Nothing beats a good hand job.!!!

 

I'd like to chime in here and say that in desperation this winter I put my S through one of those monstrosities while on a roadtrip... I got shot in the face through the driverside seal of hte top in the middle of the driver window
I'm imagining this can't be good for all the seals of your conv. top.

Not to mention it wastes like 6 bucks by not cleaning your car well...

Completely bad idea.

 

I only ever did that once in my car. The car came clean, but water leaked in the soft top and the windshield wipers were taking a beating from the drying cycle. I'll never do it again, I just wanted to see if it would work. Since then, if it's above freezing, I'll be out in the driveway washing the car by hand.

 

Actually, the car can go through a regular car wash just fine. The soft top is more than strong enough to take the light beating from the car wash. I always take my S2k through the regular wash and never have an issue.

the touchless car wash will do more damage, because of the high pressure hoses and the way it affects the seals around the soft top and windows.

 

When I bought my car last summer, I took it through the touchless wash at least once a week. I ended up stopping because it neither got the car very clean nor dried it well enough to prevent water spots everywhere. To my knowledge, my seals are still fine. None of the seals leaked before, and I didn't notice any difference after I started hand washing the car and treating the seals with shin-etsu grease.

 

My friend used it, its crap. Doesn't get dirt between grooves. Can't remove bird crap.

 

I've used a bunch on my Prelude. They're very hit-and-miss (ie, one gas station's wash will work very well, another one will be nearly useless).

There's one that I go to fairly often when the weather isn't prime "car washing" weather (ie, a Vancouver fall/winter), which does an amazing job. It's nearly $11, but comes out almost as nice as a hand-wash, as long as you quickly scrub your wheels while in lineup (which is usually 20+ minutes)