water still beads

[joe18741]

After Washing Car with 3M APC diluted in wash water 4oz to 3 gallons
wipe down panels with IPA 12% solution
also used Dawn in wash water
also wiped down with prep all

After all this water still beads on panels
Is it because there is wax still remaining or is it beading because of the
clear coat finish

Thanks From New Guy Still Learning

 

[07RS4]

Welcome "New Guy Still Learning"

What LSP was on the vehicle? Wax or Sealant or Coating?

 

[FUNX650]

Water beads form on a surface when the cohesion of the water molecules with each other...
is much greater than the adhesion of the water to the surface.
This is called "wetting".

The cohesion of a liquid is directly related to the surface tension of a liquid.
It is the two properties combined, adhesion and cohesion, which determine "wettabilty"...and ultimately: beading.

Water, due to the above, will bead-up (not "wet") on hydrophobic materials.
Some of your vehicle's clear coated panels must be exhibiting hydrophobicity, in and amongst themselves;
and/or: there is a hydrophobic substance(s) still remaining upon some of the clear coated panels.

Hope this not too scientific approach helps.

Bob

 

[joe18741]

Welcome "New Guy Still Learning"

What LSP was on the vehicle? Wax or Sealant or Coating?

I Dont Have that info

 

[PiPUK]

I am not familar with 'prep all' but the other steps used would not strip any of the LSPs I work with. If you really want to be certain that the existing LSP is removed, you need to use an abrasive polish (also note that polishes have oils so you would need to also clean these off to ensure you have virgin paint).

 

[swanicyouth]

I am not familar with 'prep all' but the other steps used would not strip any of the LSPs I work with. If you really want to be certain that the existing LSP is removed, you need to use an abrasive polish (also note that polishes have oils so you would need to also clean these off to ensure you have virgin paint).

Prep All is a product to remove wax and grease before painting. It removes all conventional LSPs. Check it out:

It's actually pretty good.

 

[KillaCam]

I'm starting to wonder if mineral spirits would be just effective as using something like DP prep polish. I know mineral spirits can be used for many things and it would sure be quicker than using a polish that you have to machine apply before using a coating or applying a sealant.

 

[swanicyouth]

Mineral spirits is the BEST stuff I have found to get tough sealants like PowerLock out of pads. It just emulsifies the stuff into nothingness. I'm sure it does an equally good job on the panel.

However, the stuff smells horrible (even low odor) and everything that touches it reeks. I wouldn't want to touch any of my good towels to mineral spirits, as I could see repeated exposure possibly destroying super nice towels.

 

[Andr3wilson]

Swanic raises a good point, MS (aka Paint Thinner) is really the only thing (excluding polishing) to remove an LSP or coating. I do not advise wiping down a car with pure Thinner, it wont remove the paint (as it has already cured and off gassed), but it will slowly deteriorate it.

Now I would also like to point something out here. I don't know about anyones experience on here, but personally I have washed fresh paint (baked) and it really beaded nicely. Now why does it do this? Well if you look back the physics of why water beads (read above), you know we need a surface to exhibit hydrophobicity; help the water retain its surface tension. An LSP will bead because it makes the paint "flat" or fills in the imperfections (I know there is a lot more behind it, but I am trying to be general here). Perfect or fresh paint will bead as well because they do not have any imperfections to break the surface tension.

Keep in mind there are many different degrees of beading and a persons opinion of beading/sheeting will be different than someone else's opinion.

If the paint was freshly polished or new, this is one reason it could be beading!

 

[PiPUK]

Prep All is a product to remove wax and grease before painting. It removes all conventional LSPs. Check it out:

It's actually pretty good.

Cool, thanks.

It is actually rather similar to what we would use for a tar remover (albeit tar removers should have surfactants so that they rinse off). I would still suggest that this is not a guarantee of stripping. If you have followed my threads, you will recall that even the strong tar removers (and, in fact, neat xylene) did not reliably strip some of the LSPs.

Swanic raises a good point, MS (aka Paint Thinner) is really the only thing (excluding polishing) to remove an LSP or coating. I do not advise wiping down a car with pure Thinner, it wont remove the paint (as it has already cured and off gassed), but it will slowly deteriorate it.

Now I would also like to point something out here. I don't know about anyones experience on here, but personally I have washed fresh paint (baked) and it really beaded nicely. Now why does it do this? Well if you look back the physics of why water beads (read above), you know we need a surface to exhibit hydrophobicity; help the water retain its surface tension. An LSP will bead because it makes the paint "flat" or fills in the imperfections (I know there is a lot more behind it, but I am trying to be general here). Perfect or fresh paint will bead as well because they do not have any imperfections to break the surface tension.

Keep in mind there are many different degrees of beading and a persons opinion of beading/sheeting will be different than someone else's opinion.

If the paint was freshly polished or new, this is one reason it could be beading!

As above, MS will not remove everything, at least not unless the LSP is already degraded or not the most durable offering.

With regards to the hydrophobicity, this is actually not right. I can make very rough surfaces very hydrophobic. Going to the extreme, super hydrophobicity tends to be achieved by having a surface which is extremely rough - same principle as the lotus effect.

I could produce you a surface which is nanometer flat and extremely hydrophillic. I can even switch between the two behaviours with simple chemical treatment for some surfaces. Roughness is a red herring without a whole lot more info.

 

[KillaCam]

Mineral spirits is the BEST stuff I have found to get tough sealants like PowerLock out of pads. It just emulsifies the stuff into nothingness. I'm sure it does an equally good job on the panel.

