Drive through car washes - are they really that bad?

I'm up in Massachusetts where we deal with a lot of salt and snow.  I keep hearing drive through car washes are bad for the car but how else am I supposed to get the undercarriage washed?  Isn't the salt just as bad or worse for the car than having a few brushes clean my car?  What's the general consensus with regards to these?  Is it worth it for the few times a year to keep the salt out from the under belly?  Can't afford ceramic coating yet (which, if I understand correctly, will help protect the paint).

Brushed or touchless?  If you just want the underside wash, go through a touchless.

Brushes can damage paint on some cars.

Will they put swirl marks on your paint?  Yes.  Do I use them anyway?  Yes.  Do I own black cars anymore?  No.

In 05 I took an 86 southern car with zero rust, up to upstate ny in feb. for a 5 week contract. Car did not even have surface rust on chassis!

Did the drive through about twice a week, paying extra for the chassis wash. 
Did ABSOLUTELY ZERO to prevent the chassis from rusting!!!

That 5 weeks did more to start rusting the car, than almost 30 years driving around the coastline of VA 

Total waste of my money. 

Living in Ontario Canada, I never understood washing a car in winter. Whatever you got removed will be back on before you make it off the car wash lot.  The roads themselves are salty from December to May, so the undercarriage is going to be covered by salty  puddles all the time.

Then there is the concept of spraying high pressure water at the salty surface. Won't this just ensure that any surfaces that were not in the  direct line of fire for daily splashes get a nice force-fed source of salt?

In reply to NOHOME :

One thing- you do it in good weather, so that when you get into the car, your pants don't get dirt or salt on them when you brush up to the car.  And it will last for a while- like if I washed a week ago here in SE MI, it would still be clean as it's not been wet since then.

Also, I only did it when it was a free wash for getting a fill up.  That's not an option anymore...  bummer.

But I did it pretty often on my Miata, and it was a touch system.  The rust I got wasn't from that, it was from the top drains being plugged up and holding water in the rockers.  

IMHO, one of the best rust preventions is to put in the oil style treatment every year- it gets sprayed in the enclosed spaces.  Not sure how available they are anymore.  And I should have done that on my Miata- it would have save a ton of "restoration" work.

In reply to alfadriver :

We do the "Oilguard"  or "Krown" every year. You can see it creeping up the edges of the panels all winter long. 

Touchless washes with undercarriage sprays are one of the bet automotive related inventions around. Brushed washes are one of the worst. It is true that to *really* be meaningful you have to do it basically on a daily basis, but anything that reduces the amount of salt piled up everywhere is helping at least a little bit.

I always thought it would be a good idea to have some sort of spray bar setup in the driveway or entrance to a garage that would spray off the underside whenever parked for the night.  Some clear drainage and ice issues of course.

Of note: I have never lived in a snowy or icy environment so I don't know what I am talking about.

I was involved with insurance for these for many years.

Brushless #hellyeah

Brush  #berkeleyno

I live in MA and just went through a touchless car wash last weekend, AMA. 



But seriously, the touchless washes are harmless. They do the undercarriage and get about 94% of the salt funk off the car. I followed up the wash with some chamois and quick detailer action, and that closed the deal. Owning a black car with thin econobox paint means there will always be chips and swirls, but it looks great from 10ft which is all you could ask for, especially in the dead of winter. 

In reply to dps214 :

Yea, the old saw "YMMV" holds true. 
They did squat for me. 
on brush or brushless, I've owned very few 100% scratch free cars, but have not seen well maintained brush type add any scratches to mine. Well maintained does fit in that sentence, though. 

If you want a flawless, show quality paint job then you'll need to avoid the automatic car wash.  If you just want your car to be clean and look decent then a car wash is fine.  I keep my trucks for several hundred thousand miles and run them through the car wash regularly.  The paint holds up fine.  Not show car quality but they're often the shiniest vehicle in a parking lot.

In reply to Tony Sestito :

I'd swap your numbers, from my one month in Oswego. 49% even sounds high!!!

