I have bird poop etching on my hood. Will it take off if i get my car polished and waxed or do I have to take it to a body shop to get the whole hood repainted?

 

Depends on how deep the etching is into the top clearcoat paint-layer. If it is not too deep, or only on the surface, SCRATCH-OUT might work. If not, then probably a trip to the body shop.

 

You have a lot of steps between scratch out and the body shop.

If a hand polish like that doesn't work, it will likely need to be machine polished or even wetsanded.

 

The average car owner, though, usually does not have the skills to wet-sand. Doesn't that usually take a body shop?

 

I think I will try machine polishing the car hopefully it removes it. Is liquid compound and liquid polish the same thing? This will be my first time doing either of them. I am used to just washing and claying my car.

 

it usually takes a professional detailer.

 

Yes, you're going to want a professional detailer to handle this.

 

Bird poop well definitely etch your paint, but this time of year "love bugs" can be even worse here in the South. On high-speed road trips I take time every evening to drop onto a coin-op carwash and spray their little carcasses off the paint. Best not to use soap because you don't know what's in it.

if you're in a humid climate wait 'til early morning to let the dew soften them up for easy removal, but don't wait for too long after sunrise. It's important to flush them off ASAP, so those acidic little bodies don't eat into the paint. In college I had to have a car resprayed after a really nasty attack of the bugs ate through the new enamel paint job on my old Dodge. It was an expensive lesson.

 

From the looks of it that unfortunately is not going to come out from polishing. It may be able to made a little better with some polishing but the acid has destroyed that portion of your clearcoat. You can generally do 3 or 4 things, just live with it which is probably the best most cost effective thing to do, have the hood repainted by a shop which will be expensive, try light wet sanding and polishing which may or may not work but it will just be taking off more clear, or there is a DIY method of sanding it down, reapplying urethane paint, and using a 2K clear all of which you can get in aerosol cans, you can do the area that got hit and blend the area around it but you will have to so some wet sanding/polishing to cut down the edge or do a larger a whole larger section where there is a crease to try to better disguise the edge.

I would put this in the detailing section though.

 

I had like 10 huge spots when my 750i was 2 months old. I was furious and after I wash them off, I can clearly see the etchings so I called my detail guy to come asap.

But to my surprise, when the guy came 5 hours later, all the etchings are gone, not a trace of it! I don't believe my car paint is self healing but guess I was lucky to saw

them early and wash them off fast?

 

Wow. That's awesome for you. A story with a happy ending.

 

Are you sure all the bird poop is gone? Run clay bar over it then polishing it out by hand first.

What car is this?

 

As an owner of a classic car business, I've had to become something of an expert car-detailer over the years, and deal with all kinds of situations involving paint that I didn't want to hand over to my paint and body guy. As a result, I will give this piece of advice, and while obvious, it is THE #1 thing you can do to prevent this type of etching:

Get it off your paint the moment you see it. Not over the weekend. Not tomorrow. NOW.

The longer you let it sit there, especially baking in the sun, the worse it will eat through the layers of clear and paint. I've seen bird droppings permanently etch paint after only 48 hours NOT sitting in the blazing sun. That stuff is pure concentrated evil!

Once it is etched through the clear, you'll be hard-pressed to ever make it go away without repainting. My advice is to try varying degrees of abrasive polishes and rubbing compounds (Meguiars, 3M, etc have many such products that cover wide spectrums), starting with the least abrasive, and work your way through the clear until you've gotten it the best you can, then use a pure polish/swirl remover (multiple coats), then finally a good wax.

You can try one of those multi-step kits where you do your own sanding, painting, and clearcoating, but honestly, most people aren't skilled enough to not make it look like crap, esp on an otherwise nice paint finish.

Lastly, I don't recommend using a machine unless a) you've done it before, and b) a whole panel is etched. It's too easy to burn through the paint using a rotary type device (and random oribital type devices are no better than working by hand for these instances).

 

Here's a summary of removing any defect in your paint (scratches, etchings, whatever)...

The most important questions... Is it through the clear coat?

If so, then it needs to be repainted. If not, then you may use various types of abrasives to level the clear coat and remove the defect.


@GhostCar made an excellent point... "I will give this piece of advice, and while obvious, it is THE #1 thing you can do to prevent this type of etching: Get it off your paint the moment you see it. Not over the weekend. Not tomorrow. NOW."

This is absolutely critical in maintaining your vehicle! Bug guts, bird bombs, acid rain, hard water, tree sap... all of these things can cause an incredible amount of damage to your paint in very little time. I recommend you keep a small bottle of quick detailer or waterless wash along with several high quality microfiber towels in your car to remove bird bombs as they almost always occur when you are not at home.

 

I have seen bird crap eat through cc within a few hours of a fresh paint job. My dad got his hood repainted after a accident and for some reason the shop decided to park it outside in the brutal sun for a couple hours. We went to pick it up and I saw the big bird crap spatter over the hood and shook my head and knew what it meant. I carefully cleaned it off while they were talking and I could already tell it was damaged. Told my dad and he said lets try polishing it first. I waited another day so the cc could cure more and tried polishing it but the crap already ate into the clear and was not coming out. We took it back and they worked on it for a few hours, got it to where it was almost gone but since I knew where it was I could still see it. There are different types of bird crap too, white spotty bird crap is generally not too serious or damaging but then there is the big reddish multi colored crap with seeds in it and that is devastating to a finish when left out in the hot sun, eats into cc almost immediately from what I have seen, the sun and bird crap is the combo that kills your cc.