I took my car to the local car wash. Before they hand wash they run a through a sprayer.
(nothing touches the car it just sprays soap then rinse it. The car is pulled through via the left side wheels. Anyways, I leave the car wash and when I stop an hour later I discover that my left rear rim is smudged with some sore of plasticy material and and 13 of the circumfurence portion of my rim has small indendations and scratches. My left front wheel has no damage but there is a 6" length of tape on the wheel. So I'm thinking did the car was guys do this? Has anyone had a similar experience?

Also can I get this fixed? Its pretty minor but hey the car is brand new and it kind of bugs me.
Does anyone know how much a new 2004 s2000 rear rim costs?

Oh ya and I got 2 little 3" not very deap scratches on my hood, Dang! Any thoughts on removing small scratches?

THe thing is, as I'm watching them wash my car, there are like 3 80K porches there too, I can't beleive they could make a habit a trashing people's nice cars and stay in business.....

Thanks

 

I had a very similar thing happen to my RSX in a drive-in car wash in Florida. Apparently some metal part was loose/uncovered and it scratched my front right rim. I pursued it pretty hard with the station and Chevron corporate, but they basically said "You can't prove we did this, and you're lying to try to scam us." I would love to take them to court, but I don't have the time, and the small claims filing fee in FL is about 1/4 the cost of a new rim. There ought to be some sort of defense fund for this sort of thing -- car washes are unbelievably bad when it comes to damaging cars!

 

Can you have rims repaired?

 

I just wanna do what's fair. I'm gonna go talk to the car wash guys. It it looks like their
equipment did then I'm just gonna submit a comp claim to my insurance company and let my Insurance company deal with them. I'm just blown away that they could do this to my car considering the type of cars I see going in and out of their place....

 

Anyone know what a new rear rim on a 2004 s2000 costs?

 

I had the same thing happen with an Integra.

When the car rolls thru the car wash, there is a track that one side of the car usually runs in. There is a guide, like a curb, on the side of the car. I could see there were teflon blocks attached to the guide to prevent scratching.........except fot about a 4 ft section. On the Integra, the rim sticks out just a little more than the tire rubber. The rim entend up getting a nice deep scratch all the way around the rim - about half way down the radius.

Needless to say - I was pissed off. I grabbed the manager immediatley to show him the problem. First he denied it all, then as I walked him over to the missing section of teflon, and we measured the same height on my scratched rim.....he agreed to have the rim fixed.

I took the car to a local rim/machine shop. They mostly do plating and polishing. There-polished ALL four rims - because they no longer matched after fixing one.....and the carwash manager paid the bill.

That was the last time I went to that carwash.

Now, I NEVER go to carwashes. Neither should any of us, since our SEALS CANNOT HANDLE THE PRESSURE!
Be careful, and good luck!
Hockey

 

Good advice. I hate work so I like car washes, but my S2000 deserves only a low pressure hand wash using clean towels and cloths and extreme care.

Sometimes that's me, or sometimes a detailer, but I don't trust those machines.

 

Hmmm, I had a rim scratching incident recently too. I bought new tires online and had my local goodyear install them for me. I went to pick up the car and noticed some scratches on the face of 3 out of the 4 rims. They were on the face of the spokes and looked like the guy had layed the rims down on the concrete on their face and they were slid around like that I calmly went in and said I noticed the scratches, and the next thing I know the manager comes storming out of his office telling me I'm lying and there's no way his "best tech" could have scratched them. I said, well I'm the one that's on my hands and knees once a week polishing these wheels so I think I know what kind of shape they were in a few hours ago. He proceeded to tell me that he knew I was going to be trouble when I walked into the place that morning. My jaw dropped when I heard him say that. When I realized I wasn't going to get anywhere I decided to just leave and call goodyear corporate. They were helpful and had the rims restored to new.

BTW, after riding around for half an hour on the new tires I thought the ride seemed awfully rough. I checked the pressure and they were all around 45 psi!! And this was their "best tech".

 

Is there a plastic coating on the outside of the rims?

 

I just scretched my front driver rim this past saturday and made a pretty nasty mark on them, I would also like to find out how much would it be to get this repaired. A friend told me they were hard cuz the lip is polished and the inner part of the spokes are painted. I was just very and upset cuz I just got the car a few weeks ago.

Anyone knows how to repair this or how much would it be?