2012 A7 with Cement Splatter and Road Paint!!

[richy]

Be advised this a very lengthy write up about my journey on removing cement and road paint and what I learned along the way. Go back while you still can, hehehehehe.

This car was going to be a challenge. For several reasons. The owner called to tell me his wife drove through fresh cement and then when they delivered the car to me, he tells me that his wife is complaining about spending the $$ and he wants it done for a pretty low price. Well. OK.
When he called me a few days earlier, I started doing research into cement removal. Roughly 10 years of doing this and I've never had to deal with cement before, but I remember reading about a specific product to remove it. The product is called Back Set. I remember reading that it was a liquid sugar based product. The company is in Arkansas so I had to have it rush shipped to get it in time for the weekend. I had also read that WD-40 is also supposed to be OK to remove it, although not as strong. I called the customer and advised him to totally coat the area with WD-40, let it dwell for 20 minutes, shoot it again with another 20 minute dwell and then power wash it off. He called the next day to tell me that the WD-40 actually removed a fair bit of it. Good.

So, the car arrives. Filthy. Stains in the leather she wants removed. Dirty kid fingerprints everywhere. I can't really see what I'm dealing with as they dropped it off at 9:00 pm on the Friday night. I'm getting in a bad mood thinking about this job before I even begin. Time for a cigar, LOL.

Sunday morning I get up early after finishing the Rio at 2 am and start to read the Back Set instructions. Simple really. Spray on, allow to dwell for about 15 minutes. The surface changes colour as the chemicals react and then power wash rinse. I start to spray and start to cough. Holy Moley is this stuff caustic to breathe!! And I thought Zep Purple was bad. This stuff blows it away! It had to go on a dry surface too, so I still can't even see how much splatter there is as the car is so dirty. The wheel wells are terrible. I soak the living Hell out of those and everywhere I see any sort of splatter. Here are some pics of the car, although it was tough to see and photograph the splatter. Turns out it wasn't just cement! More on that in a minute.















I didn't take a lot of before pics as I had to have it done by 4:30 and had no idea how long this was going to take. If I didn't get to the interior, so be it.

After letting the Back Set dwell for about 20 minutes, I power washed the area. It was cleaning up pretty darned nice, but I could still see a lot of white marks. Then I realized those were road paint, not cement! Great!! The wells were absolutely blasted with my power washer at point blank range against the material that lines the wells. I would say the Back Set removed about 90% of the cement staining that had been in there. Turns out there was road paint in there too. I wanted to use Tarminator on the material, but Tarminator works much better on a dry surface, so I got my master blaster out and dried the material after the Back Set and rinse stage. I then soaked the material with Tarminator. I used about a 32oz bottle of it on this car! While it was soaking and dwelling, I also applied it to the barrels. The wheels and barrels had been coated by me with OG back in April, so I wanted to see if Tarminator would be sufficient or would I still need to use IronX. I agitated the Tarminator after a minute or so and then rinsed with the power washer. Very clean after this stage, just like on that Kia Rio. I did test a front wheel with IX and got virtually no purple run off. That stage was followed with Zep Citrus. I then power washed off the material on the wells too. Yippee!!! 95% at least removal of everything. He was quite concerned about the wells and I was anxious not knowing how it would react to the cleaners. My mood was starting to improve. Time for a cigar, LOL.
All four wheels were then done the same way.

Next up was to clean the paint well and to really inspect the lower driver's area for road paint.
I heavily sprayed the driver's lower side with Tarminator and allowed it to dwell for several minutes. I could feel the little specs of road paint all along the bottom of the side of the car as well as heavily along the bottom of the rocker panel. After some good dwell time, it was power washed off.

Next up I foamed with a strong mix of DG 901 and Dawn.






That was followed up by a wash of the same mix. I wanted to make sure the paint was very clean and with the OG, I knew a strong mix could do no harm at all. While rinsing with the power washer, the paint was repelling the water like crazy. Yeah...OG at work! I dried the car off and inspected the paint. Boy, it was really rough. Every top surface felt really rough and bumpy. I used the Elastofoam clay and lots of ONR. That smoothed it out with zero marring. Now, for claying the paint spots remaining...and there were lots. The Elastofoam was doing an amazing job picking it up. You could see all the white specs imbedded in the rubber of the clay. (I wish I'd thought to photograph it!). I didn't want to ruin it so I switched to Riccardo yellow. It did not do as good or thorough a job so I still ended up going over the area again with the Elastofoam.
Finally a defect free surface!!
I had quite a few hours into it by this time and was racing against the clock. I shot the whole car with Permanon (using my spray gun and my air compressor) to give the paint a nice boost and hopefully protect it a little better against whatever nasty fallout stuff had settled on it in the last 4 months.
The chrome exhaust tips were cleaned with Colli Metal polish and 0000 steel wool and a mf.

