Due to shape of the rear of our MINI's, they tend to pick up a lot of dirt including iron particles. These show up especially on a MINI with a white roof, like my R50 daily driver. I just thought that I would share the procedure that I use to remove these "rusticles".



Here you can see the iron particles picked up from the road as rust colored stains.




After rinsing and washing the car to remove loose grit, dirt, etc, I treat the car with DoDo Juice's Ferrous Dueller to neutralize the iron particles. Be warned, the smell of this liquid will curl your toes!




Here you can see that the iron particles have been turned purple by the Ferrous Dueller. Leave on the car for a few minutes to neutralize the iron deposits, and then rinse/wash/dry.




I use these Microfiber Madness towels (I think from CarPro) to dry my car. They soak up a lot of water, and you can ring them out to carry on.




Next step is to clay bar to remove the particles from the paint. The Simoniz is a good quality clay bar, and any detailer will work. It's only to lubricate the clay. Use the clay bar until it moves smoothly across the paint with no "drag", remembering to fold over the bar to expose new clay.




After using the iron remover and the clay bar, you are going to have to re-wax/polish/seal your paint. I use DoDo Juice's Purple Haze. Seems to work well, especially on the Chili Red.




All done. The lambswool mitt is a "Two Fingered Wookie Mitt", again from CarPro. Works great on small areas, or hard to get to spaces.


I hope that this helps in keeping your MINI looking great. There are other products that work just as well to use this procedure, these are just the ones that I found to work for me.

 

Just did an iron decontamination on my son's car this afternoon. We used CarPro Iron X. Not only does it eliminate the rusticles but also makes the paint feel smoother as the iron particles dissolve.

 

Clay bar works really well too.

 

Clay bar works well and sonax wheel cleaner does the same thing on wheels. Water it down and it can work on paint also.

 

Recently watched a video from a well know YouTube'r that gives detailing tips. His guest was from Optimum Polymer Technologies showing off some if their products and he used Optimum Ferrex and Optimum Clay Mitt together for the decontamination.

I've used their Ferrex product, but haven't pulled the trigger on their clay mitt yet.

The two together looks like the absolute best way to get the job done.