in our old minivan, the car wash broke the antenna off and my dad gunned it out of there so the antenna (stuck in the brushes) wouldnt come back around and hit the car... you can always take the antenna off

 

I don't go to those type car washes any longer. I just use the 'laser' wash type touchless car washes. They work good enough to rinse the salt off of everything and won't damage anything.

 

What's that? Might be cause I just moved to the USA in the spring but never heard of that. Is that one of those where you wash your car yourself?

 

You can wash the car yourself or there are ones that actually have automated pressure washers pretty much that spray the soap on, wash it with full power spray and then go thru a rinse cycle. The second type of wash described is the "Laser Wash" or Touchless wash and is better if you live in a salted road or real road grimy area since it wont scratch up your car.

 

These car washes are touchless. They use high pressure water to literally blast the junk off of your car. It is the older car washes with their spinning brushes and mop like tentacles that can damage paint as well as remove an antenna. I only use these type car washes when I either do not have the time for a hand wash or do not want to deal with the mud that is on my truck, LOL! In the winter, I have my out door spigots shut off and cannot wash at home. For the simple wash to get rid of road salt, these car washes work great. Most of them have an underbody rinse as well.

 

Now that I have the safari bar on the front of my truck, I don't want to chnace those car washes with the brushes and mops things. I only use the touchless ones. Not the ones that they have at the gas stations, they suck. I found one by my job that was good. I've noticed that on some, the blowers are attached to the washer. This one I found, the blowers are outside and you roll through them. They give you 30 seconds so you can roll through and reverse it and roll through again. There is one carwash in my town that has those old fashioned roller blowers that "roll" up your hood. I never went there agin after a nice long scratch showed up on my buddies '07 Nismo Frontier. He was pissed with a capital P.

 

Ah cool, I wonder if there are any of those near by me. I only know of one place I can wash it myself, but of course I never have enough change on me But my truck, actually black is pretty much white right now and I want to clean it tomorrow, want to make it last for many years 2 come

 

I work at a car wash and the only antennas that the wash screws up tends to be the retractable antennas and everything else is fine. But some onstar/cell phones can get taken off in the wash but most people take theirs off. As for a roof rack or safari bar, the should have a feature in the was called a top brush retract (at least ours does) where the top brush won't engage and it will rise over the car.

 

Went to one of those cloth slapping thingys today, all went well, just wanted to wash all the salt off, didn't do much good as it's already full again, but rather once a week and no rust

 

I think the last time I went through a car wash was the day of the prom back in April. It was the "laserwash" in Smithfield. It did a good job, but I do a heck of a lot better with my rag and bucket free spray wash. They're just too expensive for me. They salted the main roads and the bridgesthe other day, so I wash the Blazer Saturday and began using a glaze thats supposed to keepwater from freezing on the car. Now its supposed to be 78 degrees outside today thru the end of the week.