Have you been drinking?

We Z drivers always keep things legal, but I think HE WAS IN THE CAR WASH!!!

:happydance:

:tup:

I always make sure I hand wash the Z, but off late with the cold weather when I have been getting lazy and have taken it to the touchless automatic. But I get my washes for free there since the managers daughter is my friend. :tup:

+1 here in Germany we do have winter. The car washes at the newest stations are great and you see all kinds of power using them. R8, C4S etc. I hand wash summer, spring and fall. Winter if I can, machine wash(cloth etc) when needed. Plus those machine systems at the stations have a nice under-body wash to counteract the salt etc. There is nothing wrong with that when its necessary and to use a good machine soft tech sytem.

In fact it was washed in a machine at my fave Aral station near Stuttgart yesterday after a nice little road trip! These here also dry automatically. NO hand drying at all. I hand dry after on the site of course. Zero issues thus far and in the winter its nice to have an option rather than by hand when its very bad weather out.

Haha, the first thing that would rub is the deflector forward of the front tires. I would just take those off during the winter (3bolts and just put some tape over the screw holes to prevent rust or screw them back in if the bolts don't bottom out) and run it through if that was my only choice. :)

I luv my G (dd) but she will be going through the car wash next wk if temps are too low to wash at home.

Hand wash only for me. If absolutely necessary I MIGHT consider not taking it to a touchless wash system, and go grab a bucket! :)

Btw, those screws fall out by vibration if you don't torque them in snug.

Ahhhh...the Swirl-o-Matic!

Even 'touchless' can / will damage your paint. First of all, a lot of them aren't actually 'touchless' - they just don't have the big spinning brushes, but still use hang cloths or other methods to agitate.

If they are truly touchless, here's what happens: The 100 mph stream of water blasts the dirt off your paint, the dirt gets blasted back into the stream of water, and said dirt that just came off your paint gets blasted back into it at 100 mph. Over and over. And over.

You don't run into this with a garden hose becasue you don't have the velocity and volume that you do with a commercial wash.

Also, if it's hand dried after this, that's where you really increase your damage. I don't care how hard you blast soap and water at it, it won't be clean. Then some guy making $5.75 an hour picks up a towel that he's used on a dozen other cars, that's probably been dropped on the ground a few times, and proceeds to wipe not only the dirt and dust that's left on your car all over it, but the dirt from everyone else's too.

In the winter, I'll use a spray it yourself wash just to get salt & all off, but I'll never dry a car in the winter. Unless I'm 100% certain I can wipe down any area of the paint w/o picking up any dirt on my towel, it doesn't get dried.

I used a touchless car wash yesterday, and dried it down and waxed it afterwords. When its 30 degrees outside, it seems to be the best option in my eyes.

:tup: :tup: :tup:

I'll do touchless on a very RARE occasion,but only with a good coat of Wax protecting the paint. Most touchless car washes use acid based soaps in order to do a thorough job at removing dirt. Too much exposure to the touchless eats up at the clearcoat.
Meguiars gold class soap or turtle wax ice and a bucket works excellent. A high quality non abrasive microfiber sponge, a nice shade, lukewarm filtered water, high end detail drying cloths, quik detailer, clay, polish, wax and buff the car off with a detailers buffing cloth. Every evening after the wash I dust off the car. Every 5 days, give or take a day or 2, I quik detail and quik wax. After the quik wax, I buff the car out with a detailiers, buffing cloth, done
If regular maintenence keeps the car clean for a long period of time? I may only water wash every 5 weeks give or take 1 week. If I notice I'm getting build-up from having to quik detail or quik wax too often? I will wash sooner.
The interior I vaccuum weekly. I use cleaners on the plastics about every 3-4 weeks. The leather area I use a leather clean cond. Every 6wks.

My car almost always looks showroom or better than showroom. It costs about $180 for the supplies. And I get about thousands of $$$$ in in detailings and washing done when I do it myself.

This is exactly what I do on cold days. Lol.

:tup:

i would rather wait and hand wash my car than risk taking it to an auto wash.

just fill some buckets with hot water and wash in your driveway. Put on a winter hat.

either kind of car wash is bad IMO. Touchless uses harsher chemicals to eat through dirt without having to actually rub it away, and conventional car washes are abrasive and swirl up your paint.

the harsh chemicals used to clean off your car in a touchless wash are probably worse for your paint than the road salt and dirt they are supposed to remove and cause more damage than actually just letting them sit there until you can hand wash it.