Help identifying what these are

Avgguy

Avgguy

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Doing a customer’s medium blue Subaru Forrester this past weekend I noticed these spots that were mostly on the hood. They were dark brown and raised up slightly above the surface. They did not come off with a blue Nanoskin mitt nor did they come off with a LC 5 inch yellow pad with Meguiar’s 101 & 105. Also, before that the car was chemically decontaminated with Iron X. I should have made sure they were off before polishing... Thought they were gone.

Of course, now they appear white. They were very hard and I tried it but I figured all that I still would come off. Any thoughts as to what this is and what might get them off at this point? I know, it could be almost anything.

Thank you.

Craig
 
Looks round like a water spot. Raised like a water spot. Didn’t come off by compounding? Maybe some other bonded contaminate. Compound again, if no better result you are looking at wetsanding. I hope it does not come to this, but even hardened pine tar should come off by compounding. Good luck.
 
It could be tree sap that has not come completly off. It can be quite hard almost like rubber when sitting on a long time. If you are unlucky it has stained the clearcoat. But since you felt it it's good which is above surface. Use a tar remover to desolve the tree sap. To get longer dwelling time soak a mf towel and lay on the spot and then rinse off. Could be that you need to repeat it a couple of times to desolve it fully. Maybe aggitate very gently with the soaked mf towel with tar remover.
 
Water spots can be just about any color depending on length of time on the paint and contamination type. I see a lot of yellowish ones due to pollen. Water spots that are white are fairly new. Have you had any success in removal yet?
 
Thank you for asking/follow up .. that’s cool. Customer has car ion FL Keys .... I’ll let you know hopefully next week.


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No luck removing. Tried Yellow LC flat pad with M105, clay mitt, clay bar, and even Tarminator. As said before I can still feel them above/on the surface raised slightly.
 
You try gasoline or acetone stuff like that yet ?


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I'd also vote for tree sap etching. I had something similar on several of my cars. Unfortunately, I was never able to remove them completely. Maybe probably by wet sanding the surface or compounding off a significant amount of the clear coat, which is just not worth it, as they were - at least in my case - virtually impossible to spot, unless you looked for them.

If the actual tree sap is still on, you should be able to remove it with a simple IPA solution, or at worst with a tar remover. However, unless it was fresh, it will most likely already left some damage and thus at least a slight discoloring in the clear coat, which you will not be able to remove, except with said, very aggressive methods, which might not be worth neither the hassle, nor the loss of thickness in the clear coat.

You could do more for masking the defect by applying some kind of glaze, which will result in the surface being more reflective and hide the light discoloration among all the random reflections.
 
itsgn said:
I'd also vote for tree sap etching. I had something similar on several of my cars. Unfortunately, I was never able to remove them completely. Maybe probably by wet sanding the surface or compounding off a significant amount of the clear coat, which is just not worth it, as they were - at least in my case - virtually impossible to spot, unless you looked for them.

If the actual tree sap is still on, you should be able to remove it with a simple IPA solution, or at worst with a tar remover. However, unless it was fresh, it will most likely already left some damage and thus at least a slight discoloring in the clear coat, which you will not be able to remove, except with said, very aggressive methods, which might not be worth neither the hassle, nor the loss of thickness in the clear coat.

You could do more for masking the defect by applying some kind of glaze, which will result in the surface being more reflective and hide the light discoloration among all the random reflections.
Click to expand...

Thank you for your input. Yep, owner thinks he remembered tree sap. Tried Tarminator already.

How about distilled white vinegar ? IPA straight ?
 
Hand sanitizer ?

Searching, read a serious article about hand sanitzer... even on hardened tree sap.
 
Avgguy said:
Hand sanitizer ?

Searching, read a serious article about hand sanitzer... even on hardened tree sap.
Click to expand...

Hand sanitizer won’t work on the worst tree sap, neither will alcohol, or any of those other things as you’ve already found out... When I dealt with the absolute worst tree sap that had been baked on for over a year, the only thing that worked was the claybar, and even then it took some work.

917328ca5120cdedc14023273fd69e6f.jpg
 
Avgguy said:
How about distilled white vinegar ? IPA straight ?
Click to expand...
As said, nothing will deliver you a perfect result, as the clear coat is already damaged, and you can't fix that, except with repaint.

If you still see and/or feel a bump over the affected spots, and you've already tried tar remover and IPA, then the only thing remaining you can try is wet sanding. I'd recommend 4000/5000 grit sandpaper, as that will allow you to go gradually, and not abrade too much to fast. (But even with that, use a paint thickness gauge to track the abrading process, and stop before burning through the clear coat, or realize there's no point in continuing, because for ex. you've already abraded 20 microns, and you still see no improvement, at all). Use a sanding backing pad to ensure that you're not creating a "hole" (valley) in the paint, but blend the spot in with its surroundings.

However, if you don't feel a bump anymore (just possibly a different texture, or not even that, you just see a discoloration in the paint), or have reached this point through wet sanding, there's nothing you can do anymore. If you still see or feel cracks or hazing in the paint, that's because the clear coat - or possibly even the base coat - have been already permanently damaged by the sap etching. And other than a repaint, you can do nothing to improve the situation.

Actually, I had cars where the attempt to even just remove the excess sap forming a bump over the paint made the situation worse, because it then exposed how much the sap has etched the paint. As long as the bump (formed by the sap residue) was there, it was just a relatively uniform spot of hazing, but once removed, you could see cracks in the paint, some even reaching down to the metal, as the sap has "eaten" its way through the paint.

In this case the sap has been sitting on the car for about a year before being taken care of, but I'd think a lot less (probably even just a few weeks or possibly a month in the hot summer) could be enough for the sap to etch the paint down right to the base coat. And an irrepairable discoloration of the clear coat (not even repairable through sanding down some of the clear coat) would probably take less than two weeks with the sap sitting untreated on the surface.
 
The most aggressive I know about that AGO offers is 3M General Purpose Adisive cleaner.

3M General Purpose Adhesive Cleaner, bug and tar remover, adhesive remover, decal remover, tree sap remover

Could be worth a shot and could become handy in other situations too. Since you have a clean paint I would use a mf towel to wipe it off with. Work in small sections when working with stronger chemicals. And you may need to repeat it several times before results.

Do you have any aggressive clay bar like Meguiars C2100 and 3M perfect it clay bar?
 
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