Car wash activated sliding door on new Chrysler Pacifica

[CKN]

Originally Posted by user52165
" and ripped the door completely off of the van."

I had a high school era job 55 YEARS AGO in a car wash. There was a tension adjustment for the rotating brush. I'm sure they are much higher tech now.......................... or are they?



I know someone who manages several automated car washes. They are all controlled by computers these days. All adjustments are made by a computer.

 

[28oz]

Originally Posted by PimTac
The point of this story is to never use these swirl-o-matic car washes. They are destructive on paint finishes and now we know they have even worse problems.



I agree. I only use the touchless washes, simply because I don't want those things touching my car.......especially right after that truck caked in rocks and mud has gone through.

Glad the kid wasn't hurt!

 

[StevieC]

The other thing is that in my Dodge Caravan the door opening buttons are disabled when the vehicle is in drive but not in Neutral / Park.
So this would a problem if you don't remember to hit the button to disable the doors or don't lock the doors.

Oversight on the engineers part for sure but easily fixed with an update to the body control and door control modules in these vans.

 

[OVERKILL]

Originally Posted by Traction
This car wash you just pull in, put it in park, and the machine moves.


I'm guessing it's the "put it in park" that is the problem as most of these systems self-disable when out of park. And yes, they definitely should have mentioned car wash procedure in the manual.

 

[ragtoplvr]

I can pretty much guarantee the attendant at the touch less car wash I use is not responsible. I would be happy with mostly sober. The air drier will in fact rip off a wiper arm. So you have to turn that stuff off.

On mustangs and such where the window must roll down part way to open the door, a brush will trigger that too. You get a little water, not a blast but not good.

Good Info. Thanks

Rod

 

[Traction]

This was a big issue to me, after seeing so many countless bogus claims against the car wash, like key scratches, door dings, cracked windshields, rust specks, etc. Yet we find whole grill pieces, trim, license plates, and nobody even comes back to check. Stuff that was ready to fall off anytime. Crazy

 

[Garak]

Originally Posted by Virtus_Probi
I always shut my car down completely in a car wash, but I can't say that I've ever locked the doors.

I haven't read the nanny gibberish in manuals too much recently, but for years, I remember them always encouraging you to drive with your doors locked. Not to be paranoid, but my worry wouldn't be a car wash, but a carjacking if someone can just get the sliding door open at a whim.

 

[Skippy722]

I noticed with my Durango and 300, both with the passive entry, my garden hose would trigger it and unlock the doors if the keys were in my pocket. But the car wash wouldn't. My satellite dish was also grounded to that spigot

 

[HemiBenny]

I don't see how this is Chrysler's fault. The vehicles owner should know her vehicle, know that it has all of these features and know how to disable them. It's not bad engineering, it's just an inability to engineer people's ignorance out of the equation. Glad that the kid is ok.

 

[cronk]

I call this bad engineering on Chrysler.
They spent millions to engineer a car and didnt factor in someone taking it through a car wash! Really!
There are pretty much only 2 types of automatic car washs, high pressure jets, and rotating brushes. No one at Chrysler thought about this?
This is why when we bought our Quest, I made sure to get a base model without power sliders. To much to go wrong, finicky technology, and expensive to fix.

 

[dishdude]

Do we know a passenger in the vehicle didn't push the button to open the door?

 

[Skippy722]

Originally Posted by cronk
I call this bad engineering on Chrysler.
They spent millions to engineer a car and didnt factor in someone taking it through a car wash! Really!
There are pretty much only 2 types of automatic car washs, high pressure jets, and rotating brushes. No one at Chrysler thought about this?
This is why when we bought our Quest, I made sure to get a base model without power sliders. To much to go wrong, finicky technology, and expensive to fix.


All cars are tested to see how well they handle water using far far more water at a higher pressure than a car wash would ever use.

 

[OVERKILL]

Originally Posted by cronk
I call this bad engineering on Chrysler.
They spent millions to engineer a car and didnt factor in someone taking it through a car wash! Really!
There are pretty much only 2 types of automatic car washs, high pressure jets, and rotating brushes. No one at Chrysler thought about this?
This is why when we bought our Quest, I made sure to get a base model without power sliders. To much to go wrong, finicky technology, and expensive to fix.

So it's bad engineering from Chrysler, but you explicitly state that this is why you bought a base model Quest without power sliders. So it's bad engineering from Nissan too then?

There's a button that disables the feature. She didn't push it. So obviously they did factor in situations that would require the disabling of the system, it simply wasn't used.

 

[exranger06]

Originally Posted by HemiBenny
I don't see how this is Chrysler's fault. The vehicles owner should know her vehicle, know that it has all of these features and know how to disable them. It's not bad engineering, it's just an inability to engineer people's ignorance out of the equation. Glad that the kid is ok.

