First Car Wash Questions, Please ?

If you want to wash it "safely", get out your hose, wash buckets, car wash liquid, wash mitts, wheel brushes, drying cloths/chamois and use a little elbow grease.

OTOH, if you want to start ruining your paint job with flailing, grit-encrusted spinning brushes, head on over to your neighborhood car wash and let them have at it...

Never been to a car wash except a DYI one with just sprays of rinse, soap, rinse, spray wax and water rinse. Only costs a couple bucks.

Our Subaru dealer washes cars after service even if just an oil change.

You wash your car!? ;)

My own preference is to hand wash my cars although this isn't feasible during our sub-zero winters. I admit to using "touchless" washes in the winter. Leaving salt and road grime on the car is worse for the car than any damage the touchless wash may do.

I do not use the coin operated washes for two reasons. First, the soap cycle with the brush is possibly contaminated with sand or grit from a previous client and I don't want scratches in the paint; and second because the high-pressure spray can drive dirt right into the paint.

I see that absolutely no one has answered your question properly. Instead, we have degenerated into a bunch of snooty attitudes about how they'd never put their cars through an automatic car wash, etc., etc.

You don't have to cover up the cameras or anything, just turn off the Eyesight, because if it goes through while large brushes are coming at it, the Eyesight system might misinterpret it as an object it's about to collide with, and it will apply the brakes. This is a problem with the treadmill-type carwashes. However, if you are using a stand-in-place carwash then it's no problem.

As for automatic carwashes, I have problems with it. Worrying about dirt and grime left over from a previous car is ludicrous, the brushes in the car wash are constantly being cleaned off by the water rinse. The water is also recycled, but it is filtered heavily for dirt and grime before being recycled.

Yousuf Khan