Got a new problem.... perhaps you bird or insect specialists may
know... if you do, please help.

I was washing my car the other day and noticed maybe 15-20 small
dots all over my car. I thought it was tar, but it looks more like tiny
droppings of some sort.

The size of the dot is about 2-3mm in diameter and dark brown in
color. It bakes into the paint (even etched lightly) and stubborn to
remove. Over night, i accumulated about 5-6 more.

Does anyone know if this is some sort of an insect dropping? I noticed
that the same dots are on my bush leaves maybe 3-4ft away from where
the car is parked. There are no tall trees around my house.. also no
flowers that have dark brown seeds...

 

I get some amber/brown colored dots that I believe are tree sap. They are hard to remove but are easily dissolved with rubbing alcohol.

 

Unless you get some kind of chemical analysis, you'll probably never know. Could be bird poo (likely), something industrial..... hard tellin' not knowin' as they say.

 

humm... i don't have trees near the car, but my bushes have
flowers... can those 'pop' and spew over the car?

regardless, thanks for the tip on the rubbing alcohol. i'll give it
a shot tomorrow. im sure it tears off the wax so
i'll have to spot wax.

 

can birds poo such small amounts? the poo i usually get are
splats.

 

What kind of bushes are near the car?
Annette

 

Perhaps beetles or another insect? I vaguely remember encountering an infestation of beetles on, I think, rose bushes, when I was a young child and I can sort of remember such types of dots on the leaves.

 

i'll take a pict of the bushes (close up of flower) and the dots on my car...
im sure i'll have more of these dots by morning.


really bugging the heck out of me cause it etches the paint.

 

yeh, i don't particulary see beetles in my area... i have ants but i don't
think ants can really climb up my car especially after it was waxed.
the panels are super slick. i was thinking maybe moth or large butterflies
maybe? even grasshoppers? it has to be able to fly pretty high cause
there were some on the roof too.

if i look carefully at the dot on the sidepanels, there is a reminance of
a line where it appeared it dropped on the car and slid down maybe 5mm
before it got baked by the sun. so im thinking it was dropped on the car
from something that flew over it.

 

If its near a tree its probably aphid potty. yeppers, it sticks to cars.
Learned that yrs ago in Biology.

 

I would try and use some quick detailing spray on a towel that you leave on the effected areas for a few minutes, before the alcohol route. Let it soak in, then dab at the spots, don't wipe.

Mark

 

The alcohol will definitely remove the wax. The way I deal with my personal brown gooey spots is to wet a corner of a microfiber and very very gently rub to dissolve them away. After each spot, I move to another section of the microfiber.

Isopropyl alcohol is my detailing product of choice for removing most any sticky residue. My favorite use is for cleaning wiper blades. No more streaks on the windshield once the gooey gunk is off the blade.

 

heres a pict of the bush... not the best pict.

http://www.geocities.com/ken350gt/DSCF0038.JPG

(im not linking the pict directly here due to limited bandwidth from Yahoo..)


there were no dots on the car as of this 7:30am; will monitor and take
a pict later on again today as I know i will have more by end of the day.

 

is that like gooey stuff? i mean, does it dry out in the sun? cause the
dot on mine dry out. the wiper blades can't even deform the dot once
it's baked on. this is why i originally thought it was tar.

 

lots and yucca - my first option would be to use my detailer spray, but
once baked on it's very hard to remove. i used CleanerWax last weekend,
but it still took some work to remove it and my towel turned into a brown
ikky mess. The abrasive wax will also remove a little bit of the
clearcoat plus doesn't match the wax definition with the surrounding
areas...so im hoping the rubbing alcohol would just quickly
dissolve it (will even use an edge of a paper towel) and i'll just use my
detailer spray which contains natural wax until the next wash when I
spray the whole car down with SprayOn wax.

regardless, i'd like to pinpoint where this crap is coming from.....

 

Flys have very small turds like you mentioned. Had that happen to an older car a long time ago. Apparently there were a bunch of flys around some dead thing where I had parked. was not too hard to get off!

 

gizzer777- that's a possibility. ive been seeing some different flying insects
lately... this problem started maybe 2 weeks ago. never had this issue
the last 6 yrs. different cars parked in the same spot, no issues.

...hummmm

 

Absolutely. Think Hummingbirds, especially if there's flowers nearby. Many small birds can do what's appearing on the car. That it is etching into the paint indicates a digestive enzyme at work.

 

yeh, possibly. those birds are small enough... it's interesting how
many 'so called bird lovers' don't have any decent homepages where it
talks about identifying birds from droppings. don't most wildlife people
track animals by their feces and to find out what they ate and all whatever's
to know about their habitat? wats wrong with you bird people!

or are these bird people more like magazine readers... i just want to
play with the clean part. i dont want to get my hands dirty.

here's the terd. found another one this afternoon... there were only
3 today, so not bad. it's about 2-3mm in diameter.

 

That there looks like an alien spawning pod.

 

oh?

 

Industrial fall-out

 

MINI crabs (car body lice)!

 

wat?! but i just washed/claybar/waxed the other day!

 

Ken, I'm going to move this over to the Detailing forum where it will get more serious attention. Have you considered making a weak solution of Simple Green and water, spritzing the dots with that, letting it sit a bit, then rinsing it off? Works great to get bug guts off the bonnet and grill!