I normally wash my vehicle by hand but it's too darn cold right now to do that in NY. Has anyone had trouble in the car wash. I took my vehicle to an automatic car wash and the vehicle would not budge while in neutral on the conveyor belt. On the conveyor belt, each time the elevated roller sleeve would try to push the vehicle along, the vehicle would not glide along and the roller sleeve would lift and go under the tire. The car wash guy (after several attempts to get it to get thru via normal process) had to ultimately get in the vehicle, shift it in drive and gently drive the vehicle thru. Has anyone else had this issue? Or did he just not know how to shift in neutral? He said even in neutral it was doing this but not sure he's right.

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2020 Defender 110 First Edition Indus Silver (Current)
2020 Discovery HSE Luxury Si6 Fuji White (Current)
2015 RRS Autobiography Fuji White (Former)
2011 RRS Supercharged Fuji White (Former)
2008 LR2 Fuji White (Former)

 

What does the owners manual say about automatic car wash?

 

Whether on here or on FB, other owners are getting dragged over the coals for using car washes. It drives me nuts that owners get trolled by other owners for doing so. I agree with you, from time to time it’s a necessity. When I do look for one, I always look for the style in the picture above. While it doesn’t do a great job, it does wash off the bulk of the road salts, dirt, etc. The “wand” moves around the stationary car. I have the roof rack on mine, so this is the only type I will periodically use.

 

Does it have an anti roll feature like hill holding or something like that?

 

Same here. Occasionally just the "touchless" carwash is adequate enough to get whatever you're trying to keep from festering on the vehicle. I don't do anything that has tracks or brushes. They tend to do more harm than good.

 

Army rover is on to something. Either the attendant didn't know how to put it in Neutral or he press the brake on too long for the hold to kick in.

 

likely brake hold was enabled. read through this https://www.ownerinfo.landrover.com/.../proc/G2409144

 

When going through the manual I found a couple of references to car wash. I experienced one in my wife’s 2019 Landrover so I was digging around.

Auto start stop should be disabled because if you pop car into neutral as required take your foot off the brake and then unbuckle the seat belt the parking brake will be applied as car shuts down

Forward Alert has a note to be turned off in a car wash which could possibly lead to applying brakes.

I normally hand wash but really if it is a nice car wash they are capable of doing a good job of set up correctly. In Washington State they really don’t want us letting soap into storm drains and ask residents to report those who do. It pretty much drives me to the car wash. The ph in the soap is usually high for them to work well and it will tend to remove some waxes. I took my Defender through just out of curiosity and turned off forward collision alert and disabled auto stop/start. No problems. I did this only at a wash I was very familiar with that was well maintained. I always worry about scratches from my hand mitts or the brush in self serve or the brushes in an automatic. I have never had issues in self serve if my first move is a thorough cleaning of the brush head lots of pre-rinse and lots of flowing soap if I use the brush.

Hope this helps

 

This is an issue on new cars with all the high tech driver and safety assistance systems. The manual advises against auto-wash with a forward propelling rail system. The crash-avoidance safety features and auto-hold on the defender are doing what they are designed to do.

I have been taking mine to a no-touch wash with no forward propelling track to get all the winter salt off the car. Mercedes now has a convenient “auto-wash button” with auto configures the appropriate safety system including turning the wipers off for the car wash.

 

Hi all,

I've been through the car wash many times a week. My dealership offers free carwashes for three years with the purchase of a car. They have a new $1m carwash, and while not touchless, it gets cleaned multiple times a day to cut down on the build up of dirt on the parts that touch the car.

I make sure to turn off my auto wipers, put the car in neutral, make sure I don't have "Hold" on and fold the mirrors in... No issues except that the whirling wipers, (not bristle brush material) grab the spare when they get to the rear of the car and shake the Defender a bit.

I normally hand wash, but now that we lease cars every 2-3 years, I don't care as much as I used to. I do get ceramic applied and they reapply each year to keep things looking good. That means they buff prior to reapply.

Rob