I let my wife use my LS430 wile I was out of town on business for two weeks. When I ot back I noticed several spots tat looked like tree sap. I tried bug and tar, isopropyl alcohol, polish, scratch x. All to no avail. It appears that my black paint has several white circles on it, it looks like the paint was etched. What can I do? Help me please!!!!!

 

Usually, isopropyl alcohol works well, even on hardened sap if you're patient enough and give it time to work. I'm surprised if it's etched within that time frame, but stranger things have happened too.

Which begs the question; why do you think it's etched if you can't remove the sap>? You will have to get the sap off first to know for sure.

Take a cotton ball and soak it with isopropyl alcohol, and let it sit and soak on the sap. It won't hurt your paint. Leave it for an hour or so and then see if the sap has broken down enough to rub away with a cotton rag and some fresh alcohol. You may have to re-wet the cotton after 1/2 hour or so, or as needed.

Then, if you get the sap off and you have etching, you can try your luck with some 3M Fine Cut Rubbing Compound or similar and see if you can make it less noticable.You will have to use a swirl remover or a finer polish on black though, because the Fine-Cut will leave a haze usually (normal).

I've read others say they use a razor blade etc. but to me, that's only going to make matters worse, and I don't recommend it.

Sorry, that's the best I can suggest, good luck.

 

Isopropyl alcohol is just regular rubbing alcohol right?

 

Yep.

 

FWIW, I've had very good results with Dupont's Prepsol for removing tree sap. I usually use this prior to detailing a vehicle.

Meguiar's Medallion Premium Paint Cleaner also takes water spots off pretty well.

 

Also, denatured alcohol is preferable (stronger) to isopropyl on sap, but most people don't have that in the house, whereas almost everyone has some rubbing (isopropyl) around.

Think of it this way; Sap is used to make shellac...what thins shellac?= denatured alcohol.

 

After removing sap with either alcohol, should you re-wax the area?

 

Yessir, alcohol will strip both wax and sealants, so you will have to re-protect the area.

P.S. When you remove sap this way, you'll get a whitish film / residue as you wipe it off (from the sap/alcohol ), so some quick detailer comes in handy to remove that. Or, if you're using a cleaner wax product, that will suffice too.

 

I've noticed I have a couple small white circle marks on my hood & roof area, about the size of a nickel. However I think it has been there for a long time, cause it was there before I bought the car recently. I didn't know how to treat it so I didn't. Is it too late to use the achol trick?

I've already clay bar & put 3 coats of Zaino & lots of Z6 Gloss Enhancer Spray.

I thought it was from bird dropping that were not gotton off in time or tree sap and figured it was probably too late to fix it.

 

Xanadu, I can only guess without seeing a pic of it, but it *sounds* like damaged (etched ) clearcoat from sap that was left on it once upon a time. I see a lot of that on my customers' cars. If it's uniformly whitish it's likey from sap, If there is micro cracking (a magnifying lens helps determine this) in irregular whitish splotches, then it's acid etching most likely from bird droppings. The alcohol won't help at this point unfortunately. The damage is done.

It may be futile, but you can certainly try some 3M Fine-Cut rubbing compound or Meguiar's Scratch X on it. You'll be able to tell pretty quick if it makes any visual difference. Best of luck.

 

I have the same problem as XanaduSC. I tried using alcohol to rub it out, but that didn't work. I then tried some Meguiar Scratch X....unfortuneately, that didn't work either.

 

Acids wil eat through ANY sealant or wax, it's only a question of how long ( it does buy you time, but maybe only hours or a day or 2). Once they dissolve the resins in the paint, the only thing you can do is hope it's only removed a small amount of paint, and left enough UNDER the etch to allow you to cut away ( by wetsanding and/or compounding) the paint to that level below the mark, making it disappear.

If it eats right through to the basecoat, adding touch-up paint is all you can do, outside of getting the panel repainted. Time is definitely the enemy when it comes to sap and bird bombs.

It sounds like some of you guys have inherited these problems from the negligence of the previous owners.

 

My daily driver gets parked in an out door municipal lot and gets bombed by seagulls regularly. None of the carnauba waxes I've tried offer much protection from the highly acid nature of this stuff. Recently I've been using NXT and was amazed at how well this polymer coating protects.

 

Guitarman, yup....like many here, I inherited my 99 2nd hand.

It doesn't seem like the 1st owner cared much about the body and paint, EVEN THOUGH IT'S BLACK!!!!!!

I hate having a black car. It's so hard to keep clean! I don't have a garage either....so that doesn't help.

But is there any product out there that will remove O-L-D tree sap or bird crap? I have nice white blotchie cirlcles the size of nickels and quarters just like XanaduSC.

I guess it's too late.

 

If the sap is still there and "fossilized" (lol) onto the paint, the only thing I can think of is to wear it away with abrasives like you would a scuff or scratch.

Some 3M Fine -Cut rubbing compound, or even heavy cut if necessary, followed by finer abrasives to restore clarity once you've got the sap off.

Wetsanding will also work, but it you haven't done it you can cause more scartches and problems than you started with. Maybe a local pro would be able to help you out with that. Good luck.