Water Spot Problem, Solution, and Question

Setec Astronomy · 09-03-06, 09:11

My friend Jr. has been a little busy lately and hasn't been doing her weekly wash. She stopped by today after about 3 weeks to catch up and I asked her what this was:

We presumed this was parking garage runoff from where she works. You can see that besides the main spot on the door, where the water has run down into the jamb and out onto the rocker panel, there is another spot on the wheel arch to the left, which had dripped onto the tire and the wheel.

Here's a closeup of the main spot:

For brevity, I haven't included pics of the inside of the jamb or the wheel. As I suspected, washing did nothing. I figured I would take a little AIO by hand, to see if I could get some of the crust off. That took the stuff off the wheel arch, and a little off the rocker panel:

I brought out my PC with a white 4" pad using AIO, which didn't really touch it. I then switched to an orange pad, which slowly was having an effect. I kept going, and the area got quite warm, then I scared the crap out of myself as the AIO kind of skinned up on the surface (I'll call this the "Swirlbuster" effect) and I thought I had damaged the paint. At that point, I thought maybe I should try some clay on what was left. "Scrubbing" with the clay seemed to work, and removed most of what was left, and since I had calmed down from my scare, I finished off with the orange pad (no, we hadn't dressed the tires yet or done anything to the wells!):

My question is whether I should have tried clay from the beginning...whether that would have been successful and been safer than dwelling on the spot with an orange 4" pad?

JRdetailerwoman · 09-03-06, 09:36

I would just like to thank Setec for doing a great job removing those horrible white spots!!

Setec Astronomy · 09-03-06, 09:37

Now you just have to promise me to do a walk-around more often!

JRdetailerwoman · 09-04-06, 08:37

I will do that! I promise!!

chml17l · 09-04-06, 08:42

I know the water spotting/mineral desposits looked pretty severe, but you might have tried a chemical solution prior to polishing. Vinegar first and then if that didn't cut it you could proceed to a dedicated water-spot remover (decon acid) before polishing.

Setec Astronomy · 09-04-06, 09:27

I thought about vinegar, but I had tried that on something else (although now that I think about it, what I tried it on probably wasn't really water spotting, anyway). Of course, I have the FK decon kit, but I didn't even think of that. Part of the problem with the decon would have been keeping the area wet, since it was largely vertical. I kind of wish I had tried the clay first.