Anybody else run into this?

Pretty much every time I go through a standard car wash there is Greater than a 50/50 chance I will lose at least one Hella 500. The ‘durable, rugged, shock-proof’ ABS housing cracks as soon as the rotating brush or the long swinging sponges hit it. Never used to have this problem with the Hella 500s I had on my Dakota, but then again they were on a safari shaped in such a way that the machine hit the top curve of the bar before it hit the light. Yesterday it happened again. Lost one of the outer ones so I took the matching one on the other side off. It's not even like the bracket breaks. The housing itself completely breaks apart. Now I've just got the pair in the middle. I'm contemplating spending some more cash this time and upgrading starting with the outside set to a pair with a steel or Aluminum housing but I wanted to see if anybody runs those through car washes without a problem.

Before anybody says stop with the car washes, the truck is a decade old and not babied anymore like it used to be other than meticulous mechanical maintenance. Between keeping my Challenger clean, chasing a 2 year old around and getting things done around the house I only have time and energy for one or two good hand washes per year on the Tundra now. It goes through car washes in the interim. The only style of car wash that fits it and where I never have this problem is a half hour away and not convenient to get to most of the time if all I want to do is take a quick ride to wash it off. Everything we have close by has the standard machinery with the brushes or the long swinging sponges.

 

That's not a problem with the lights or the machine. You want to keep the lights on the truck, drive the extra time to a touch free wash or wash it by hand.

 

Thank you for the reply. If there’s nobody out there that’s been able to run a set of auxiliary lights through a car wash without them falling apart I understand that’s the solution. Just wanted to see if anybody had other suggestions first. It would be one thing if they were falling apart at the brackets but the actual housings grenading made me wonder if something sturdier might work.

 

Those spinning brushes are not soft they are a hard rubber so it doesn't surprise me that the backs are shattering.