Nearly had the roof of my car ripped of by a car wash

[Giannis]

Guys, this is freaking unbelievable. Yesterday my wife took the Clio to a car wash, since she couldn't stand the car being so dirty. So far so good. The car washes have a system that blows air to the car so that it dries out. This thing has a sensor that "sees" the height of the car and adjust itself, but this time it failed to recognise the roof rack/load carrier that i used to have, so it ripped it off. She said that if the a$$hole responsible for the washing hadn't stopped the machine, then it would take the roof with it. The rack was totally broken, as well as the bicycle holder that used to have on the roof. This ended up with a totally wasted load carrier and many scratches to the top of the car like this one:



At least it looks better without the roof rack, but damit i need it..

Before:

After:


PS. How hard can it be to wash a car. For Fack's sake...


edit; some mod please correct the title of the thread. it's roof, not rood

 

[SDNR]

An automated car wash nightmare -- I have heard other car wash horror stories.

Not good Giannis, I'm glad it wasn't worse.

 

[NarutoRamen]

So is the company responsible going to compensate you? I think they should. It's their machine that screwed up.

 

[phaeton]

Thats why I hand wash my family's fleet

 

[Merc1]

Sorry to hear about this. Just asking, but isn't something like that supposed to come off the car before you go in to an automatic wash? Such a device would have never been allowed to stay on a car going into a automatic was here.

M

 

[MikeJ]

Sorry to hear about this. Just asking, but isn't something like that supposed to come off the car before you go in to an automatic wash? Such a device would have never been allowed to stay on a car going into a automatic was here.

M

Here they would ask (especially in the winter) whether you have a roof rack or a ski box, and the machines have a different program which is specifically set up to take any such devices into account.

Sorry to hear about the damage Giannis. I'm surprised that the machine didn't automatically stop before it could do any damage. Once, I forgot to fold the mirrors when I took the Volvo we used to have to a wash (the car was then brand new and I didn't realize that unless I folded the mirrors I would have to position the car exactly in the middle of the thing with 2 cm to spare on either side). The machine hit the mirror and stopped immediately, leaving no marks whatsoever.

 

[Merc1]

Oh I see. Different places, different practices I guess. Interesting.

M

 

[Giannis]

To answer your questions, i never had to take the roof rack off, or close the mirrors before. Always worked fine. But this time, who know?

As for the damage, i will have to make some phonecalls tomorrow and see what we can do. If they don't pay me for the damage, i won't be fixing the car with my money anytime soon. There no point in spending much money on minor cosmetic damage on such an old car, given the way i use it..

 

[Yperion]

Nomally they should had asked you to remove the rails before entering the washing machine like Merc1 says.

Or maybe they were tired of seeing you with the same car so many years and tried to destroy it in order to get a new one.

 

[Tarek]

I hate those automated ones,sorry to hear about that man

 

[Giannis]

Or maybe they were tired of seeing you with the same car so many years and tried to destroy it in order to get a new one.

The problem is that i can't get rid of the car. I need an old one, that i don't have to care about, no matter how much i abuse it. And believe me i abuse it a lot. These days i am supervising the built of a villa up in the mountain, where i have to use a "road" made of gravel. Well, i see it like a special stage every time i go there I don't think i would do 60km/h with the Volvo on such a road

 

[Mr Robert]

If you want to look at the bright side of the story, you seem to have really nice consistent weather, judging by the before and after pictures.