Touch free car washes

[Mounted Madness]

Oh yeah, now I remember what I was going to say...I think it depends on the cleaning chemicals and the type of 'touchless' wash that's used. One of the chains in our area, has the same make of touchless wash at many of their locations. 3 levels of wash with fill up -$6-$7-$8 and about 5 minutes and you're done.

Summer and winter, these washes get the dirt, grime and salt off and leave you with a nice shiny car/truck.

Oddly, the one location with a more traditional 'pull through' wash without brushes, actually does a poorer job then the 'touchless' ones that you roll into, stop and the equipment goes around you. It has yet to clean the tailgate on my truck and is about 80% of the chains other washers.

A national chain had a new touchless wash installed - different make and clearly different chemicals. About 60% of the job done by the above described.

 

[Bird]

I hated driving a dirty cruiser, showed poor image IMO. Then again I pressed my shirts, pants and polished my boots, but there are a lot of the new age members that don't...or worse, wash there stuff and don't iron it...okay...off topic and getting P'd off.

Yep, hated driving one that was dirty, and sometimes also filthy inside. The worst was the guys who chewed tobacco and spit out the window and it was streaked down the side of the car. And we certainly did a lot of shoe polishing, but our uniforms were dry cleaned.

 

[bradm64]

My wife and step son own and operate three car washes, all with moving cloth.

Well cared for cloth washes will not damage your vehicle. My truck, which I have had 6 years, has been through well over 100 times, with no damage. (6 years, 2 times per month, 12 months a year is 144 times) and that is conservative. Many manufacturers even have the cloth type washes in the factories.

As someone else said, empty beds are important for trucks.

 

[2manyrocks]

Here's my patrol car story while we're talking about dirty cars.

Years ago, I'm sitting in Nashville general sessions night court. Different night duty officers come and present their brief explanation to the judge why the particular person they arrested should be jailed. All of them are sort of cool about their business.

Then one officer comes in and something is different about his attitude. Finally he gets his turn before the judge where he explains how he saw the defendant do this or that and he arrested him. Then he said, "and he willfully urinated in the back of my patrol car on the way here."