We asked readers for their nightmare car wash stories earlier this week. We received a thrilling and worrying array of anecdotes. We saw minor mistakes turn into vehicle-damaging problems within a matter of minutes. We also learned about teenage vandals who broke into a closed car wash to turn automated brushes into weapons. Without further ado, here are your worst nightmare car wash stories:
Mine is a very strong memory.
I was tiny and had just learned to tie my own shoes.
We were going somewhere and Dad took the Maverick through a car wash on the way. On the way out of the car wash, suddenly there was a bang and the back end of the car jumped up in the air, alarms started going off and the like. The exhaust pipe had fallen off the muffler and had caught and jacked the back end of the car up when it caught on something.
Dad’s solution was to steal my shoelaces and tie up the exhaust pipe to get to where we were going. I was SO mad, because I was going to show off how I had learned to tie my own shoelaces and dad had stolen them.
Submitted by: hoser68
I once took my ‘90 Volvo 740GLE 16V through a carwash where one of the spray nozzle assemblies came off just as my car was entering. It bounced off the hood leaving a nice dent, then it was basically like a fire hose pointed at the top of my car. This pushed the sunroof down off its tracks and I got a free krhodes1 wash, along with a decent amount of flooding of the interior of the car, and it ruined the headliner. The carwash paid to fix it all to the tune of several grand.
Otherwise, dummy me forgot to retract the electric antenna on my LR Disco I last summer and got to replace the mast, again. Luckily cheap and easy.
Submitted by: krhodes1
Worked at a service station as a teen, had a free wash with fill up. Neighborhood kids would sneak in and tie lug nuts to the spinning brushes.
Submitted by: Mike Christopher
Okay, please don’t turn your local car wash into a structure weaponized against vehicles and their occupants.
My mother had to borrow my car one day, and as a thank you she thought she would run it through a car wash for me. She was extra considerate and made sure to use one of the touchless ones, so “those dirty rags” didn’t scratch the paint. What she didn’t consider was the cost of heavy refinishing on the two rims that got destroyed by the rolling track.......thanks Mom.
Submitted by: AlphonzeMephesto
Years ago, we took my wife’s 2011 Pilot through a conveyor belt car wash (so you know the width is set) and it popped one of the side mirrors off. It broke the bracket, so I had to replace it instead of just reattaching. A couple months later, my wife tried the same place again but she made sure to fold the mirrors in. Either through water pressure or the cleaning arm itself, it flipped the mirror out on the other side and did the same thing. Needless to say, we’ve never gone back to that car wash.
Submitted by: Ours Blanc
I thought we collectively figured out those automatic car washes are terrible for your car. Now I’m not concerned about my ‘05 Camry with the paint peeling off the bumper, but if you have a nicer newer vehicle probably should skip the sandpaper wash 😆
Submitted by: sausagefingers76
I traded in my 2007 Saturn Sky on Friday.
Here in the NE we’ve just started to get frost in the morning.
On Thursday afternoon I ran it through the carwash for the first time (usually I’d do it myself, but lazy)
That’s when I learned the trunk seals have failed, not exactly flooding the trunk but leaving a puddle.
The next morning the trunk would not open (required for putting down the top) since the mechanism was coated in ice. In addition, the passenger side window which already had a weak motor, completely failed to function. ...And probably not related, but the coolant temp which usually runs around 195 - 200 [degrees] decided to spike to about 220 [degrees] while driving, which is top top end of normal.
Thankfully, after running the car for a while I managed to get everything to function for inspection, and the temp was technically in range.
The dealer gave me the low end of what I wanted to sell it for privately if it came to that, and agreed to come down enough on the vehicle I bought to have everything make sense. So, no longer my problem. Already kinda miss the sad bastard though, it was a fun three years.
Submitted by: IstillmissmyXJ
LOL, my friend took his 2000 Discovery to the wash and forgot to close the sunroof. That car had wet carpet until the day he got rid of it.
