What is this on the glass??

[GASCo]

Awesome! Thanks itsgn!

As my first approach with meguiars buffing compound didn't show any results I assume the stuff is pretty hard, summed to the fact I can see some scratches even under this coating, I will try to polish deep into the glass as much as I can.

Other than the DA I also have a grinder which doe not have speed control. I'd better stick with the DA, I assume?

I know nothing about detailing but I'd like to say I appreciate your guys' patience with me. I'd much rather pay a professional to do this job but we just stretched to get this car for my wife and on the very next day our dog had to have surgery. And a quite expensive one.... I hate to have debt and therefore my approach is to save the most money I can by doing it myself. If the car was mine I'd probably just wait for the stuff to wear off, but my wife can't see very well in the dark and this stuff makes driving dangerous for her...

[itsgn]

If you only have a choice between a DA and a grinder, then yeah, definitely pick the DA. However, I assume your DA is free spinning, which is not ideal for windshield polishing. That's because the windshield is relatively heavily curved (especially at the sides, close to the pillar, where you'll have to work), the rayon pad is very thin and thus can't confirm to the surface, and because a rotation of the pad on a free spinning DA depends on the pad making full (or close to full) contact to the surface - which is obviously not given under these circumstances.

Now, I'm not saying that you can't polish glass with a free-spinning DA, just that it won't be easy, and prepare for a lot of stalling of the pad, especially if you don't keep it perfectly parallel to the surface. Which you won't even notice most of the time unless you mark the pad or the backing plate to see whether it's really rotating.

So, if you have or can gain access to a forced rotation DA or a rotary buffer, then you should use those for this purpose, because they rotate the pad even then when there's no perfect surface contant, which helps with windshield polishing a lot.

[GASCo]

Just an update, got the items delivered quickly from autogeek. A couple of Rayon Polishing pads and a bottle of Ceriglass. Whatever it was in the windshield did not go away. Ceriglass (in my cheap DA, granted) didn't touch it. I got a little ahead of myself and tried the grinder instead. Bad surprise here as the polishing pad separated from the hoop and loop fabric when I tried to remove from the backing pad. Are you supposed to be super careful when doing that? Maybe should I have used a spatula? whatever I did wrong, the fabric stayed in the backing plate and now I have a rayon piece for polishing by hand maybe! lol

I ended up replacing the glass. This mess is in the back glass as well but the wife can live with that. The windshield was just ridiculous, we had to take care of that.

Thanks for all your help guys!!

[drisaudi]

Did you try using Clay on the glass . I have seen stuff on windshields that look like overspray and Clay worked. Also I have had a ISP work on some stuff also. The pictures are hard to tell what it is

[rlmccarty2000]

Now I really want to know what was on that glass. If Ceriglass could not cut it then it must have been harder than glass. Wow! I wonder if a heat gun would not have loosened it enough to scrape off, but replacing the glass was definitely the easy way to go. Sometimes it’s just not worth the time spent.

[GASCo]

I haven't tried clay but I can't see this working since it's been stubborn even to razor scrapping.

I was baffled by the ceriglass not touching it. I even tried the grinder instead to be more aggressive but it really didn't work well because my grinder doesn't control speed and it would splash ceriglass all over in a couple of seconds.

The windshield was totally covered by this so any solution would need to be relatively easy since I was not willing to spend 5 hours on it, replacing was definitely the best way to go. Wife is really happy with 4K view out front now!

I have an older pickup truck with very scratched glass on the driver window. I will try ceriglass there and see if it helps. I was meaning to do that for years already. Good opportunity now.

[Whitewater25]

Take the edge of your razor blade and run it on a file or sharpening stone to round it a little. That way it won’t bite into the glass if you push too hard. WD-40 makes a good blade lube and just might help get that stuff off the glass. It cleans of easily with apc afterwards. Maybe acetone if all else fails.