Can You Take Your Truck with a Tonneau Cover Through a Car Wash?

No matter who you are, after using the car for a long time, your car will always become dirty and ugly. At this time, washing the car becomes something you have to do. When your car gets dirty, it is inevitable that your tonneau cover will no longer be clean. With the development of technology, the emergence of automatic car washers is simply a super invention for impatient car owners, which is fast and affordable.

Recently, we received a question from a customer, "Can he take the tonneau cover through the Car Wash?" This question is also one of the most concerned issues for many customers who have purchased our tonneau cover. They are always worried about whether the tonneau cover will be damaged or whether it will leak. In this article, we discuss the situations that the tonneau cover may encounter in the automatic car wash to help you prevent any damage that the car wash may cause to your tonneau cover. This article is suitable for people who own tonneau covers. Let's continue reading.

2 Types of automatic car wash

Before discussing, let's first recognize the two types of automatic car wash:

Touch

Features

Touch-type automatic car washers use soft brushes or cloth strips to clean the vehicle. These brushes are usually made of foam or other soft materials to reduce damage to the paint.

Advantages

• The cleaning effect is comprehensive and can clean all parts of the vehicle, including the edges and tires

• The cleaning speed is relatively fast, suitable for situations where quick cleaning is needed.

Disadvantages

• If the brushes are not maintained properly, they may trap dirt or debris, causing damage to the paint.

• For some vehicles with special coatings, there may be a risk of scratches.

Touchless

Features

Touchless automatic car washes use high-pressure water and chemical cleaners to clean your vehicle without using physical brushes or cloth strips.

Advantages

• Since there is no contact with the car body, there is almost no risk of scratching the paint.

• More suitable for high-end vehicles or those with special coatings.

Disadvantages

• For particularly stubborn stains (such as mud, shellac, etc.), the cleaning effect may not be as good as a touch-type automatic car wash.

• Sometimes it takes longer to achieve a satisfactory cleaning effect.

Car wash with brushes

If you are going to use a touch Car Wash, we usually recommend that customers remove the tonneau cover first. As mentioned earlier, this type of Car Wash uses a rotating brush to clean the car body. There are several reasons why it is not recommended to wash with the tonneau cover installed:

1. Dirt or debris will be carried on the brush, which is likely to wear or scratch the top of your tonneau cover, and this damage is often irreversible.
2. When the side brush of the automatic car wash machine cleans the tonneau cover, if the pressure of the side brush is too high, it may exert additional force on the guide rails of the tonneau cover, causing the alignment of the guide rails to shift, causing the clips that fix the rear tonneau cover to fall off. In addition, once the guide rails shift, the tonneau cover may become unsmooth when closing or opening, or even get stuck.
3. Some people may use the automatic car wash machine once or twice without encountering any problems, but in fact many problems are cumulative. For example, in long-term use, excessive brush pressure may cause the guide rails to deform slightly, especially for aluminum or other softer materials. Deformed guide rails will affect the sealing and operating performance of the tonneau cover.

Car wash without touch

If you insist on using an car wash, a touchless car wash will definitely be your best choice. It won't have anything like a brush touching your tonneau cover. They usually use water and chemicals to clean, which is good news for your tonneau cover. But be careful to use low-pressure water flow as much as possible. We recommend avoiding touchless car washes with high-pressure water jets to protect the seal and surface coating of the tonneau cover. Because during the car wash, high-pressure water flow or large amounts of water may cause water to enter places where water usually doesn't enter. Of course, if the product is installed correctly, more than 90% is waterproof, and it can withstand the test even if it is exposed to the rain overnight.