How to remove Aquapel

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grambow

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Hopefully this post will help others in the future. I recently applied Aquapel and I don't know what I did wrong but it streaked like crazy. No amount of rubbing, buffing, class cleaning or Gyeon Prep would take it off.
After Googling and seeing a lot of people asking the same question without any answers, I stumbled upon a post in a Corvette forum that indicated Aquapel Support suggests a product called Bon Ami. Its a super inexpensive Barkeeper's Friend type product. It worked and my windshield has never been cleaner! Not sure of the chemical difference between Bon Ami and Barkeeper's.

It removed the streaking but seemed to leave some of the Aquapel product as I still have some slight water shedding, which is great since my goal was to remove the streaking. (Yes, there is white powder residue that will need to be hosed off.)

There ya go!
 
Interesting and good info if needed. I end up using about 7-8 paper towels to buff out an Aquapel installation.
 
First I useally ask did you buy it on AGO or something like this. If you got on a much lower price that it's useally sells for. The risk of getting a knockoff is huge. I have 2 Aquapel that I paid $1 for each just as I'm interested on how they look like and also how they worked. Have not tried it yet as I won't apply these on something I care about. I ordered 6 of them but only 2 was whole the other 4 was empty. That's also a tell if it's a knockoff it breaks very easy. Have heard many horror stories about the streaking mess and low performance they gets from these knockoff. I just wanted to mention this as this is very common that if you import Aquapel or buy from a shady reseller to a very much lower price but also at full price sometimes you have a very high possibility that you have got a knockoff one. I compared the Aquapel container with what I'm certain that it's Aquapel with the other 2 ones that costed me $1 each did looked different between them too. One of the knockoffs looked actually better and more real than the real Aquapel LOL. The other one looked very close to the original one but missed a sticker on it. So it's not easy to see if it's a knockoff or not.

What's useally goes wrong is the prep and to get the glas surgical clean. The Aquapel is quite strong so if not really clean it desolve some of the dirt that's left and you get streaking galour. Another thing is you work fast to spread it out and it's hard to see when it's time to buff it off. As you don't want it to dry on the glass. Cause then it's very hard to buff it completly off. When you buff it off it's important to flip or switch to a fresh side of the mf towel you use as it's gets saturated fast even with that little liquid you have to soak up. I used a short loop nap mf towel to cut through with the first pass and used 4 sides of the mf towel on the windshield. So a quarter of the windshield and flip and another quarter and while I moved over to the other side I folded it and repeated it. Then directly after this I reach for a higher gsm long split weave mf towel and did the same. Not much elbow grease is needed with this just move quite fast LOL. One more problem that is easy to happen is if you apply the Aquapel very close to the rubber seals on the windows. And it's easy to bump in to these when you apply it and get that blackish oxidized rubber on the Aquapel applicator and you get a mess to wipe it off. So you useally have like a black zone on the windshield and the back window. Just go a little over that and where you don't have it have a half inch safety distance to the rubber seals on the windows.

I useally pop the Aquapel applicator high up on the middle of the windshield and start spreading it up and down towards me and then side to side. This way you can pick up where you get the most Aquapel solution where you popped it and started. When you move to the other side start in the middle of the windshield and spread it the same way and if you see it leaves it dryer try to squeze the wings together again to really get all of the Aquapel out of the container. Or you can pick up from where first started the application. If not to high of temperature I finish with move over to the driver side where I begined and follow the wiper blades movement on the windshield or back window and the same on the passenger side. A tip I saw somewhere that gets just a notch thicker layer where you have the most wear on the windshield. Maybe don't do much LOL. Then I start to wipe it off where I started to apply it.

It's also important to don't let the wipers be on the windshield the first 2 hours and don't use them the first 12h. And if you live in an environment where you have rain at a kind of regualary basis. If the wiper blades is 6-12 months old and you notice some little wear on them or you don't get them really clean and they keep releasing that black gunk. I replace them and get both a higher performance from the Aquapel and also a longer durability from it. This I do with all glass sealants or glass coatings.

How did you prep the windshield?

Great tips on the cleaner to remove it!

/ Tony
 
I've. used Bon Ami for years when I want
to really clean up my windshield
 
It seemed to work real well in the Movie "The Ghost and Mr. Chicken"! LOL
 
The single best glass polish that is capable of removing silicone and fluorine is a product called GS8-Notouch comes in 8 Oz bottles. It’s made by permatex. It is a solvent based white creamy polish and is chemically aggressive with mild abrasives on par with ceriglass. It is powerful stuff it cannot be left to sit on a ceramic paint coating so if you polish glass and fling the stuff everywhere get it off a ceramic coating as quick as possible it stripped 2 month old Gtechniq Exo V3 ontop of CSL off my whole front clip.

It’s a gem and if autogeek could carry it that would be great.

I once read a quote by a glass smith that created lens for NASA the guy hated silicone so much he stated once glass is exposed to silicone the only way to get it all off is by grinding the glass and creating a new surface. I found it interesting.
 
I never had a problem with Aquapel probably because I did not follow their directions. They suggest using paper towels to buff off the product. To me that is a major mistake. Paper towels can scratch and I don’t think that they properly remove the product. I have always used microfiber towels and had great success. My man Tony makes another great point about starting off with a completely clean piece of glass.
To remove the poorly applied Aquapel, I would suggest 0000 steel wool or a glass polish like Griots and a rayon pad.
 
UncleDavy said:
I never had a problem with Aquapel probably because I did not follow their directions. They suggest using paper towels to buff off the product. To me that is a major mistake. Paper towels can scratch and I don’t think that they properly remove the product. I have always used microfiber towels and had great success. My man Tony makes another great point about starting off with a completely clean piece of glass.
To remove the poorly applied Aquapel, I would suggest 0000 steel wool or a glass polish like Griots and a rayon pad.
Click to expand...

They suggest paper towel removal for longest durability because microfiber is so good at picking material up. The microfiber takes too much of the product off the glass. The paper towels do stink but you get better durability. 0000 steel wool could scratch I had mixed results sometimes 0000 saves the day and sometimes 0000 makes the day longer but paper towels shouldn’t unless maybe got a price of grit or dirt under it.
 
Mgavin1985 said:
They suggest paper towel removal for longest durability......
Click to expand...

Maybe they need someone that actually graduated high school to engineer a removal cloth to go with the product. Lol

Like UD stated, I would not use linty paper towels on my glass.
 
When I used Aquapel I had success using paper towel at first (which left smearing/haze behind) and then finishing up with a microfiber towel. I think at that point the paper pulled the excess and helped spread any leftover product over the glass before the towel picked the rest up. It all has to be done really fast, Aquapel requires speed to be applied or it will stick like glue.

Having said that, I don't think my McKee's 37 glass coating is much easier to remove. Takes just as much elbow grease. But it allows for more time so I don't feel like I'm rushing so much.
 
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