“Baked In” Bug Stains

[Desertnate]

Water etching stains on otherwise perfect painted bumpers has caused me a bit of stress on several occasions. There’s not much worse feeling than when a vehicle cleans up nice only to notice water etching streaks running vertically down those bumpers and wondering if you somehow caused them while also finding out they’re virtually impossible to correct. Has anyone else experienced that?

The customer shows up and all I can think about is “damn has he noticed it yet”
The risk you take on when it’s in your hands to take care of.

I haven't experienced etching from those drips, but I have seen them. It seems water gets trapped in the hidden drainage channels between the trunk/hatch lid and the body of the vehicle. Then at some random point that water cuts lose, runds down, and escapes across the bumper. This usually happens long after I've finished drying everything.

My "favorite" is working out our Highlander. The glass on the rear hatch can open seperately from the rest of the hatch. Dirt will accumulate between the glass and the recessed sill. I don't always open the glass and clean that sill, so it is not uncommon to have a perfectly clean car and suddenly this muddy drip appears from behind the glass and runs across a perfectly clean hatch. Ugh...

[Eldorado2k]

I haven't experienced etching from those drips, but I have seen them. It seems water gets trapped in the hidden drainage channels between the trunk/hatch lid and the body of the vehicle. Then at some random point that water cuts lose, runds down, and escapes across the bumper. This usually happens long after I've finished drying everything.

My "favorite" is working out our Highlander. The glass on the rear hatch can open seperately from the rest of the hatch. Dirt will accumulate between the glass and the recessed sill. I don't always open the glass and clean that sill, so it is not uncommon to have a perfectly clean car and suddenly this muddy drip appears from behind the glass and runs across a perfectly clean hatch. Ugh...

The streaks I’m referring to are along the entire surface of the bumper. Streaks that could have only occurred if someone were to take a garden hose and spray off their car as a means to quickly “wash” it, then doubled down on their mistake and allowed it to sit and dry.

Another way of causing it would be if one were to claybar the vehicle and allow the claylube you’re spraying to rundown onto the bumpers and forgetting to dry it off in time. That’s what had me thinking about whether I had caused them or whether they were already on the vehicle but I just hadn’t noticed them until the rest of the paint had cleaned up.

This is also another reason why it’s a good idea to use distilled water to mix up your chemicals, especially claylube.