Submitted by: TommyKar
I had a suh-weet ‘78 VW Scirocco with a broken AC compressor in the middle of a Kansas City summer. For whatever reason rolling down the windows did NOTHING to ventilate the interior, so I kept an old folder in my car to stick out the window to direct airflow toward me as I drove. I loved that car but it was a seriously miserable place to sit during summer. Well one day I left work midafternoon on a scorching day (my K-Mart dashboard thermometer read 135 degrees inside) and decided to use science instead of the folder. My thought was cooling down the outside of the car would cool down the inside. Obviously, right? I headed straight for an automatic car wash, paid the money and inched my way in until the red light told me to stop. It was that instant the flaw in my thinking became apparent. As soon as the sprayers started the realization hit that I needed to (very quickly) roll back up the windows and sit in a 135 degree car for the next three minutes until the water stopped spraying.
Submitted by: dug deep
I made the mistake of taking my C7 Corvette through one of those “conveyor belt” car washes. The belt mechanism has a metal plate at the end that allows the rollers to drop down and return to the beginning. Normally the plate lays flat but somehow it had flipped backwards and was standing straight up in the air. As I drove over it, it mangled the fiberglass at the bottom of the driver’s side. I’ll never take one of my vehicles through that type of car wash again.
Submitted by: Muggster
In elementary school, my friend’s dad had a brand new S2K. Hey filled up with gas, then flipped around to the car wash, one much like the lead image of this article.
Right as it’s about to start, he notices the fuel door is open and he wasn’t sure if the gas cap was in place or not and was worried he might get soapy water in the fuel tank. Decides to try and hop out really fast and shut it and get back in before the wash starts. Gets out and immediately slips on the soapy ground, the arms begin moving from the rear to the front, he gets a shower, then the washer arms hit his open door and try to bend it the wrong way.
So he ends up with some damage to the door hinges, interior door card gets roughed up by the spinning brushes and a car full of water and suds and having to pay for some damage to the wash mechanisms as well. He ended up driving home in a soaked interior with a driver-side door that was stuck open like a wing.
Only bright side is his fuel cap was in fact in place so at least no soapy water in the tank.
Submitted by: Kaiserserser
Had a customer who owned not one, but TWO mint-condition 1998 Chevy Trackers. They were both immaculate inside and out, and less than 40k miles each, to boot.
He decided to take one to a “brushless” wash (lmfao)...the brushes ripped half the trim off, broke off both side mirrors, created a massive dent in the driver-side door, and gouged the paint all the way down to the metal across the entire driver-side, from front to back.
Apparently the trim pieces were made from Unobtanium and cost multiple arms and legs; fortunately he managed to have OEM replacements stock-piled and we were able to restore the rest. Caused over $8k in damage, and the owner of the car wash refused to pay. Owner of the vehicle took the owner of the car wash to court, who kept getting the case pushed back.
After 6 months of continuing the court date, the judge had enough. She found the Defendant liable and ordered him to pay the owner of the vehicle $14k in damages. The case was decided in less than 10 minutes.
Submitted by: Alcoholic Synonymous
Not really a nightmare, but when the first fully automatic, stay-in-your-car wash opened near me, they offered a 99¢ basic wash for the first month.
Of course, the attendants pushed the upsell for the full wash-and-wax for $9.95, and the monthly ‘membership’ for something like $25/month.
The lines for the 99¢ wash were sometimes 20-30 cars long and would spill out onto the street which, of course, screwed up traffic in the area. Eventually, the police created a waiting area in an adjacent parking lot, but it was still a 15-20 minute wait just for the carwash itself and up to a 30-minute wait for a vacuum.
There was another car wash down the road that was $2.99 for a basic wash (although you had to exit your vehicle) and after doing the math and realizing my time was worth more than $6.00/hr (average 20-minute wait times at the new car wash vs. $2/wash savings) I just kept using the old place.
Submitted by: Earthbound Misfit I