Car Washing Horror Stories

every Christmas I get one of those Armor All gift sets from someone, just smile and say wow just what I needed. Luckily everyone knows not to touch my car , I dont know how I would have reacted to that.....



I was parked next to my girls mom a few days ago, kind of close because she never goes out anyway. I told her if she needed to get out just let me know and I would move, she takes a look and says I can make it I dont need you to move. I repeated loudly just say the word and I will move, nah she says I can make it.



I quickly parked around the corner, lesson learned
 
Brand new Mustang, end of winter, and it was an unusually warm day all the snow was gone and I wanted to make sure the under body was spotless and I had to make sure I got rid of all the remaining winter grime off that I couldn't get to under the car. I went to a local auto car wash that our family has gone to for years. Got home and I was drying the hood scoop area off that those morons did a terrible job of. Then I saw it. Scratch marks, everywhere. Literally everywhere. There was no way I could have seen them at the car wash. I started to inspect the rest of the car and then my horror was realized, one of the kids had used a dirty chamois cloth to dry it off. There was scratch marks on the windshield, the paint/clearcoat, my mirrors, etc. I could not believe it. Never going to an auto wash where there is a human element again. Terrible.
 
neighbor was cleaning her windows of her buick on dubzzzzzz and spinnahz. after she was done with the windows, she proceeded to wipe some of her cars paint with the windex applied towel. i didnt say anything cause shes an owner that doesnt know how to maintain a vehicle properly. it was a scraper anyways.:o
 
I had pulled up to check my tire pressure at a gas station with brushless chemical cleaning car wash..... to my HORRAH! in front of me is a guy on a cell phone shanking a bottle of Nu Finish as he is walking toward to paper towel dispenser by the gas tank island.....I watched in total shock as he proceeded to pour the Nu Finish on the paper towel and began wiping on the rather wet car which obviously just went through the wash. I froze witht he air nozzel in my had as if I had turned to stone. The HORRAH! was built into my face as I had trouble moving at all. I wanted to stop him , I wanted to yell out STOP! PLEASE STOP! OH The HORRAH! but i was jhust frozen as if I had turned my head to look back on the burning of Sodom and Gamorah!........ He finished the "once over" applying more swirls than a can of monkeys could ever do and got in his car and drove away.....Needless to say the whole experience cost me $.50 as the time ran out of the air nozzel as I began to feel the blood move back into my arms and legs after I witnessed this catastrophie.

I hope never to see something of this nature again.

Just recounting the saga has given me "wax-on/wax-off trama!" Call the medvac unit!
 
I must admit to being a moron a while back with a couple of my cars... :(



One, not such a big deal. I kept it clean, but it was a base model Tercel. I once washed it by squirting dish soap all over it and going over it with a sponge mop while it was raining. I also hadn't realized that using a pure polyester rag would leave swirls. Doh.



Also used a kitchen sponge scrubby side on a windshield to try and clean off the hard stuff... Needless to say it left fine scratches :(



I routinely watch a couple of my neighbors in horror as they use large car wash brushes on poles to wash their cars, thinking that they're taking good care of them...



One neighbor who bought a nice dark green Jag from Enterprise had me clean it up a couple of summers back when I was a strictly clay + Zaino user... You know how well Enterprise takes care of their cars... It cleaned up very nicely and stayed that way (Z5 did fill up a lot of the lighter swirls) until they took it to the dealer a week or two ago to have it buffed up. Hologram city. If they weren't moving on Monday, I'd bug them to let me polish it up properly...



I've learned a lot in the last five years and have adopted a much more stringent Autopian way, to the point that I'm comfortable charging regularly for my services.
 
One of my Nieghbours has a new VW Beatle. Every weekend her 6 year old son cleans it - dropping the spong countless times. It is lucky the car is silver as it hides the marks from a distance, but close up it is a mess. Makes me cringe every time.



I heard a story a while back of a kid who cleaned his dad's Porsche with rocks. :eek:
 
Back in the 70s, my mom worked for an oil company & had to handle some of the gas station car wash claims. This was in the day of the rotary spinning brushes. I remember one time, a car had a loose mirror which got caught in the brush & beat the crap out of the car all the way down the side. Can you imagine sitting in the car while that was happening?



