Acid Rain

The article below is part of my quarterly newsletter that I send out to clients and others. This is the first time it has really gotten too technical, but based on the dangers I think every state faces right now I thought I'd post it here too. I'm doing a car tonight that has acid rain damage that I will be photographig for the article, but here is the text so far.

 

 

 

Summer is in full swing and that means lots of additional dangers to automotive paint. More cars on the road mean more pollution. Fireworks add lovely haze to the sky on the morning of the fifth of July. Forrest fires in the area can almost black out the sun some years. All of this pollution is gratefully cleared away when it rains and the skies are restored and all is well again. ...or is it?

 

Industrial fallout, otherwise known as that lovely haze that turns the sky brown at sunset, can combine with moisture in the air to form sulfuric and nitric acid. Sound familiar? It should. That is the same type of acid that sits in your car's battery. That cooling rain that washes the air clean is actually a form of acid that is very harmful to our environment. Acid rain is a subject that most people have read about in school. I remember reading about it in elementary school even. The problem is getting even worse today as many of your children are reading about in class too.

 

As these droplets of acid rain sit on your paint and dry, the acid can leech into your paint and cause, sometimes unrepairable, damage. A brief shower followed by a blazing sun is the worst combination for your paint. Recently a client of mine faced that exact circumstance when his 2007 Porsche 997 turbo was at the dealership for some warranty work. It sat in the back lot for two weeks during brief periods of rain and sun. We have had a lot of fire in Utah this year and there was plenty of contamination in the air. There has been concern about some of the fires going through old nuclear testing sites and what that might have kicked up, so the rain was especially nasty. I actually called in sick to work one day simply so my truck didn't have to sit out in the parking lot during the rain showers.

 

The other problem that this kind of weather can cause is lots of dust on your car from other pollutants. Just the road grime of daily driving through a rainless week can just wreck the appearance of your vehicle after a short shower. That rain mixed with who knows what on the surface of your car can also combine to cause damage to your paint. I'm sure you all know how hard it is to wash water spots off your car sometimes. That is because the spots are actually etched clear coat on your car. Time and polishing can wear the etching down, but for the moment it looks terrible. Even without having contamination on your car it is easy to damage your paint from the hard water sprayed from your neighbor's ill aimed sprinklers. Dangers lurk everywhere, so what can we do?

 

There is actually a lot you can do. The first step is to protect your paint with a good wax or sealant. For as short lived as most waxes are on the surface, a fresh coat can do a lot to protect you from the dangers of acid rain. Protecting the paint this way can also protect from UV damage, bird droppings, bug guts, and a host of other contamination that find their way onto your paint. Sealants will last and protect longer than waxes, but if you are left with few options but the ones on the shelf, then at least get the wax on your paint to protect.

 

If you find that you have acid rain damage on your paint or glass, then the first step to removal is to wash the surface thoroughly using a good soap and a wool mitt. Rinse the car well and dry it with a soft towel (not a bath towel) before the sun does. When the car is clean and dry it will be easier to identify the water spots that have etched versus the ones that can be washed off. Anything left will need to be polished off. It is incredibly difficult to achieve results polishing by hand, but there are products out there that can work. Two of them that I have seen work well are Pinnacle Paintwork Cleansing Lotion and P21S Paintwork Cleansing Lotion. Those are both mild polishes that are capable of removing light acid rain damage by hand as well as reducing the appearance of minor swirling. They are products that I can recommend to any car care enthusiast regardless of experience. For heavier damage that is beyond those products, the solution would be to use a machine and a heavier cutting polish.

 

I hope this advice has been useful to some extent. The purpose of OCDetails has always been to create an awareness of car care. Through education in the right products and processes I believe that I can make a difference in the appearance of the cars I see on the road every day. As always, I'm happy to help if you have any questions. Email me at Anthony@OCDetails.com or visit http://www.OCDetails.com for more information on detailing. Keep an eye out for my book titled "The OCDetails Way of Detailing" coming this fall.

do you like any of the car covers that are available on the market to prevent things like this? Just wondering if the rubbing is a bad enough trade-off

I use a Noah car cover when the car is parked outdoors. It was a couple hundred dollars but I think it's keeping the paint from being baked off during those sunny days. It also keeps the car a lot cleaner.

Noah covers are some of the best. Car covers are definitely worth using to protect from acid rain. They are best used if the car is clean and not super dirty. Obviously they can cause damage if you put them on wrong or leave them on for very very long periods of time, but for the most part I have no problem with car covers at all. They are much better than the alternative of nothing at all. There aren't many products that will prevent acid rain or bird bomb damage.

I've got a Noah cover for my '69....

The article below is part of my quarterly newsletter that I send out to clients and others. This is the first time it has really gotten too technical, but based on the dangers I think every state faces right now I thought I'd post it here too. I'm doing a car tonight that has acid rain damage that I will be photographig for the article, but here is the text so far.

 

 

 

Summer is in full swing and that means lots of additional dangers to automotive paint. More cars on the road mean more pollution. Fireworks add lovely haze to the sky on the morning of the fifth of July. Forrest fires in the area can almost black out the sun some years. All of this pollution is gratefully cleared away when it rains and the skies are restored and all is well again. ...or is it?

