What is this on the glass??

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GASCo

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We just bought this new (to us) car from a BMW dealership (Schomp BMW, in Denver). The car is a Corvette, and the dealership swears they didn't apply anything to the the glass of the car. Clearly you can see that the product was applied there because they didn't even take the price sticker from the windshield to apply it. You can clearly see clean glass where the sticker was but all the rest of the glass has this applied to. And I want it gone, ASAP, because it is horrible.

I tried to take pictures but it just doesn't show up. I might try with a real camera maybe if really necessary, but I will try o describe what it looks like and what I've tried so far.

The product is applied to all windows but the effect is worse in the windshield and back window. The driver side window is bad but not too distractive. The passenger side window has the product but it is barely noticeable...

The effect you have when looking through the glass is as if had some kind of resin sprayed over it but the spray was globby, i.e. you can see the little individual globs of "resin"stuck to the window, as opposed to a flat coat. The result of this is incredible distortion, especially at night. Looking through the glass is like if your eyes where all watery. Looking from the rearview mirror it feels like the back window is made of cheap plastic by how much it distorts the image.

I tried to remove it three ways. First with a DA and Meguiars rubbing compound on an orange pad to no avail. Absolutely no effect. I then added some orange pumice cleaner to the rubbing compound and still noticed almost no difference. Next day I came with comet cleaner using the same DA and pad to try being more aggressive and I can say that after about 20 minutes on the windshield only I was able to improve the image quality by maybe 20%... It would take the whole day to go around the car on every glass, and the rear glass is not easy to access.

Question is, does anybody know what that might be and most importantly, how can I get rid of it?? It is horrible to just have bought a new car and not be excited to drive it because of such a silly thing. The sales guy at Schomp told me that the only thing they could have applied is Crystal Fusion but they would charge for that. I looked up Crystal fusion online and it does not look like the same thing since it is not applied as a spray... He is a sales guys with the sale done, so obviously he doesn't care about the problem anymore. Anyway I am just sick of dealing of those clowns and would prefer to just solve the problem myself....
 
Thanks LSN!

Yes, I'd love to them to tell me what that is. And I noticed they have it in all their cars. I believe it is something to make the glass shiny from the outside so they look pretty on the parking lot. The windows are really super shiny from distance....
 
MikeC78 said:
Have you tried removing it with a razor blade?
Click to expand...

Not yet! Should I pay any special attention to blading the glass? I'd assume the glass is tough enough for resisting scraping as long as I don't force the corners of the blade, right?
 
GASCo said:
Thanks LSN!

Yes, I'd love to them to tell me what that is. And I noticed they have it in all their cars. I believe it is something to make the glass shiny from the outside so they look pretty on the parking lot. The windows are really super shiny from distance....
Click to expand...

You may never know... If the vehicle was used, odds are previous owner did some kind of coating and it's interfering with the light refraction causing the impairment. Is the vision worse at night? If so, it's plausibly a pretty stout coating, or one not formulated for glass.

I particularly do not install coatings on wind-screens for just just this reason. I've been asked and I refuse. I don't want to apply anything that takes an act of congress to remove, and may impair a drivers night-vision.

Typically Pinnacle Chrystal Vision Glass Cleaner w/ Water Repellent gets rave reviews from my customers. It's not long term, but I give them a sample and lead them to the source. :)
 
GASCo said:
Not yet! Should I pay any special attention to blading the glass? I'd assume the glass is tough enough for resisting scraping as long as I don't force the corners of the blade, right?
Click to expand...

Yes, just don't try to force the blade in the glass like a gorilla and you should be good. ;) You could try using a soapy-watery solution to help glide it along.

If you can get by scraping it off, I'd go that route over using ceriglass if you can. Polishing glass can be a mess.
 
There are also blades made of plastic, which - depending on the material you're trying to remove - might not be "sturdy" enough, but you'll run even less chance to scratch the glass, than with a steel one. Essentially your only chance to do so will be when something gets caught between the plastic blade and the glass.

Also, angle is more important to avoid harming the glass. It should be pretty low (meaning as close to parallel to the glass surface as possible), and also make sure you're not trying to scratch with the corners only, but the full edge. The former happens when you press down on the blade and the inner part of it actually bends away, leaving the blade resting mostly on its two corners.

That said, unless this stuff you're trying to remove is somehow sticky or otherwise not fully solid and cured, I'd rather suggest going in with either the above recommended CarPro Ceriglass or with Gtechniq G4 instead (of the blade), which are dedicated glass polishes, and should not only be able to remove any cured and hard substance or resin from the glass in a far more gentle and more uniform way than a blade, but actually even enhance the appearance of the glass and prep it for another coating in the very same step.

Also no need to use these polishes on a machine, because as long as you only want to remove some coating - and not actually correct the glass - a hand polisher and application by hand are more than enough to achieve that goal. And it will save you the mess what polishing the glass with a machine might cause.
 
I wonder if this is some clear coat overspray.

Maybe from some previous work, or sitting in a backyard body shop or something. Or worse, someone did a quick job and didn’t mask off anything.

I’d imagine it is also on the paint, you just may have a harder time seeing it.

I kinda doubt the dealership is spraying some durable glass coating on all the vehicles.
 