My neighbor uses a squeegee on his car, but I really can't say much as I still use my water blade. It is so dry here, that I try to get as much water off my vehicles as quickly as possible. I can't dry the vehicle fast enough to keep it from spotting (and yes, that's in full shade). I tried the leaf blower routine once... but it's just too dusty here.



Although... my cars never really get THAT dirty... just dusty.
 
When I was perhaps 12 or 13, my dad taught me that one should *NEVER* use dish soap. Obviously, dry dishwasher detergent was completely different! I knew that his car would go to me by the end of high school, so I "took care" of my "baby" - I washed it inside and out EVERY Saturday. By the time I was 15 and driving it, the SS paint had gone from a surprisingly pretty (for a cheap, CHEAP Ford) red to a chalky pink.



Oddly enough, it was my mother who came home with a bottle of Meguiar's polish/compound of some sort. Brought back the red so well, I didn't even notice that there was still no gloss. Still, next time I went to pick up oil, I discovered car wash solution. Been learning (slowly) ever since....



(It's funny, everything I learned about fixing cars came from my dad. But when it came to *caring* for them, it came from my mom. On the other hand, her stepfather was true gear-head: she learned to drive a manual on a Shelby Tiger 289, a car succeeded by various muscle cars, mustangs, and Porsches...)
 
The only think I've seen so far is my dads old work truck he doesn't try to make it spotless or wax it or anything but he thought just spraying it down with some water would make it all clean. He said it looked really clean untill it dried lol
 
So, the other day I'm sitting in a parking lot when this young guy jumps out of an older Ford Explorer and starts spraying one of his wheels with a bottle of EO A2Z. Then, an older woman, presumably his mother, gets out of the passenger side to check his work. After telling him to give the one wheel another blast or two, she then tells him to continue with the remaining wheels. It was at this point that I thought about explaining to him what the A2Z is going to do to his rims if he doesn't rinse them off NOW, but I decided against it since his mother probably would made a spectacle out of it. Once done destroying his rims, the kid got back in and they drove away throwing A2Z all over the side of the Explorer. Pretty sad...
 
GreyFixer said:
I was washing my car in the coin-op with the pressure sprayer. I had the nozzle about 3 inches away from the paint when the time ran out and the water turned off. Now without the force of the water, the nozzle dropped and scrathed my door. :(
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I can sympathize on that one...



I was doing the coinop to get the usual caking of salt off my car (a daily occurrence for me in winter). Anyhow, I was just finished rinsing around the driver's side fender. I sneezed...I was too close to the fender and put a nice 4-inch scratch in it.



Touch-up paint still shows. I've been meaning to get my friend to try buffing it even and getting the rest of the scratches out. For some reason, that fender is taking a huge beating than the rest of the car :confused:
 
A guy pulled into the oil change place I manage today in his new Pontiac. He see's the window scrubbers in the bucket and grabs one and starts ravishing his front bumper that was covered in bugs.I am in the middle of billing out a customer and see this and hand the customer the clipboard and go running screaming "STOP!!" He looks at me like "What?"

I tell him he is killing his paint. He looks at the scrubber and says" Is it the washer fluid?" I point to the mesh on the scrubber and explain its way too abrasive to use on paint. He tells me thanks and I finish billing out the customer I was with. A few minutes later he thanks me again for stopping him. The customer tells me he usually washes it himself but hasn't had time lately. I ask him what he uses. He says just dish soap and a sponge. I tell him to go to Target and get a Vroom wash mit and some Megs Gold Class soap and to never use his old wash routine again.
 
I once had a neighbor who washed his van with a bottle of Dawn, the shirt he was wearing at the time, a bucket and a garden rake. The rake was use to "hold" and move the shirt on the roof of the van, while the bucket was used to collect ditch water and reduce his water bill.



He finished the detail with Pledge or kerosene for that "superior gloss." I don't think he ever made the connection between the rake and the scratches, because he often complained of the "big cat" that must be walking on the van roof at night; "must be a cougar or somethin'."