 

Industrial fallout, otherwise known as that lovely haze that turns the sky brown at sunset, can combine with moisture in the air to form sulfuric and nitric acid. Sound familiar? It should. That is the same type of acid that sits in your car's battery. That cooling rain that washes the air clean is actually a form of acid that is very harmful to our environment. Acid rain is a subject that most people have read about in school. I remember reading about it in elementary school even. The problem is getting even worse today as many of your children are reading about in class too.

 

As these droplets of acid rain sit on your paint and dry, the acid can leech into your paint and cause, sometimes unrepairable, damage. A brief shower followed by a blazing sun is the worst combination for your paint. Recently a client of mine faced that exact circumstance when his 2007 Porsche 997 turbo was at the dealership for some warranty work. It sat in the back lot for two weeks during brief periods of rain and sun. We have had a lot of fire in Utah this year and there was plenty of contamination in the air. There has been concern about some of the fires going through old nuclear testing sites and what that might have kicked up, so the rain was especially nasty. I actually called in sick to work one day simply so my truck didn't have to sit out in the parking lot during the rain showers.

 

The other problem that this kind of weather can cause is lots of dust on your car from other pollutants. Just the road grime of daily driving through a rainless week can just wreck the appearance of your vehicle after a short shower. That rain mixed with who knows what on the surface of your car can also combine to cause damage to your paint. I'm sure you all know how hard it is to wash water spots off your car sometimes. That is because the spots are actually etched clear coat on your car. Time and polishing can wear the etching down, but for the moment it looks terrible. Even without having contamination on your car it is easy to damage your paint from the hard water sprayed from your neighbor's ill aimed sprinklers. Dangers lurk everywhere, so what can we do?

 

There is actually a lot you can do. The first step is to protect your paint with a good wax or sealant. For as short lived as most waxes are on the surface, a fresh coat can do a lot to protect you from the dangers of acid rain. Protecting the paint this way can also protect from UV damage, bird droppings, bug guts, and a host of other contamination that find their way onto your paint. Sealants will last and protect longer than waxes, but if you are left with few options but the ones on the shelf, then at least get the wax on your paint to protect.

 

If you find that you have acid rain damage on your paint or glass, then the first step to removal is to wash the surface thoroughly using a good soap and a wool mitt. Rinse the car well and dry it with a soft towel (not a bath towel) before the sun does. When the car is clean and dry it will be easier to identify the water spots that have etched versus the ones that can be washed off. Anything left will need to be polished off. It is incredibly difficult to achieve results polishing by hand, but there are products out there that can work. Two of them that I have seen work well are Pinnacle Paintwork Cleansing Lotion and P21S Paintwork Cleansing Lotion. Those are both mild polishes that are capable of removing light acid rain damage by hand as well as reducing the appearance of minor swirling. They are products that I can recommend to any car care enthusiast regardless of experience. For heavier damage that is beyond those products, the solution would be to use a machine and a heavier cutting polish.

 

I hope this advice has been useful to some extent. The purpose of OCDetails has always been to create an awareness of car care. Through education in the right products and processes I believe that I can make a difference in the appearance of the cars I see on the road every day. As always, I'm happy to help if you have any questions. Email me at Anthony@OCDetails.com or visit http://www.OCDetails.com for more information on detailing. Keep an eye out for my book titled "The OCDetails Way of Detailing" coming this fall.

Sulfuric acid and nitric acid are sold in glass bottles, so I doubt acid rain is going to cause vehicle glass damage. Only areas in the general locale of coal-fired power plants are going to experience any significant acid rain damage and this only over periods of years. Automobile exhaust also contributes to acid rain. Ironic, eh?

There are different types of glass

 

glass bottles meant for acid are cool

windshields with layers of plastic in them etch

There are different types of glass

 

glass bottles meant for acid are cool

windshields with layers of plastic in them etch

Yes, IN them. Glass on the outside. Hydrofluoric acid is the only acid that etches glass and it's not a component of acid rain.

windshield glas is fairly soft and that plastic is alot closer to the surface than you think.

 

It etchs and there are millions of windshields out there to prove that point.

Sulfuric acid and nitric acid are sold in glass bottles, so I doubt acid rain is going to cause vehicle glass damage. Only areas in the general locale of coal-fired power plants are going to experience any significant acid rain damage and this only over periods of years. Automobile exhaust also contributes to acid rain. Ironic, eh?

 

I'm not talking about the kind of acid rain that eats away the writing on headstones or destroys statues. I'm talking about the kind that etches the clearcoat of your car. If you have a Subaru painted after 2005 then this should be of special concern for you since that paint is going to scratch no matter how gentle you are with it. All it takes is for standing rain water on your car, and the mineral deposits and contamination contained in that water, to be allowed to be baked onto your car by the sun and you'll have some significant waterspots to deal with. You think the hard water spots from your sprinklers are bad? Just wait till you get hit with this stuff.

 

Windshields etch very easily. You can etch it with hard water if you let it sit in the sprinklers on a sunny day. I'm not saying that it is going to eat right through your windshield onto your dash, but you can get some permenant waterspots if you aren't careful. There are a number of glass polishing products out there for when that happens, but don't think that just because it is glass then it is safe. When the right contamination mixes in the atmosphere from fires and industrial polution, then you can expect to see acid rain. This article is meant to be sent out to people in my area who are aware of the situation locally. It isn't always this high of a concern, but when the sky is orange and you can't see the mountains because of the smoke, you know that the next rain shower is going to be one that you don't want to be out in.