Cleaning sap off car

Ok what is it then? Rubbing alcohol is the only thing that could get it off

How the fuck did you let your paint get that bad?

Jesus, dont even try to clean it, its fucked.

I have to park it under a tree every day. I only bothered cleaning the windshield so I could see out of it.

That looks like fungus.

Bug and tar remover makes short work of that. It's $3-5 a bottle that'll do the car twice. Won't hurt the paint either.

I've only reconditioned a few vehicles that were that bad.

Usually do
>Dawn dish soap hot water presoak, let sit for 5 minutes, touch less wash
>Dawn dish soap touch wash, very light pressure and lukewarm water
>Cold water rinse, quick touch wash to get anything else loosened up
>Quick cold water rinse
>Dawn dish soap and clay
You'll remove everything without damaging the paint.

Buy proper towels as well.

Once you clean it once apply sealant / wax and it won't stick to your paint.

Okay, thanks. It also may not be as bad as I thought because I was able to get it off of the luggage rack in one wipe with just water on a rag. The clean spot in the background is just water too.

> Not using microfiber.
Sometimes you learn the hard way.

>cleaning sap off car

Sap actually comes off pretty easily when you wash the car with soap and a microfiber mitt. Don't use cheap terry cloth (or old t-shirt) to wash the car. Terry sucks since the ends pill up and form hard lumps when resin gets into them. That results in scratches.

I have a soap dispenser on the hose and after spraying car shampoo all over the car as a prewash softener, I then use the mitt with a slow but steady stream of fresh soapy water to carry off the dissolved sap. After gently rubbing an area a few times, I check with my hand how many sap bumps remain. Once I get the total number of rubbing needed to get rid of all the sap in an area, I repeat that number of rubbings.

Sap comes off without any harsh chemicals or rubbing that is harder than just the weight of the wet microfiber mitt. I don't press down with my hand but basically try to keep just the weight of the wet mitt on the surface. A few wipes and all the sap is gone.

I don't use the bucket method because a continual stream of fresh soapy water is both cleaner, provides fresh lubricantion as the mitt moves across the surface, and carries off any dirt or dissolved grime.

>Rubbing alcohol is the only thing that could get it off
Since you let the sap remain to the point of it growing mold, that's bad as it etches your clear coat. Meg Gold Class shampoo is not enough now. As others said, use something stronger like dawn. Do not use dawn with bleach or any "oxy" type dish detergents. Since you managed to get paint on the terry, that means the clear coat is gone, so paint is exposed. Exposed paint is sensitive to bleaching action of oxy or bleach-type cleaning chemicals.

You'll need to seal it before you wax. One of the cheap sealants out there is Turtle Wax ICE. There are better ones from europe/germany that run $100 or so, but I guess you don't want those. So ICE sealant is good enough. Sealants have a curing time so weather matters.

I park under a tree too but i still wash my truck off atleast once a week.
Go to a carwash stall and clean it off, if youre feeling even lazier then just rinse off the car. Costs 2.50 and takes less than 10 mins.

Do you not have a clear coat because your car is old or you did a shit respray?

Wat

I've forgotten the scientific name, but it's called artillery fungus. It's all fungi. There is no sap in his picture.

I don't get it, all i see is a bikini

You deserve to die

Blue trees?

Since he leaves the sap on until parts of the car look moldy, it might be that the clear coat has been etched away by various factors including rubbing with terry cloth towels that accumulated some grit in them.

Simply rubbing sap off with terry cloth has a good chance of scratching BECAUSE the sap is sticky. It grabs onto all sorts of grit particles. So each dot of sap is basically a shampoo soluble grit ball. And if the trees were conifers, then it would have some turpentine (paint thinner) in it too. Does long term exposure to turpentine and rosins weaken clear coat? It probably doesn't help.

>not a microfiber towel
Why

u dun goofed

>I've forgotten the scientific name, but it's called artillery fungus. It's all fungi. There is no sap in his picture.

Wow, that is a tedious fungus to remove once it gets a firm foothold into the surface. I googled "what kind of fungus grows on car paint?" and it looks like other people have the same type of artillery fungus problem.

Artillery Fungus shoots sticky spores a good distance. So once OP gets a colony, it will spread all over by squirting its spores a good distance.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphaerobolus

>it's called artillery fungus

In S. stellatus, the gleba may be thrown up to 6 meters horizontally. This species is phototropic, and the nearest source of direct or reflected light will be the target for glebal discharge. Nice. The fungus aims for other shiny cars especially if they are white or reflect light onto the fungus.

>artillery fungus
So if OP parks his car near ours, he could infect our cars with his fungus. A sort of automobile "athlete's foot" for paint. Or if we are unlucky, we have our windows open and it infects the upholstery cushions.

Since you got paint onto the terry cloth wiper, that means the clear coat is gone. So you are close to that point you've seen on other cars where the paint is visibly peeling off. Since it has not yet, you can apply a sealant and then keep it waxed from now on. Because there is no clear coat, it will probably suck up the sealant like a sponge so you will end up using more than you thought.

You're in luck that the newer products are easy to use. It will take more frequent effort with these products to protect your car surface from either paint thinning (rust forms later) or paint peeling (contaminants soak in and cause paint to detach) now that the clear coat is gone. The all synthetic polymers are your best low-cost good rate of return choices. There are better but those are not over the counter and are expensive. You can either try megiuar's ultimate liquid wax by itself or use the turtle wax ice sealant followed by the turtle wax ice liquid wax. Both products are polymer with the turtle wax being 100% polymer. In your case, the wax is to provide UV protection now that you have no clear coat to do that.

>he could infect our cars with his fungus
Seems like this fungus could be used as a revenge tool.

>Buy cheap shitbox caked in this rapid spreading launching fungus
>Park said car in the sun on a windy day as close to the neighbors as possible
>Legally become a nuisance covering your neighbors car and siding in this sticky fungus

Interesting.
>6m ~20'
Oh yeah. You could turn it into a true biological weapon.

Wash it so that the mold and fungus don't grow on it. Those things make enzymes that break down organic substances. And clear coat and paint are organic substances.

use a clay bar for tricky sap next time friend

That's terrible, how fast would it spread in a parking lot full of cars, some of which rarely move?

It's actually slow growing and needs people to leave sap on their cars as a nutrient source. Lots of places would kill it like prolonged hot dry strong sunlight.

I'm glad I don't have the right conditions where I live.

But I also can't start a pandemic, which is probably for the better.