Car Wash Troubles

Car Wash from Far Side artist Gary Larson

When I was kid, I thought the automated, drive thru car washes were the cat's pajamas. We probably only went once, they cost money you know, but evidently it made an impression. Since I got married, and appearances are important to SWMBO, and I had more than two nickels to rub together, I started using the local car wash, which made my inner ten-year-old very happy. Not so my daughter. Girl can travel the world without having to call home, but can't go to the car wash without her pappy. Now I know why.

I've never been very good about keeping my cars clean. As long as they ran, that was enough. I did thoroughly clean a few cars, but that was usually because I was putting them up for sale.

Anyway, I seem to have had more than my fair share of problems with Kaddy Car Washes. I took our SUV there a few years ago and once I got fully into the car wash tunnel, water started pouring in. What the heck? Seems that somebody closed the sunshade but had forgotten to close the sunroof all the way. The wet interior was the least of my problems. Seems that sunroof mechanism is kind of delicate, and it wasn't up to the task of closing while the overhead brushes are beating on it. It closed, but something in the mechanism broke and now it won't close completely anymore. I have it propped up with a couple of wood blocks.

A few months ago I took my car to the car wash. I heard a bang, it seemed to come from the car in front of me, a late model Toyota Prius. They stopped the car wash to fix the problem, and then they restarted it. A few seconds later my car is where the previous bang came from and now something is beating the tar out of the side of my car. Seems a big rotating brush had snagged the side view mirror of the car in front of me and ripped it clean off. When my car got to that brush, the mirror assembly was still caught in the brush so every time it went around, my car got beat.

Kaady did right by me, they paid to have the body shop fix it and paid for a rental car for me to use while mine was in the shop. Cost them $2,000. They also gave me a bunch of passes for free car washes.

2016 Mazda 3 Roof Trim

Yesterday, my daughter comes by and she wants to get her car washed. Usually her husband washes it by hand, but he is tied up with work, so she's going to help him out. So we go to the car wash. Halfway through there is a big bang. We look at the car afterwards and don't see anything. Once she gets home her husband takes one look and notices that one of the trim strips that line the edge of the roof is gone. I managed to retrieve the trim strip from the car wash. It is a piece of aluminum with some plastic clips to hold it in place and at least one of those clips is broken / missing. So we are going to have to find a new way to attach it. I think a generous application of silicon sealer will do the trick.

I could holler at Mazda and Kaady, but being as the damage easily can be repaired, it's probably not worth the hassle. Mazda and Toyota may want to try making their cars more car wash resistant. I mean, a car wash brush shouldn't be able to rip things off of your car. Or maybe Kaady needs find some snag free brushes. Or they need to ban me from their car wash.