I washed, clayed, polished, and waxed our daily driver yesterday. It's a 2014 Ford Fusion, Sunset Orange Metallic, with ~60k miles. It is parked outside almost exclusively, so it has its fair share of bumps and bruises, but the paint came out looking pretty good, overall.
Where I had a problem was on the roof. There are probably a dozen little brown spots that look like dried tree sap. Typically, these come off pretty easily, but some of them were remarkably stubborn. Given the fact that it was 98 degrees (felt like 1048 degrees, even though I setup my portable canopy, since the garage was occupied), I ended up giving up on them, but I would really like to get rid of them entirely, so I'm looking for advice.
Things I tried (in order):
Wash
Pre-treat with Waterless Wash, let dwell for a couple minutes, then light scrubbing with a microfiber wash mit
Clay bar
After the clay bar didn't remove them, I decided to just polish the roof (left it for last, to minimize the chances of pad contamination). Polishing was done with a white MF pad and Adam's Finishing Polish on my trusty old Porter Cable 7336/7424. I also tried hitting a few of them with a 4" white foam pad and polish on the same PC, just to concentrate on the area.
In the end, the spots simply laughed at me. I feel like the next step involves fingernails and/or the edge of a plastic card, but I would prefer to get after these chemically, if possible, to reduce the chances of scratching. Any ideas would be welcome.
Question
chupr0kabra
I washed, clayed, polished, and waxed our daily driver yesterday. It's a 2014 Ford Fusion, Sunset Orange Metallic, with ~60k miles. It is parked outside almost exclusively, so it has its fair share of bumps and bruises, but the paint came out looking pretty good, overall.
Where I had a problem was on the roof. There are probably a dozen little brown spots that look like dried tree sap. Typically, these come off pretty easily, but some of them were remarkably stubborn. Given the fact that it was 98 degrees (felt like 1048 degrees, even though I setup my portable canopy, since the garage was occupied), I ended up giving up on them, but I would really like to get rid of them entirely, so I'm looking for advice.
Things I tried (in order):
Wash
Pre-treat with Waterless Wash, let dwell for a couple minutes, then light scrubbing with a microfiber wash mit
Clay bar
After the clay bar didn't remove them, I decided to just polish the roof (left it for last, to minimize the chances of pad contamination). Polishing was done with a white MF pad and Adam's Finishing Polish on my trusty old Porter Cable 7336/7424. I also tried hitting a few of them with a 4" white foam pad and polish on the same PC, just to concentrate on the area.
In the end, the spots simply laughed at me. I feel like the next step involves fingernails and/or the edge of a plastic card, but I would prefer to get after these chemically, if possible, to reduce the chances of scratching. Any ideas would be welcome.
-Mike
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