Touchless or Brushed or does anyone care on Car Washes?

Neither are good ideas. While being the lesser of two evils, the touchless car washes won't do a great, or even a good job, removing dirt. In the 4 years I've owned my truck I've only driven it through a wash once (touchless) and this was after spending a day on a dirt road. I knew it would be a week before I had time to wash it properly and I just wanted to get the top layer of filth off. I'll also mention that if you have paint chips, the pressure sprayers can cause damage. This happened to my wife's car a few years back. She had a chip on one of the doors and the pressure washer managed to get under the paint and blow off a small patch.

The brushed washes are even worse. YES they will leave swirl marks. The brushes are extremely dirty and essentially beating the dog piss out of your paint. Avoid them if you care about such things.

Even hand washing will cause swirls if done improperly. You can go way down the rabbit hole when it comes to researching how to properly maintain your truck's appearance. You just need to determine how much you care and how much time you can dedicate to it.

Bottom line is, anytime you touch your paint, you are either making it worse or making it better.

 

I live in South Dakota so hand washing outside is not practical in the winter but there are good car washes everywhere and most have underbody wash as your drive in. I use the brushless and have found the car washes that are better than others. Spring to Fall I use 2 bucket hand wash at home but will take the truck thru brushless occasionally, but not the Vette which is not driven in the winter or the rain.

 

I plan on filling two 5-gallon buckets with water ( with lids ) at home, take them to the self-wash, hand wash it there myself since it's shaded, do all of the cleaning I need to do, rinse it with their spray gun and spotless rinse. Dry it on the freeway, back home and prep for clear coating/wax.

 

I work at a plant near cooling towers, I drive my truck in the woods, I don't really worry about using a carwash or not. I figure running through a car wash is much better than letting it sit until I can get to it.

Touchless doesn't work all that well. I go to a well maintained brush wash place. I use the buckets and brushes to knock loose the dirt on the back, then drive through. It's not a show car, it sits outside, it gets pollen, chemicals, dirt, bird poop and whatever on it.... I'm not worried about a brush and I have better things to do with my time.

 

I go to car wash that has the big spinning brushes. If it doesn't touch your car, it won't clean it. And I don't go if I don't have 15 minutes after to wipe down the whole truck. If you don't you'll get water spots and dust will stick to the water spots.

 

Swirls and broken off parts from brushes, or touchless damage like this? (see #12). Neither for me. I wash it myself.

https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/car-wash-damage.533268/