Dear Mr Forum,
Much against the grain (I normally wash by hand, I paid a visit to my local carwash on Sunday. I went for the full all-singing all-dancing wash with added gusto and vim.
Imagine my surprise when I left the place and went to brake for the next turning. I'd have stuffed someone up the backside (oo-er!) if it had been a traffic queue rather than merely slowing for a turn. No brakes at all for a second or two (i.e. an eternity of panic time).
Thinking back, I remembered that the way the machine waxed the car was to spray the stuff everywhere, presumably including through my alloys onto the brake discs. The thing is, if this is happening to some cars every weekend, they must end up driving about with brake pads utterly impregnated with wax, with all the attendant problems that implies.
I'm not looking for an answer (my solution is that I won't be getting the car auto washed again), just mentioning the issue lest anyone else should suffer it.
V
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Moral of the story is to try your brakes as/before you move off. Don't you ever take note of the warnings after you have been through a ford?
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brakes are self-cleaning, and some handbooks recommend giving them an occasional 'power-clean' if they are glazing (favorite of stop-start traffic).
Just a hard drive, on a straight road, and a good dab at the brakes works wonders.
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CM. I think the warning after a ford applied really when we have drum brakes.
I'v driven through them with disk brakes and there's been no affect when trying them after.
Alvin
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Possibly you are right - another road sign designed in the 60s - but it does dry off any residual water. I think even disk brakes would need to "burn" off this water if covered - but I am talking about something I know nothing about.
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Water will evaporate almost immediately on hot disc brakes but not wax.
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Vin
I imagine if you'd got to any speed after the wash the disc brakes would have been dried centrifugally. That's one of their benefits. The problem is more likely to be the significant quantity of water, rather than an extremely small quantity of wax.
Only had this once, many years ago, on a drum braked motor bike after a ride in heavy rain. It's only a second or two, but seems like a lifetime.
Regards
John
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Funnily enough our local car wash actually has a sign up telling you to try your brakes so perhaps it is worth mentioning to the proprietors, after all in todays litiginous (is that the right word?) world someone would probably sue sooner or later.
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