Winter left its mark on North Carolina this week, coating roads in snow and ice.

North Carolina Department of Transportation crews sprayed thousands of gallons of salt brine on roads to help with driving conditions.

But how does salt brine affect your car?

Automotive experts say there are a number of ways.

“Vehicles are not cheap. A little bit of TLC goes a long way, and will keep it on the road for years beyond,” Rick Sapienza said.

Sapienza is the dean of the Wake Tech Community College Division of Transportation Technologies.

He said without your vehicle's structural integrity, you have no car to drive.

“The frames, the backbone, of the vehicle — without the frame it cannot go down the road,” he said.

It’s why he and others say go straight to a car wash after the end of winter storms. After all, nothing beats a shiny set of wheels after rolling through a car wash.

Ask the district manager of the Autobell Car Wash, Bryan Smades.

“Your car is an investment, right? It's an investment that you want to take care of,” he said.

Nearly 24 years of working in the car washing business has taught Smades a thing or two about vehicles.

“That brine mixture they put on the roads to help the roads when freezing, it can really cause some serious issues underneath your vehicle with rust and stuff like that,” he said.

Sapienza said a good cleaning and rinse is important for not only the outside of your car, but underneath it. That’s because your brake lines and fuel lines are part of the underbelly of the vehicle. They are most at risk from salt brine.

Sapienza said you can protect the bottom of your car by eliminating the road salt one wash at a time.

He also said taking a bucket of water, a hose and some elbow grease to your car’s undercarriage plus the wheels in your driveway works just fine, too.

“You have a fresh water flush,” Sapienza said. “When I do it, and I do it myself, you have a hose and you can get in the wheel wells. And then you can look at the suspension and rinse them off real good.”