water spots or etching...

I

imported_paradigm

New member
i posted a while back about my non-winter car being covered in salt after a road trip (~175 miles) a few weekends ago.



http://autopia.org/forum/car-detailing/84879-things-autopians-suffer-through-women.html



this was the first salt and snow the car has seen since i have owned it...i took it to a self spray wash bay after they finally reopened them when the bitter cold ended. it was another day before i had a chance to do a full ONR wash, etc.



end result: nearly all of the horizontal surfaces have water spots/etching. :(:wall



i know i should not have left it sit after rinsing it off, but things didn't work out and i had to. so, it looks like either the water itself was hard enough to do the damage, or there was enough salt remaining after the rinse that it got through the zaino and into the paint. grrrrr.



i've been wondering if collinite would have prevented this. my winter car has 476S on it and has had constant exposure to the salt, unlike the zaino'd car. hmmmm.



i guess i am disappointed in the zaino not preventing this, but i also realize i should have not let the water linger that long. hopefully it will polish out in the spring without too much trouble.
 
YOu can try duragloss spot remover. It works pretty good. I have friends who have the same problem with Zaino and protection.
 
thanks for the input. i will try a good paint cleanser first as well...i have some 4* UPC that may work as well.



an interesting side note...i just got back from doing the same wash bay spray down on my winter car that has 476S. the beading was INCREDIBLE. the difference in the harsh treatment the winter car has taken compared to my zaino'd car is night and day...it has been over a month of salt and harsh winter on the winter car...the salt has lingered on it 2.5-3 weeks compared to less than 5 days on the zaino'd car and the collinite basically laughed at it.



i would not normally say i am amazed with something...but the 476S beading and durability under such conditions has me thinking about selling my zaino and sticking with collinite for both of my cars. yes, i realize there is perhaps an aesthetic trade-off, but i'm a durability/protection guy more than ultimate gloss. i'll need to get 476S on my TL in the spring and see how it looks.
 
paradigm- Hope you get the spots off. They don't sound *too* bad, being presumably salt-based, but you never know; Accumulatorette got some water spots/etching on the roof of her A8 that resisted even the rotary...I ended up leaving them in as I was starting to worry about taking off som much clear.



Yeah, 476S *does* seem to really resist a lot of [environmental stuff]. I can't say that it protects my one dog-hauler/winter vehicle better than KSG protects the other one (and both end up getting neglected for weeks on end), but it *is* really good at not letting something eat through to damage the paint.
 
I had the same problem with Zaino. I am sure that the Zaino lovers will come on here and say that it is not possible, or that we are "doing it" wrong, but I got horrible protection out of the products. Looking forward to try the CS, to see if that is better.
 
joshtpa said:
I had the same problem with Zaino. I am sure that the Zaino lovers will come on here and say that it is not possible, or that we are "doing it" wrong, but I got horrible protection out of the products. Looking forward to try the CS, to see if that is better.
Click to expand...



+1 Love the crazy gloss, but kept getting waterspots on horizontal surfaces. Must have been applying it wrong :rolleyes:
 
a quick follow-up to this. i decided to try and get the spots off today rather than wait until spring (yup, it was bugging me every day knowing they were there! haha). i had my PC and everything ready to go...then at the last second thought :idea"hmmm...i wonder if vinegar will take them off".



YES! a MF w/ white vinegar and a few swipes...the spots came right off. :woot:



i had tried numerous other QD products and they were not touched...so the residue must have been dissolved by the vinegar. :)



i did a once over with some 4* PWC and then put down a coat of 476S. i'll add another after this one sits for a while.
 
No water spots here on the wifes dark red BMW with zaino CS over 3x of Z5pro. But heck no salt here either and I have let rain water dry on the car more then a few times. I don't recall having the water spot issues on my DD which sits at the airport daily where I work with Z2pro in the past. Now it has ZAIO on all the paint and CS just on the center of the hood. Still no water spot issues.
 
not sure what happened to cause the spots, other than a worst case scenario. the coin-op wash water may have been super hard and then add in the salt...that could probably do it with any type of protection on the paint. the vehicle had multiple coats of z5 and z8 as touch ups. i'm just glad it's back to autopian standards. :)
 
paradigm- Glad to hear the spots came off so easily. Yeah, it does sorta sound like maybe salt residue. I'll be interested to hear how the 476S works compared to the Zaino. The 476S I have on the Blazer is doing great, with no problems from having been run through the touchless a few times when I didn't want to bother with doing it right.
 
Ive tried the vinegar method at no avail. I had some really bad water spots on the windshield an could not get them off. I tried Zaino glass cleaner and they came right off. I was actually quite surprised it came off so easily with a glass cleaner.
 
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