Thanks for all the answers guys. I haven't had the opportunity to try scraping it yet (got a herniated disc in my back, it's been hard to get motivated to do anything after I get home from work). But will do soon and report back. If i find it too hard I will switch to the glass polishes as suggested by itsgn. I assume they are far more aggressive than comet cleaner, right?

I don't believe it might be clearcoat overspray because I am somehow familiar with automotive painting. The globs are way too big for the thin fog clearcoat should be applied.

I really think it is not a treatment for water. It looks like it is something they put on to hide scratches and streaks on the glass. I am pretty sure that I sat in vehicles inside the showroom that had the same thing applied. Of course I didn't pay much attention. I though at the time it was some greasy stuff on the glass only...
 
Finally I was able to get out and try the razor. Unfortunately it just slides right on the surface and doesn’t even touch the goo. I was able to take pictures and a video. Guess next step is polishing as suggested, then! I can see that there are quite a bit of scratches on the glass caused by the wipers so I might be killing two stones with one bird hopefully!

Picture of the unaffected area:
c68e13068cd091a74ac602c89bcc4d0d.jpg


Picture of the affected area (and the clear line dividing them:

19414d1c764f2b341a2185d17fd199c0.jpg



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Looks like some resin type overspray to me. Anyway, if it's hard enough, you should be able to get it off the glass using some kind of polish. You might have to work for a while on it though, because to me it seems like it's at least a few dozen microns thick. Then again, hard to tell just by going by pictures.
 
Would this be the right combo? I only have a harbor freight DA with a 6" backing plate. Can I get away with that or I really need a 5" backing plate for these pads? I know it was said I could do it by hand, but with my back problems I'd rather have the machine doing the work. Moreover, I'd rather work this hard into the glass as well to get rid of any scratches (I can see quite a few through the goop)

CarPro Ceriglass Kit, glass polish, water spot remover


CarPro Rayon Glass Polishing Pad, glass leveling discs
 
The stuff you have *on* the glass might come off even with a regular polishing (cutting) compound (obviously depending on what material it is of). You'd only need Ceriglass and a rayon pad if you were to polish the glass itself, or if the substance on the glass would be so hard that only a similarly hard glass polishing compound would be able to cut it.

But yes, if you want or need a glass polish, then the CarPro rayon pad and Ceriglass are the way to go. However, you might not need the kit you've linked to if you're using the pad anyway, but only the compound itself.
 
Awesome! Thanks itsgn!

As my first approach with meguiars buffing compound didn't show any results I assume the stuff is pretty hard, summed to the fact I can see some scratches even under this coating, I will try to polish deep into the glass as much as I can.

Other than the DA I also have a grinder which doe not have speed control. I'd better stick with the DA, I assume?

I know nothing about detailing but I'd like to say I appreciate your guys' patience with me. I'd much rather pay a professional to do this job but we just stretched to get this car for my wife and on the very next day our dog had to have surgery. And a quite expensive one.... I hate to have debt and therefore my approach is to save the most money I can by doing it myself. If the car was mine I'd probably just wait for the stuff to wear off, but my wife can't see very well in the dark and this stuff makes driving dangerous for her...
 
If you only have a choice between a DA and a grinder, then yeah, definitely pick the DA. However, I assume your DA is free spinning, which is not ideal for windshield polishing. That's because the windshield is relatively heavily curved (especially at the sides, close to the pillar, where you'll have to work), the rayon pad is very thin and thus can't confirm to the surface, and because a rotation of the pad on a free spinning DA depends on the pad making full (or close to full) contact to the surface - which is obviously not given under these circumstances.

Now, I'm not saying that you can't polish glass with a free-spinning DA, just that it won't be easy, and prepare for a lot of stalling of the pad, especially if you don't keep it perfectly parallel to the surface. Which you won't even notice most of the time unless you mark the pad or the backing plate to see whether it's really rotating.

So, if you have or can gain access to a forced rotation DA or a rotary buffer, then you should use those for this purpose, because they rotate the pad even then when there's no perfect surface contant, which helps with windshield polishing a lot.
 
Just an update, got the items delivered quickly from autogeek. A couple of Rayon Polishing pads and a bottle of Ceriglass. Whatever it was in the windshield did not go away. Ceriglass (in my cheap DA, granted) didn't touch it. I got a little ahead of myself and tried the grinder instead. Bad surprise here as the polishing pad separated from the hoop and loop fabric when I tried to remove from the backing pad. Are you supposed to be super careful when doing that? Maybe should I have used a spatula? whatever I did wrong, the fabric stayed in the backing plate and now I have a rayon piece for polishing by hand maybe! lol

I ended up replacing the glass. This mess is in the back glass as well but the wife can live with that. The windshield was just ridiculous, we had to take care of that.

Thanks for all your help guys!!
 
Did you try using Clay on the glass . I have seen stuff on windshields that look like overspray and Clay worked. Also I have had a ISP work on some stuff also. The pictures are hard to tell what it is
 
Now I really want to know what was on that glass. If Ceriglass could not cut it then it must have been harder than glass. Wow! I wonder if a heat gun would not have loosened it enough to scrape off, but replacing the glass was definitely the easy way to go. Sometimes it’s just not worth the time spent.
 
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