Critique my quarterly article titled "Acid Rain"

[Jngrbrdman]

I maintain a quarterly newsletter that I send out to clients and other interested individuals. This quarter I am writing about acid rain and some of the dangers. I`ve got a car I`m doing tomorrow that will hopefully provide some good pictures of it as well as on how to remove it. So far this is what I`ve got for the article. It is pretty much complete and I`d like an opinion on it since this is a little more technical than I`m used to writing. Any chemists who know more about acid rain who could provide more insight would be helpful.

Summer is in full swing and that means lots of additional dangers to automotive paint. More cars on the road mean more pollution. Fireworks add lovely haze to the sky on the morning of the fifth of July. Forrest fires in the area can almost black out the sun some years. All of this pollution is gratefully cleared away when it rains and the skies are restored and all is well again. ...or is it?

Industrial fallout, otherwise known as that lovely haze that turns the sky brown at sunset, can combine with moisture in the air to form sulfuric and nitric acid. Sound familiar? It should. That is the same type of acid that sits in your car`s battery. That cooling rain that washes the air clean is actually a form of acid that is very harmful to our environment. Acid rain is a subject that most people have read about in school. I remember reading about it in elementary school even. The problem is getting even worse today as many of your children are reading about in class too.

As these droplets of acid rain sit on your paint and dry, the acid can leech into your paint and cause, sometimes unrepairable, damage. A brief shower followed by a blazing sun is the worst combination for your paint. Recently a client of mine faced that exact circumstance when his 2007 Porsche 997 turbo was at the dealership for some warranty work. It sat in the back lot for two weeks during brief periods of rain and sun. We have had a lot of fire in Utah this year and there was plenty of contamination in the air. There has been concern about some of the fires going through old nuclear testing sites and what that might have kicked up, so the rain was especially nasty. I actually called in sick to work one day simply so my truck didn`t have to sit out in the parking lot during the rain showers.

The other problem that this kind of weather can cause is lots of dust on your car from other pollutants. Just the road grime of daily driving through a rainless week can just wreck the appearance of your vehicle after a short shower. That rain mixed with who knows what on the surface of your car can also combine to cause damage to your paint. I`m sure you all know how hard it is to wash water spots off your car sometimes. That is because the spots are actually etched clear coat on your car. Time and polishing can wear the etching down, but for the moment it looks terrible. Even without having contamination on your car it is easy to damage your paint from the hard water sprayed from your neighbor`s ill aimed sprinklers. Dangers lurk everywhere, so what can we do?

There is actually a lot you can do. The first step is to protect your paint with a good wax or sealant. For as short lived as most waxes are on the surface, a fresh coat can do a lot to protect you from the dangers of acid rain. Protecting the paint this way can also protect from UV damage, bird droppings, bug guts, and a host of other contamination that find their way onto your paint. Sealants will last and protect longer than waxes, but if you are left with few options but the ones on the shelf, then at least get the wax on your paint to protect.

If you find that you have acid rain damage on your paint or glass, then the first step to removal is to wash the surface thoroughly using a good soap and a wool mitt. Rinse the car well and dry it with a soft towel (not a bath towel) before the sun does. When the car is clean and dry it will be easier to identify the water spots that have etched versus the ones that can be washed off. Anything left will need to be polished off. It is incredibly difficult to achieve results polishing by hand, but there are products out there that can work. Two of them that I have seen work well are Pinnacle Paintwork Cleansing Lotion and P21S Paintwork Cleansing Lotion. Those are both mild polishes that are capable of removing light acid rain damage by hand as well as reducing the appearance of minor swirling. They are products that I can recommend to any car care enthusiast regardless of experience. For heavier damage that is beyond those products, the solution would be to use a machine and a heavier cutting polish.

I hope this advice has been useful to some extent. The purpose of OCDetails has always been to create an awareness of car care. Through education in the right products and processes I believe that I can make a difference in the appearance of the cars I see on the road every day. As always, I`m happy to help if you have any questions. Email me at Anthony@OCDetails.com or visit www.OCDetails.com for more information on detailing. Keep an eye out for my book titled "The OCDetails Way of Detailing" coming this fall.

[audiboy]

It looks to be pretty informational without trying to get into it too much. There are a few sentences that could probably use a little work as far as word usage, but there isn`t anything major that I see. I think your clients will enjoy and benefit from reading that publication. By the way, I think what you`re doing is really neat and interesting. I`m really curious as to how many of your clients read them each month and how much they think they get out of them.

[Bellydawg]

Good article. Only part that I found fault with was about calling in sick to avoid not having the vehicle sit in the rain. Putting my supervisor hat I found this to be troubling. From all that you have written and your knowledge, I believe that your intentions are always good because of the learnings achieved by myself through your writings. My point is that a client with supervisory or managerial responsibilities might take offense to that comment.

Hopefully this will not be taken wrong and I only hoped to give objective criticism.

[Jngrbrdman]

I am a manager at my 9 to 5 job and I never call in sick, so I`m sure the business survived without me that day. This is sent out to people who know me and understand that I`m an ethical person even though I`m a little obsessive compulsive. The name of my business is no accident. I`ve had obsessive compulsive disorder my entire life and nobody is more aware of that than my clients. It`s the kind of thing they won`t be surprised to hear. Thanks for the insight though. I`ll have another read and see if it is something I can leave out.

[jlift]

Good article. Only part that I found fault with was about calling in sick to avoid not having the vehicle sit in the rain. Putting my supervisor hat I found this to be troubling. From all that you have written and your knowledge, I believe that your intentions are always good because of the learnings achieved by myself through your writings. My point is that a client with supervisory or managerial responsibilities might take offense to that comment.

Hopefully this will not be taken wrong and I only hoped to give objective criticism.

And I thought that you were a hippie from your avatar. Doesn`t seem like hippie speak to me. (ha-ha)