Why You Should Never Take Your Car To The Car Wash
The other day after I finished a detail, the client mentioned they would be maintaining it with regular automatic car washes. To a detailer, automatic car washes are essentially the most vulgar language one can use. There are many reasons why, but let me just cover four of them with you.
Thousands of scratches
The micro-scratches are costing you either thousands of dollars in value or in repairs on your vehicle. Most automatic car washes use giant rotating microfiber machines in order to scrub your car down. Microfiber is an excellent material for removing dirt. The problem is though, how many cars have gone through that same car wash before you bring your car through? Even if the car wash company cleans them occasionally throughout the day, which is a generous assumption, it still only takes one dirty car before you to get dirt on the machines that then rub dirt onto your paint. Some people think, “What the big deal, it’s just dirt?” However, dirt is really just “a structured collection of smashed rocks.”[1] No one who values their car even a little bit is going to take a rock and scrub it across the surface of their vehicle. Yet that is exactly what is happening, just on a much smaller scale when you are going through an automatic car wash with dirty microfibers.
Water Spotting
Now perhaps you say, well I go to a touchless automatic car wash, so I do not have to worry about those micro scratches. Perhaps, but there are a whole bunch of other problems that you still must worry about. One big concern is going to be water spotting. What is water spotting? “Water spotting consists of an area of dried mineral deposits left on a surface after being allowed to air dry.[2]” The water we interact with in modern society often has minerals in it. In fact, it has to. Water must meet the Safe Water Drinking Act standards which was passed by congress in 1974 and regulated now by the Environmental Protection Agency or EPA. These added minerals include calcium, magnesium, and potassium, and usually many more. There are many health benefits to these minerals being in our water for drinking, but as it relates to taking care of our vehicles, it can very easily cause water spotting.
Do you go to a car wash when it is raining or when it is sunny? When it is sunny of course! No one gets their car washed when it is raining. So, you go through your automatic touchless car wash and you get to the end of the tunnel, and they have these super powerful blowers that blow your car dry. But are they drying all the water from your vehicle? No! Because no matter how powerful those fans are, they cannot check all nooks and crannies of your vehicle such as your grill, your door handle, the gas cap, the window seals, etc. So, what happens when you drive off with a few isolated water spots on your car on this sunny day when you just had your car washed? These minerals in the water are going to sit there on your vehicle, get baked by the sun, and etch into your clear coat. Now depending on the level of damage done, in order to get those spots removed, you will either have to use a dedicated water spot removal product, clay your vehicle, polish your vehicle, compound your vehicle, or if all that does not work, then the paint is more likely too far gone to remove those water spots and the only way to get rid of them is body work. So, you can see how a few drops of water could end costing thousands in repairs.
Compounded damage
Now maybe at your touchless automatic car wash they have a few guys at the end of the tunnel with drying towels and they finish off any remaining water the fans left behind to prevent water spotting. That’s great, but there are still a couple of issues with that process. In the fifteen seconds they are in contact with your car, are they checking all the areas which we previously discussed where water can be hiding? If they are, then great, but we have another problem we have to consider. How often are they changing those drying towels? Yes, they are drying cars that just came through the car wash, which in theory should have removed most of the dirt, but no car wash is perfect. It is just not possible to remove 100% of dirt in a matter of a few minutes. Again, as previously discussed, microfibers are great at picking up debris. So, if there is any leftover dirt that did not come off in the car wash, they are then going to be picked up by those microfiber drying towels from the workers. Then, we are back to the problem of creating more micro scratches.
Harsh Chemicals
So, let’s give the benefit of the doubt and say the microfiber drying cloths are changed out between each car. Should you then take your vehicle regularly to the car wash? NO! Why not? Well, it is going to be because of the chemicals that most car washes use. How long are most car washes? It depends on all the different add-ons you may want, but let’s say between 1 to 7 minutes. Now if the entire wash process takes only a matter of minutes, do you think they are going to use a weak cleaner or a strong cleaner? Most likely a super strong cleaner. You are paying the car wash for a clean vehicle, but they have almost no time to make that happen, so they need chemicals that are going to blast away as much grime as possible. Think back to chemistry class just for a moment and recall the PH scale. The scale goes from 0 to 14. 0 being the most acidic, 7 being neutral and 14 being the most alkaline. Now one of the most common chemicals used in a lot of car washes is hydrofluoric acid. Depending on the concentration level used, hydrofluoric acid has an acidic level of a low 2 approaching 1 on the PH scale. What does that mean? As a reference, a level 1 is something like stomach acid and a level 2 is similar to lemon juice. So basically, something between stomach acid and lemon juice is what you are spraying on your car when you go through an automatic car wash. You can read this report from the CDC that details how one employee at a car wash died from ingesting hydrofluoric acid as well as how 48 others were exposed to serious burns.[3] Now, are these harsh chemicals going to cause massive amounts of damage to your paint one time through? No, however it’s a cumulative effect. If every time you wash your car you are hitting it with these intense acidic cleaners, over time it is going to dull your paint. Even if it is “cleaning” the surface, you will see over time the paint just does not pop like it used to. Some people think cars just fade with age, but that is not how it has to be. If you maintain your car properly, there is no reason you still can’t have great paint over time.
Conclusion
We here at Fort Worth Auto Detail implore you to take care of your vehicle the right way, which as we hope we have successfully demonstrated is not at an automatic car wash. If you would like to know more about proper washing techniques that you can do to minimize damage to your vehicle please contact us and we will be happy to help. If you would like to have your vehicle professionally maintained by us contact us today in order to get on our maintenance schedule.
Sources:
[3] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6432a4.htm?s_cid=mm6432a4_w