Drive Through Car Washes
Drive through car washes are convenient, affordable, and timely but their is one dirty secret the owners of these car washes try to keep from it’s customers. (pun intended) The fact of the matter is that these drive through car washes are horrible for your car’s paint. Horrible is probably an understatement. These drive through car washes will scratch, deteriorate, and leave swirl marks across your paint relentlessly leaving you damaged paint that you’ll have to get repainted in a few years costing you hundreds of dollars.
Why They are Horrible
Consider your local drive through car wash. Extremely low prices, a line of cars waiting to go through, and best of all a paint killing machine lying ahead. Hundreds upon hundreds of cars go through your local drive through car wash every week and all of their dirt is getting rubbed onto these machines.
When your car enters into the car wash the cleaning machines that slap against your car are what causes the paint to become ruined. The friction of the cleaners themselves being ruthlessly slapped against your car at high speeds is enough to mess any car’s paint, no matter how thick the clear coat is. Specifically, however, what makes these drive through car washes so horrible is the dirt and small bits of dust that are settled on the machines that rub against your car.
Hundreds of cars dirt and grime is built up on these machines and your car’s paint is being tarnished as the machines rub and scratch the dirt and dust against your paint. Thousands of dust particles and tiny pebbles later, your car exits. From a distance the car looks clean and for the moment your left satisfied.
The Repercussions
As you continue to go use these drive through automatic car washes your paint will only worsen. What will eventually happen is that you’ll need to get a new paint job prematurely. Many think of the scratches, chips, and swirls that they get on their paint to be normal but the fact of the matter is that it’s not. With proper paint maintenance you can avoid having to fork out a couple thousand dollars to get your car repainted.
What You Should Do
The number one thing you should do right now to protect the longevity of your paint is start getting it hand washed or at least a touchless wash.
The second thing you should do is get a paint correction. Look online for auto detailing services in your city and call to ask if they have paint correction services. This paint correction will get rid of any swirl marks on your car and if you’re lucky, it will eliminate many of the scratches you currently have on your paint.