It was quite entertaining to watch his detail prowess. I actually went over once to explain to him some techniques he could use to improve the process, but he quickly interupted me to demonstrate his new method of "makin' my tires shine like a new penny." He then proceeded to spray the tires with gasoline and set the tires on fire!!!! I was absolutely stunned, but I could only think to ask why didn't he use kerosene instead. He simply laughed and walked away muttering "... young pukes don't know nuthin' about nuthin'."
 
ram said:
It was quite entertaining to watch his detail prowess. I actually went over once to explain to him some techniques he could use to improve the process, but he quickly interupted me to demonstrate his new method of "makin' my tires shine like a new penny." He then proceeded to spray the tires with gasoline and set the tires on fire!!!! I was absolutely stunned, but I could only think to ask why didn't he use kerosene instead. He simply laughed and walked away muttering "... young pukes don't know nuthin' about nuthin'."
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Wow! :LOLOL
 
I work for a local school district, and drive the "cars" (I use that term loosely) they supply us with to transport student from time to time. Well, today I stopped by the transportation department to wash one of the vehicles in a most disturbing manner. Being an Autopian I got a certain joy out of doing everything most of us would NEVER EVER do to a vehicle. I pulled the possibly 3-5 year old nylon scrub brush on a stick off the wall, hosed the car down, and proceeded to scrub the whole vehicle down with most of the dirt on the vehicle still clinging to the paint. About halfway through the wash I noticed the hubcaps and decided to scrub them off, then went right back to the paint. It's amazing how much brake dust was on the hubcaps, then the scrub brush, and how far across the paint it will spread. Like butter on toast. It was so wrong, but so fun...



EDIT: Also, these stories are horrifying, but I am laughing out loud... :LOLOL
 
a while back i remember someone explaining in a message forum (not here) how regular aerosol wood polish like pledge is fantastic for providing a slick glossy finish to a freshly washed car.



someone else chimed in and testified to the same effect.. claimed he worked at a car dealership (big surprise?) and they would regularly pledge all the cars in their showroom.



i bet at least 1 out of 20 autopians are driving a car that at one time or another, has been pledged! lol.



kinda makes you think eh?
 
smak said:
a while back i remember someone explaining in a message forum (not here) how regular aerosol wood polish like pledge is fantastic for providing a slick glossy finish to a freshly washed car.



someone else chimed in and testified to the same effect.. claimed he worked at a car dealership (big surprise?) and they would regularly pledge all the cars in their showroom.



i bet at least 1 out of 20 autopians are driving a car that at one time or another, has been pledged! lol.



kinda makes you think eh?
Click to expand...



Actually, I don't know where you may have read it, but I (and a few others I've seen) have talked about the same. I sat at a buick dealership one time while waiting for an oil change to be completed, and saw the lot porter come in with a can of pledge and a flannel dust rag, and proceed to wipe down a new black $40K rainier with it. The whole time I wanted to scream at him to stop, but its no use.



The truth is, pledge DOES work, but it is far from a good practice in real world "true" detailing. All of the silicones and oils in pledge make it great at glaze-filling scratches and bringing out decent gloss/reflections. However, in the long run you're not helping your paint any. Just think of all the mess hiding under that pledge!! :hairpull



I guess all you can do is step back, look at your shiny finish, breathe in and think "Mmm... lemmony fresh!!"
 
I have never really experienced any of these washing problems first hand, until 2 days ago...



Me and a buddy were on his way to his house, and as we pulled up we saw his mom run up to us. Now, around the drive way was a bunch of car was supplies. She told us to come look at her car and it was all faded and chalky like, like instant-oxidations (This is a white car.) Now, it used to be very shiny.

We ask her what she did and she says "I washed it with bleach."

We just stared at here and mumbled "Why?"

She said "I thought it would become extra white."



:scared:



I would never think anyone would be so....i dont know..to do that to a car.



I'm pretty sure it ate all the clear off. :hairpull
 
You can't really blame her for that....you use bleach for cleaning so many things...it's common to use bleach mixtures on interior/exterior paint for mildew/algae...so why wouldn't she think it would be good for her car? As much of a liberated world that we live in, women still grow up playing with dolls, and hanging around with Mom, and guys wind up in the garage with Dad, hearing things like "never use bleach on your car!" So anyway, your buddy's Mom just missed the memo.
 
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