So after getting my winter wheel and tire combo installed. Went to the auto car wash. I have been using it since my defender was new. After unloading the old wheel/tire, I noticed the passenger rear view mirror was missing the cover. It’s a good thing it wasn’t a busy night. The cover was unscathed. It had ppf film too.

 

Not sure how to respond. Smart choice with the PPF but then there's the automatic car wash... Glad to see you recovered the mirror bits, hopefully it went on ok.

 

It's a Michigan car, as much as I want to wash it inside my heated garage, those snow days, automatic car washes are unavoidable. The front face ppf is for the bugs and stones to keep it perfect after hundred miles of driving. Yes the cover is held by 5-6 clips. This is the first time it happened after almost a year of automatic car washes. I added the 3m red trim tape to keep it stronger. But no clips were damaged.

 

Modern cars snap together like Legos.

I've read that you are better off never washing your vehicle through an entire winter than running it through an automatic card wash. The water pressure of an automatic car wash pushes the road salt further into the body and causes unexposed areas to corrode faster. I had our Defender ceramic coated. I can quickly wash it on any day above 30 degrees using a bucket of warm water with P21S shampoo. Then quickly rinse off the soap and blow off the excess water with my battery-powered Dewalt leaf blower.

 

its the soft (cloth!) car wash, not a touchless carwash.

 

brushless soft cloth is less worst than brush but it will still cause damage to the paintwork.

Touchless might have the high water pressure and harsh soap issue but it's not easy to know for sure if that's actually evident.

​​​​​​I don't wash often but when I do, I use hand wash only. A dirty defender in my opinion looks better than a pristine one.

 

Totally agree, your Land Rover should look like this in winter:

 

Beautiful 😍

 

I have my 2015i escalade platinum since new and have been using this carwash daily until 295,000 miles and the paintwork still looks new and it has been a michigan car since 2015. unless the defender uses soft paints, I think I'm good. It has dealer installed ceramic protection and the front ppf up front.

 

well you said it yourself. You have ceramic and ppf protection and that's what they are supposed to do, to protect the paint.

So the condition of your paintwork is attributed to the ceramic and ppf protection that you have on your car, and not due to automatic carwash not damaging the paintwork.