APEowner said:

If you want a flawless, show quality paint job then you'll need to avoid the automatic car wash.  If you just want your car to be clean and look decent then a car wash is fine.  I keep my trucks for several hundred thousand miles and run them through the car wash regularly.  The paint holds up fine.  Not show car quality but they're often the shiniest vehicle in a parking lot.

This.  I quit obsessing over flawless paint... pretty much 6 months into owning my first car.

I have lived in Alaska, but they didn't use salt on the roads where I was, so I have no real experience. 

What I am curious about is water recycling.  Many of the drive through washes reuse the wash water.  I guess there must be some kind of filter system in place, so OK I guess.

Are there washes like this where there is salt used?  Seems like it would be difficult to get the salt out of the water and if all that was happening was particulate filtering, they would be spraying the underside of the car with saltwater.

I'm that rare detailing nerd who has no problem with automatic car washes, brushed or brushless. I tend to go to the ones with brushes because that's what's around me. Is it introducing micro-scratches into the paint? Yeah, probably, but they are pretty hard to see, and every couple of years I do a paint correction anyhow. The Expedition's been going through them since we bought it 7 years ago, and the paint still looks great. I don't use them much in the summer because when it's nice out I do like to wash the cars myself, but in the winter, in Michigan, you bet your sweet behind I'm going through an automatic carwash.

There are two schools of thought on brushed vs. brushless among detailers. Some say that brushless is fine since nothing is touching your car, but some say that, because they don't have the mechanical action of brushes, the brushless washes have to use harsher chemicals to get the job done. Those can have a detrimental effect over time, especially on whatever kind of coating you have on the paint.

I've used a lawn sprinkler under my car. Not sure how effective. 

I bet it's dependent on where you live. I'm in the mid Atlantic where we get bouts of snow/salt and then it'll be clear for weeks at a time during which point I'll take my car(s) (which are always old and have at best 10 foot paint jobs) through a brush or brushless. Never had any major rust issues or noticed irreparable damage to the paint 

CJ said:

I have lived in Alaska, but they didn't use salt on the roads where I was, so I have no real experience. 

What I am curious about is water recycling.  Many of the drive through washes reuse the wash water.  I guess there must be some kind of filter system in place, so OK I guess.

Are there washes like this where there is salt used?  Seems like it would be difficult to get the salt out of the water and if all that was happening was particulate filtering, they would be spraying the underside of the car with saltwater.

My father operated old-school self-operated wand washes, and I have designed a couple automatic drive through washes.

The wand places almost certainly are not recycling any water.

The drive-through automatic places do, but they treat and filter the water, plus have underground storage tanks with bacteria that eat the funk, including oil residue.

APEowner said:

If you want a flawless, show quality paint job then you'll need to avoid the automatic car wash.  If you just want your car to be clean and look decent then a car wash is fine.  I keep my trucks for several hundred thousand miles and run them through the car wash regularly.  The paint holds up fine.  Not show car quality but they're often the shiniest vehicle in a parking lot.

Mostly concerned about salt and secondarily damaging the paint... 

03Panther said:

In reply to Tony Sestito :

I'd swap your numbers, from my one month in Oswego. 49% even sounds high!!!

I was shocked. Especially since I went to the same car wash's "soft touch" (aka with brushes) car wash with the wife's white car and I basically had to spray detail wash the entire thing when I got home. A little touch-up here and there and I was good to go. 

I wash every chance I get with the Explorer ST. My advice is don't park your hooptie in your garage!!!! You're accelerating the rust from the heat radiated from your house.

The one I pay $15 for wings you through there at about 20 mph, the Dealership freebie is less than walking speed; same exact equipment.  Maybe my age, but I don't have issues with them, touch or no touch.

In reply to Tony Sestito :

I'm just referring to chassis wash. Totally worthless and a complete waste of money to an un prepared southern car. 
If it seemed to help a car, it was not the chassis wash, it was whatever protectant previously applied. 
Just one data point, but I saw the before and after actuall wash.