If I had a car with power sliding doors (actually, I'm taking delivery of a '13 Sienna with power doors tomorrow), I'd know how to disable the feature, as I always learn how to operate every feature of my vehicles. However, if not for this thread, I would've never thought to disable the feature before entering the carwash. It's not like it's a common occurrence that people regularly plan for. Most people buckle their seatbelts as soon as they get in the car. Why? Car accidents are a COMMON occurrence and we regularly take measures to be safe in case we're in one. Door getting ripped off in a carwash? Almost never happens, therefore nobody thinks, "Oh, I'd better disable my power doors before going in." It's very possible and likely the woman DID know how to disable the power door feature. But that doesn't do any good when you forget to disable it (or it never occurs to you that you should disable it in the first place)!

Designing door handles that open the door at the slightest touch of any object is a dumb idea. What was wrong with pull-handles that worked fine for decades? If they insist on going high-tech, there are ways to design them so this doesn't happen, e.g. using capacitive touch so they only open when touched by a human.

 

[SteveSRT8]

Since the Net is not awash in reports of this I am calling it an isolated event. No evidence of "poor engineering" at all.

 

[KrisZ]

Originally Posted by SteveSRT8
Since the Net is not awash in reports of this I am calling it an isolated event. No evidence of "poor engineering" at all.


+1

 

[exranger06]

Originally Posted by SteveSRT8
Since the Net is not awash in reports of this I am calling it an isolated event. No evidence of "poor engineering" at all.

Automakers often recall hundreds of thousands of vehicles because of an isolated event that only happened 4 times. Often, recall notices say that there have been NO known instances of the event happening, but they're recalling anyway to prevent it from happening to anyone in the first place.

 

[DoubleWasp]

People: Cars are not made for car washes. Car washes are made for cars.

The wash has the responsibility to make sure it is safe for the car, and not the other way around.

Should Chrysler also be responsible for the brushes destroying the finish? Acid based wheel cleaners destroying the PVD chrome? Rollers scratching the wheels? Other parts ripping off wipers left on?

When I was young, I saw many car washes that had signs advising persons to lock their doors. That was at a time when there were still cars on the road that had handles that could be pulled by objects, resulting in the door coming open.

This wash should have had the same advisory. Had the wash or the driver used a bit of sense, none of this would have happened.

Sliding doors that can open easily is a customer driven feature. Most power sliding doors are a giant pain in the backside to open if ones hands are full.

 

[cronk]

Originally Posted by OVERKILL
Originally Posted by cronk
I call this bad engineering on Chrysler.
They spent millions to engineer a car and didnt factor in someone taking it through a car wash! Really!
There are pretty much only 2 types of automatic car washs, high pressure jets, and rotating brushes. No one at Chrysler thought about this?
This is why when we bought our Quest, I made sure to get a base model without power sliders. To much to go wrong, finicky technology, and expensive to fix.

So it's bad engineering from Chrysler, but you explicitly state that this is why you bought a base model Quest without power sliders. So it's bad engineering from Nissan too then?

There's a button that disables the feature. She didn't push it. So obviously they did factor in situations that would require the disabling of the system, it simply wasn't used.


No it was not actually Nissan that turned me off from power sliders, it was Chrysler. When I worked at a used car lot repair shop, seeing 3 year old Chrysler and Dodge vans needing $600 power slider motor and cable mechanisms really turned me off from ever owning one.

 

[cronk]

Originally Posted by DoubleWasp
People: Cars are not made for car washes. Car washes are made for cars.

The wash has the responsibility to make sure it is safe for the car, and not the other way around.

Should Chrysler also be responsible for the brushes destroying the finish? Acid based wheel cleaners destroying the PVD chrome? Rollers scratching the wheels? Other parts ripping off wipers left on?

When I was young, I saw many car washes that had signs advising persons to lock their doors. That was at a time when there were still cars on the road that had handles that could be pulled by objects, resulting in the door coming open.

This wash should have had the same advisory. Had the wash or the driver used a bit of sense, none of this would have happened.

Sliding doors that can open easily is a customer driven feature. Most power sliding doors are a giant pain in the backside to open if ones hands are full.


By that logic, every car wash in the world is supposed to reengineer their equipment for every finicky new car design?
Cars are supposed to be engineered for regular conditions that the average consumer would encounter. Most consumers use automatic car washs. Most car washs built in the past 30 years use a similar design.
To not build your car to withstanding the car washes in use everywhere is foolish.
You engineer a product to work in the existing world, you cant expect the world to change to suit your engineering.