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Old 10-10-2013, 12:01 AM
sassparilla_kid's Avatar
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Location: Fresno, CA
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Water spot plague

Hello all, as some of you may or may not know I recently had my w115 240D painted(midnight/navy blue-ish), and when I finally got it back from the body shop after two and a half months (I was in a rear end collision so they had to fix that, which took a while) the car was amazingly clean! They were even kind enough to give me some mystery spray wax (mystery because it was in an unlabeled bottle) which I used on a fairly regular basis. Despite my efforts to keep the paint immaculate looking, apparently my mom's sprinklers are not the directional kind and spray in all directions, and decided to leave water spots all along the driver's side of the car, and it has slowly gotten spots over the rest of the car as well. I tried to keep them off with with more wax, but it didn't work. I suspect they gave me some kind of spray detailer that didn't really have any wax in it.

Today I thought I would try to maybe get some of the spots off, so I washed the car thoroughly, dried it off, then pulled it in the car to begin work. So far I have tried a clay bar with some Mothers spray stuff (whatever came with the clay), wiping it down with distilled white vinegar diluted down (1:3 vinegar:water), alternating between the two, etc. I am having limited success.

Is there some other trick I should know about, or am I going to just need to bite the bullet and take it to somebody to remove the spots, or use some kind of mild abrasive polish on it myself? The spots are very bothersome and I'm not sure how much longer I can live with them. (People would flag me down to say how clean the car was right after I bought it, not any more though )

Here's a picture before spots, I don't really have any after and its too dark out to take any tonight

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Water spot plague-74-mb-06.jpg  
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1982 300D Turbodiesel, daily driver. Mods so far: Fram 8038 paper filter, 4 brake light mod, Gen II w126 (front) rotors/calipers, boost turned up to 12lbs, non-egr manifolds, water/methanol injection, 4-speed manual
1980 300SD Turbodiesel, project car, nearly ready to hit the street

1974 240D, New paint
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  #2  
Old 10-11-2013, 09:03 AM
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first how old the paint? If over a year old,I would use Mothers cleaner wax.By the way beautiful ride
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Old 10-11-2013, 10:19 AM
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Once you get it clean

Go after the cause. Sounds like you need a water softener system on your water supply.
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Old 10-11-2013, 11:11 AM
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Hey the paint is maybe 7 months old, and yeah I plan on changing the sprinklers at some point for some that don't overspray everywhere. I think this is the nicest car anybody I'm related to owns so hopefully I can keep it that way. And I'm gonna look into that cleaner wax later
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1982 300D Turbodiesel, daily driver. Mods so far: Fram 8038 paper filter, 4 brake light mod, Gen II w126 (front) rotors/calipers, boost turned up to 12lbs, non-egr manifolds, water/methanol injection, 4-speed manual
1980 300SD Turbodiesel, project car, nearly ready to hit the street

1974 240D, New paint
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  #5  
Old 10-11-2013, 03:24 PM
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I've tried the following on removing water spots (in no particular order)

1. Clay bar
2. Paint cleaner (similar to cleaner wax but more paint cleaner than wax)
3. Meguiar's fine-cut cleaner
4. Meguiar's ScratchX

#3 and 4 are more abrasive than #1 and 2. #2 removes oxidation and on-paint contaminants where #1 removes in-paint (embedded) contaminants

Sprinkler heads can be adjusted or replace with angled units - I had to change mine when they sprayed over the first time I got them to run after buying the house. Then adjusted and fine tuned the spray pattern/s.
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  #6  
Old 10-12-2013, 05:14 AM
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SK, recommend getting advice from the body shop that repainted your 240D on how to deal with the water spots on the paint. From my experience the water-based paint (without VOC's) used these days is not as durable as the original paint on your vintage automobile. Using a mild abrasive cleaner may be too harsh for 7-month old paint. So proceed cautiously to avoid permanent damage to the paint. The hard water has likely caused a chemical reaction with the paint. A mild polish will likely produce the best results, followed by an application of carnuba wax.
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Old 10-14-2013, 12:23 AM
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it also seems to me that a delicate polishing is in order. it would be helpful, though, to know what chemicals were in the (hard) tap water that left the spots.

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