Water Spot / Prewax help requested.

[engelbert]

Thanks for your help in advance! I am having a tough time dealing with some hard water. I wanted to see if you have any recommendations.

Vehicle: X3: Black Sapphire
Problem: Possible hard water (Well Water)

Detail Process:


Rinse Vehicle
Tarinator Spray for Tarballs on affected areas. Spray then wipe/rinse.
Gilmour Foam Gun with Turtle Wax ICE Wash ( One chenille microfibers for top/ another for bottom)
2 Bucket wash with grit guard using Turtle Wax ICE
Blow Dry - By the time I finish, car is dried and water spots are appearing from the RINSE! These spots would be worse if I did not blow dry.
Meguire's Quick Detail Spray to get rid of all the water spots.
Collinite 745s - One coat.
Is it normal to have to use Clay or QD after the wash and before the wax? I was using the ICE because I thought it would be gentle.


I am now considering CG Citrus Wash w/ Extreme Suds and possibly a Prewax because the ICE may not be performing.
Switch from Meguire's to ONR, since this appears to be a long term problem.
Switch to Foam Lance/Canon for more bubbles and less water during wash.

Things I learned thus far:
Do not go from blowdry to wax. The insulator wax seemed to cover up and literally insulated the new water spots I made from rinsing the car. Then I couldn't remove the waterspots until I stripped the wax.

Don't use vinegar/water to remove spots, there will be less spots, but rinsing the vinegar water still created some spots.

The Quick Detailer rid the spots, so that I could wax the vehicle.


Of course I do not clay or use a PC because I am afraid to damage the vehicle and create ghosting or swirls.

Again, thank you for helping me on this.

[Ilovemycar]

I'm only going to try converse about the spotting, not any of the other things. I think anyway.

The spots are worse when you don't blow dry. . . do you mean as opposed to drying with towels? I ask because at least in the summer, I only blow dry the crevices (window trim, reflectors/lights, kidney grill, between panels, the most sacred roundel, you know) and then I hit the panels with MF towels, trying to be good about pat-drying (but not always successful) using some lubricant (typically ONR w/ distilled). Otherwise, I get spotting too if I try to blow the whole thing, won't work for me.

Black car, yeah that's tougher. Try to do the washes when it's cooler, when the car itself is cooler (not right after a long drive), and pull the car back into the garage (if you have one) before drying.

While I have favorite soaps, I don't think a soap would cause the spotting, it's the water. They're a lot of money, but some people seem to love their DI water systems.

Rinsing with vinegar dilution caused spotting??? You must not be using distilled water? I only use distilled for that kind of thing (as well as mixtures for IPA, ONR, interior, etc).

Clay is typical, but only when it's needed. If you've never clayed before, then yeah I'd do it for sure. You would ideally give it a polish afterward to clear up any possible marring.

Don't be afraid of a PC (or Griot's or Megs). You could put a red or blue pad, say speed 2, probably in fact higher, turn it on, and put it right on my hand or arm or face, and it won't even get warm, let alone hot. (A gold pad on speed 1, you could put that on me in the middle of a deep sleep and I probably won't wake up :D). What I'm saying is you can try the PC at first to apply some wax/sealant with a soft pad at low speed to start feeling comfy with it. As you get comfier and comfier, step up to the lightest cut white/green pad, or even up to a more aggressive orange, with various polishes etc. PC is pretty gentle, relatively speaking. In fact it's the gentlest thing there is IMO (because I consider polishing a car by hand to be certifiably insane, and so "by hand" doesn't even count, on a scale from 1-10 it gets a 0 :p).

[TOGWT]

Water doesn’t leave marks or etch surfaces; it’s the minerals that it contains calcium (Ca) and magnesium (Mg) and reactivity (heat acting as a catalyst) the spots are actually traces of minerals left on the surface. Alternatively they can be caused by industrial pollution (i.e. acid rain, bird excrement or industrial fallout)

Generally surface water-spots have no raised edges and are very shallow and so cannot be felt, they are very similar to micro-fine surface marring. They cannot be removed from the surface by washing but they can usually be removed with a slightly abrasive chemical paint cleaner


An extract from the article“Removing Water (Spots) Marks” - http://www.autopia.org/forum/guide-detailing/136608-removing-water-spots-marks.html#post1448627

I hope the information in this article is of some help to you. If you have any further questions please let me know

[3ismagic#]

Here's a little trick. After rinsing but before drying give the car a good spritz with Adam's detail spray. It neutralizes the minerals in water and helps buy time to dry.

Not sure if all detail sprays do this but Adam's does.

[engelbert]

Thank you all for the feedback.

I do have to admit my problem is probably my water because when I rinse the water, once the bead dries, it leaves behind this scale.

When I mentioned vinegar water still leaving spots, I didn't use distilled. I then rinsed the vinegar water off using the well water.

It sounds like a little ONR in the distilled "rinse water" and the Adam's spray before my modified MF pat dry with " blowing" out the crevices should work.

Interestingly, when I first saw the spots, I googled for resolving water spots and read TOGWT's article. That is where I got the idea for the vinegar water. So thank you twice!

But in regards to water spots, when you read the post, it really sounds like water spots ( various levels) is pretty harsh. My vehicle is only 60 days old and I've polished /sealed it three times already. So everytime these little mineral-filled drops dries it is destroying my paint?

I would have thought the Collinite that is supposed to last a long time would be protecting my car from this damage.

I am going to reattempt this weekend, and if BJ's gets the griot's DA back in stock, I'll grab that too and see if I can give my car a good lube and massage. Hopefully there will be a happy ending to all of this.