Farago
Comments
Join the conversation
During the winter i run my Mazda3 hatch thru the local full-touch scratch-o-matic (its a daily driver lease, so i really don't care about it that much, obviously)... during one pass, one of the last scrubbers, not sure whether it was the overhead or the side, managed to get under the rear wiper and flip it out so it was sticking straight out the back of the car, my heart stopped because as anyone thats familiar with the Mazda3 hatch, the entire rear wiper arm is plastic, not steel like the Protege5 was... so up next were the blow dryers, and at the time this car wash was using "The Stripper" drying system, likely named for the way they drag little plastic wheels over your whole car and strip off any loose parts :) (they have since changed them to touchless blow dryers that look like giant turbos, but i digress)... so anyway, my rear wiper was sticking out, and i figured the overhead stripper was going to drop off the rear edge of the spoiler and snap the wiper arm off like a twig, well as i watched in horror thru the rearview mirror, the stripper dropped onto the wiper arm and bounced on the arm a couple times, dragged up its length and off the edge, the wiper arm survived!!! Not a scratch on it, still works perfect, kudos to Mazda for designing a tough assembly! I learned my lesson, so from then on i park the wiper straight up the rear window when i shut the ignition off, this way its protected by the spoiler, haven't had a problem since!
Why do you think God made rain?
I use "touch" car washes. I wash my car maybe twice a year.
In the mid eighties I lived in a suburb of New Orleans. I often went to a local Shell station to fill up and pass through the car wash. This was the type that had blue roller brushes that went from the hood to the trunk. It was free or very cheap. Well one day I was in back of a new Olds 98 as it pulled into the car wash.. This was considered a middle class dream car at the time. Unfortunately the small truck that had just passed through the wash had its antennae pulled from the socket. It was now embedded in the car wash brushes. The brushes proceeded to go robot like from the front of the 98 to the rear scrapping the paint off and denting it. Twice. The husband and wife in the car were horrified. Somehow I got involved in the drama (as I was a witness) and we all went in to vent on the gas station clerk. She simply gave the owners of the car the phone # of the owner of the station and told them to call him.