Since my car was hit by a government vehicle and I had to wait 6 months for them to pay up, I've been pretty lax on the exterior of my vehicle. I still wash it, but I don't do regular waxing anymore. It has been about 5 months since I laid down a good hand wax on it. So today I conducted a regeime of the folllowing:

1. Wash with dawn
2. rinse
3. Wash again with dawn
4. rinse
5. dry
6. clay bar
7. wash with car soap
8. rinse
9. dry
10. wax

So after all of that I was left with this:






So what is that on my paint? My neighbor who washes and waxes both of his cars every week has the same problem, but it is considerably less then mine. Neither of us park under trees... EVER. We both have this same water-spot looking haze on the paint.


I'm up for suggestions.... Mineral deposits, Acid rain, missing clearcoat, What is it?

 

looks like calcium haze....water deposits.

 

Ok, so my first instinct would be to cut through it with rubbing compound and then polishing compound then wax. Is there some better way to deal with it? I've never had this on my car.

 

I would say either hard water spots or the clear coat is thinning out. Ive seen it on a couple other friends cars. Using rubbing compound will definitely get rid of it, if it is indeed water deposits. Otherwise, if its the clear coat running thin, then rubbing compound will only make it worst.

 

Mineral deposits based on the way they look.

I have the same problem. If you have any similar spots on glass you can verify for sure that it's mineral spots.

 

i had that problem when i lived in the city where we had really hard water. when i moved to jersey the water wasnt as harsh and it just went away with some good rubbing compound a buffer.

 

I see some duffus with a camera, but I dont think that is what you are trying to fix.

 

Do you see it more on the top of the body than the bottom/sides? Maybe flat spots where water/deposits sat instead of falling off?

 

^^ No, it's pretty much all over. It had both of us scratching our heads. I'm going to go with the calcium deposit buildup and get my rub on more then bub rub and a whistlin' wooer all over the vehicle.

 

Hey just wanna put in my two cents. I know you're an expert at car cleaning, but you didn't happen to clean your car in sunlight did you? I washed my car once while the sun was still pretty bright and I had the hard water looking spots all over my car as well. I didn't know what caused them because I had never had that problem before so I figured it had to do with washing it in the sunlight.