Finally I had about an hour left to tackle the interior. The floor mats were rubber so they had been cleaned along with the car and then shot with Crappy Tire foaming tire spray and then wiped down about 10 minutes later. I had also shot the tires and wells with DP gel from my air gun and compressor. It gave the material a nice look.
I started with the front passenger seat that was stained. I had plugged in my Gaia steamer and got it ready. I used my amazing Auto Glym Interior pad with OPC at 3:1. I worked it into the leather (it foams up when you use the AG pad) and then wrapped a white terry towel around the steamer and went at the area. Perfectly clean. Stain gone! That was wiped down and allowed to dry while I vacuumed the carpet and cleaned the plastic with the AG pad and the OPC. I then applied UIGP to the leather seat and surrounding plastic. That procedure was followed for all four seats. I put UIGP on the steering wheel as well...I love the feel of it on my Lincoln!
Well, after all that, I got done at 4:35. Not bad. Turns out they were an hour late to get it. All that pressure for nothing. Oh well. Came in on time and on budget. He paid for the express shipping so that helped too.

Here is the final result:






Driver's side where cement and road paint were:

















Stains gone!!















Metallic Close Up:










Thank you very much for persevering with me on this epic journey. Worth it in the end and got to learn about a new challenge. Hopefully this will be helpful to others too!!

[chemguy626]

looks great...I had my run in with cement stains on my volvo's paint....i really started to panic when i washed it and they didnt come out....but they came out with tlc, water spot remover and klasse. This thank came out gorgeous...good job dude!

[richy]

Originally Posted by chemguy626

looks great...I had my run in with cement stains on my volvo's paint....i really started to panic when i washed it and they didnt come out....but they came out with tlc, water spot remover and klasse. This thank came out gorgeous...good job dude!

Thank you very much and I'm glad to hear you were successful in your removal as well.

[A.P.A.D.]

nice work and nice write up! enjoyed the read and the pictures

[kmsdetailing]

I would've really considered not taking on a job like that but I'm glad you did. You provided us with some real helpful information to use in the future should we get a job like this.

I wish everyone kept up their car like we do but I guess they wouldn't need us.

Bring on those dirty cars.

[RTexasF]

This was really nicely done and very informative, thank you. When you spray on the Permanon is it left to dry on its own or do you wipe off the excess? Am I correct in assuming the surface must be in close to perfect condition prior to applying like any LSP?

[Mike.Phillips@Autogeek]

Nice write-up Richy...

I've never had to remove cement either and hope I never have to.

On the topic of road paint or here in the U.S. D.O.T. or Department of Transportation highway paint, I used to live where they tested highway paint across a very busy highway between Albany and Corvallis Oregon. There was a big sign on the side of the highway marking the site.

Considering how much wear and tear the paint on the road sees from traffic, approved paint has to be incredibly wear-resistant and stick to the road really well so it won't come off.

That means it's likely going to stick to car paint really well. This type of paint is good for our roads but horrible when someone happens to get the paint splatter on their car.

[Pats300zx]

Nice save Richy...

[vet]

Awesome job, as usual, Ritchie!

Good write up also. Thanks for the post.

[SR99]

Nice write up!

Just curious, has that A7 been compounded? Maybe it was just the photo angles but the clearcoat looked particularly flat. Normally Audi's (and most other new cars painted by robotic systems) have some "texture," visible at certain angles and certain light. Since it's applied by robots and all parameters are very precisely controlled, it's very repeatable across cars.

(I'm not sure if this texture in the clearcoat is officially called orange peel, since it's not visible at all angles, or if that term is reserved for single stage paints, but you probably know what I'm getting at) Edit: here's a video of Audi's paint process:
Behind the scenes < Virtual factory tour < Audi innovation < Audi UK
click on razor thin brilliance )

Another point...while this was ages ago, when I was in my teens I worked on a road stripe crew and the paint feeder bin had many big bags of glass beads added to the paint (for reflectivity), and there was a lot of glass dust in the bags. I imagine they still do this, and if you have road stripe paint on visible body panels, might want to be very careful in wiping it, to avoid any scratching due to the glass particles in the paint.