Was wondering with all the electronics in a hybrid can i drive my c4 into an automatic car wash.. the ones that use high water pressure, no brush rollers?
The electronics are protected, and the batteries are under the rear seat. Your owner's manual talks about car washes (page 340-ish), it talks about what to do before using automatic car washes...and warns you that their brushes may scratch the paint.
You can do it with no ill results other than swirls in the clear coat. The brushes aren't cleaned regularly and build up small particles which over time act like sand paper. Once in a while isn't going to hurt it if you can't find a touchless, but it's not good to over do it.
k I know I'm being rude and jumping in, but I've been curious about this for a few months: How would I clean the undercarriage from snow/ice/salt in the winter if I want to avoid an "automatic" car wash?
I run mine through the "touchless", high pressure automatic washers (that the OP describes) if it rains during the weekend and I want to get the road grime off of the car before the next weekend. I have never had an issue with any of these.
Shouldn't be a problem.... but I've never used an automatic car wash for any of my vehicles... I have always washed them by hand.... Less scratches and paint issues I have found... I also wax every 3 months and use wax products that have no abrasives.
I'd say the greatest deterrent to using an automatic car wash is even the brush less type are generally not recommended by those that really care for their cars finish. I do use them...but occasionally only...and only when I'm sure I have a good layer of wax protection in place. Otherwise, I try to hand wash as much as possible. Ideally, I probably shouldn't use them at all, purists have nothing good to say about them. And it makes sense. Basically your vehicle is put through a gauntlet of high pressure recycled water and spinning beaters, that dirty cars have been driving through all day. However, my declining energy level does find me cheating from time to time. So far my limited use, and ONLY if I have a good layer of wax in place approach has allowed me to occasionally use a drive through without any noticeable damage.
I use them primarily for the undercarriage spray. Never gave a thought as to that big thick orange conduit shorting out anymore more than driving in the rain.
i stay away from brush car washes and sparingly use touchless washes, mostly for the underbody wash. I always try to find highschool cheerleading teams washing cars for donations, those are all done by hand
I don't use them, but the so-called touch-less units probably aren't quite as bad unless they recycle their water.....then I'd be worried about FOD and chemicals in the water. There are a lot of 4x4 trucks in the area here that use the local unattended robo-washers to remove the upper 3 inches of caked on mud and sand from their trucks and we won't talk about the boats. I'm not inclined to frequent the attended car washes either because I really don't need a dirty sweaty high school dropout guiding my car through some abrasive car wash, after 'removing the bugs' with some sludge in a bucket by his or her boots. Besides...if you do that several times a month and you start getting into more money that I like to spend on keeping my car clean. The electronics in your car are weather hardened, but even tropical showers can't compete with a high pressure water jets assaulting your car from bizarre angles.....so you're probably better off just hand washing. No thanks. I've seen WAAAAAAAY too many posts in this forum from Prius drivers crying into their fat-free, fair-trade, shade-grown, organic, caffiene-and-sugar free lattes after having their cars trashed by Robo-Washers. YMMV!