However, the stuff smells horrible (even low odor) and everything that touches it reeks. I wouldn't want to touch any of my good towels to mineral spirits, as I could see repeated exposure possibly destroying super nice towels.

Maybe use dedicated towels for its purpose only. I notice whatever it touches does smell bad but the smell does go away. I just wondered if it would be a good prep for coatings.

 

[swanicyouth]

Cool, thanks.

It is actually rather similar to what we would use for a tar remover (albeit tar removers should have surfactants so that they rinse off). I would still suggest that this is not a guarantee of stripping. If you have followed my threads, you will recall that even the strong tar removers (and, in fact, neat xylene) did not reliably strip some of the LSPs.



As above, MS will not remove everything, at least not unless the LSP is already degraded or not the most durable offering.

With regards to the hydrophobicity, this is actually not right. I can make very rough surfaces very hydrophobic. Going to the extreme, super hydrophobicity tends to be achieved by having a surface which is extremely rough - same principle as the lotus effect.

I could produce you a surface which is nanometer flat and extremely hydrophillic. I can even switch between the two behaviours with simple chemical treatment for some surfaces. Roughness is a red herring without a whole lot more info.

I'm curious to here what MS won't remove. I'm talking about conventional waxes and polymer sealants - not coatings. I've done testing (I'm not a scientist and I'm not in a lab - just a dude in a garage) with what I consider to be pretty tough polymer sealants (PowerLock and Wolfgang) and I found mineral spirits just eats them up. I'm talking about on a panel, and getting them out of a pad and returning a pad soaked with sealant to dry new condition. I didn't dissect the pad and send it to a lab for analysis; but all the slickness, stains, and sliminess was removed and the pad feels completely new again. I guess it's possible for a trace amount to be left in the pad, but MS seems to have no problem breaking down the polymers sealants I mentioned. Surfactants do little to nothing IME with these sealants. You can soak a pad until the cows come home in your choice of APC/Pad Cleaner and it won't remove these products from a pad.

This is all my experience and my conclusions. This has been what has worked for me and what I've been able to duplicate many times over with MS and surfactant based cleaners.

Here's any example. It's not meant to form any conclusion other than what the photos show.

Anyone who has used these two polymer waxes knows they are miserable to get the stains out of your pads:

Pad after use:

Pad after cleaning with all these products. Note stain from wax is still present. Pad also still felt "oily" and "waxy"

Pad after being squeezed in mineral spirits a few times. Note pad is as new. Pad felt non oily and non waxy. Note all staining gone:

I'm not trying to say I'm right. It's just been my experience mineral spirits SEEMS to dissolve easily every and any conventional LSP I own.

 

[KillaCam]

Seems to clean pads amazing for me too. For the tough ones, let it soak overnight. Are those CG UFO pads? Those are my favorite applicators for applying waxes/sealants if it's the CG ones. Once I use up these yellow pinnacle ones I'll be going back to those.

 

[PiPUK]

I'm curious to here what MS won't remove. I'm talking about conventional waxes and polymer sealants - not coatings. I've done testing (I'm not a scientist and I'm not in a lab - just a dude in a garage) with what I consider to be pretty tough polymer sealants (PowerLock and Wolfgang) and I found mineral spirits just eats them up. I'm talking about on a panel, and getting them out of a pad and returning a pad soaked with sealant to dry new condition. I didn't dissect the pad and send it to a lab for analysis; but all the slickness, stains, and sliminess was removed and the pad feels completely new again. I guess it's possible for a trace amount to be left in the pad, but MS seems to have no problem breaking down the polymers sealants I mentioned. Surfactants do little to nothing IME with these sealants. You can soak a pad until the cows come home in your choice of APC/Pad Cleaner and it won't remove these products from a pad.

This is all my experience and my conclusions. This has been what has worked for me and what I've been able to duplicate many times over with MS and surfactant based cleaners.

Here's any example. It's not meant to form any conclusion other than what the photos show.

Anyone who has used these two polymer waxes knows they are miserable to get the stains out of your pads:

Pad after use:

Pad after cleaning with all these products. Note stain from wax is still present. Pad also still felt "oily" and "waxy"

Pad after being squeezed in mineral spirits a few times. Note pad is as new. Pad felt non oily and non waxy. Note all staining gone:

I'm not trying to say I'm right. It's just been my experience mineral spirits SEEMS to dissolve easily every and any conventional LSP I own.

I cannot name the products we make (first because we don't pay to advertise on AG and second because that would tell you who some of our customers are) but several of the production products will not strip in one go with MS and almost any of the more durable development products will not come off with anything short of abrasive polish.

With regards to APC or the likes, I would not expect them to clean your pads. These products remove your LSP type products by chemically reacting. With pad, you have simple so much LSP that you haven't a chance of getting them clean. More than that, as water based products, they are having a real fight against the tendency of these products to repel water! MS and other organic solvents dissolve, rather than react. The solubility will be quite high, much of the time so will remove a lot of LSP.

The type of polymers are also important. Un-cured polymers are soluble in MS, that is often the solvent we use with them. They are also soluble in things like IPA. If you are dealing purely with non-curing polymers, then yes, you may very well get it off with MS. However, if you have something cure on the surface, it will very likely not be soluble in those solvents anymore (or at least have low solubility) so it becomes a bugger to remove.

I would suggest that those waxes are predominantly wax and not much polymer - dissolve the wax (MS will work) and the polymer will come with it. As an aside here, have you ever tried dissolving a lump of wax in MS? At room temperature, it takes forever! Another note is that some of the 'coatings' out there are actually just curable polymers and we well know that they don't come off easy!