a little curio for you

stevo///m3

Senior member
 Leeds - you know where it is
So I washed the car the weekend before last, nothing major, normal service wash. Then went out for a run to get all the nasty droplets off, get the dreaded rust colour off the brake discs and all was good. QD'd after the wash with a couple of beefy microfibres and went to town a bit on the wheels. Microfibred the wheels again when I got back and microfibred the little streaks off. Weekend done. On Monday or Tuesday after that weekend, it rained. Horrible blood rain. The car looked like it had been playing in a sandpit all night. All that hard work down the drain - the car is black btw.

I left it with the sand on during the week, partly due to lack of time and partly due to frustration and partly because I though it might rain again that week. Come the weekend just gone, I went out in the motor on Sunday but thought beforehand that I'd at least try to hose off the sand after selecting a little test area with good results. Car is then hosed off and I thought the little run might do away with the droplets (watermarks) etc. When I got back (it was at least an hour), the droplets were still there. I'd parked half way through the journey - and it was bright that day - yesterday. I didn't bother with any QD; this involves wiping the car with dry watermarks, potentially swirling it and all that sort of stuff.

It rained again today.

All of the watermarks are gone, car looks like I applied QD yesterday... The car has a slight coat of dust from the pollen and general cack in the air from today - but the point is that the rain's fixed what the rain, followed by little droplet watermarks from a hosing, did (normal hard water rain, I'd say). There was a thread (or possibly a few threads) on water hardness not that long ago. At the risk of sounding like a muppet, perhaps someone could tell me whether they have experienced "Soft Rain" after "Hard Rain" or "Blood Rain"? It works wonders when you get it! Closely followed on my part by thoughts about why the rain can be hard and soft like that. Is that a thing??

Stevo
 
stevo///m3 said:
So I washed the car the weekend before last, nothing major, normal service wash. Then went out for a run to get all the nasty droplets off, get the dreaded rust colour off the brake discs and all was good. QD'd after the wash with a couple of beefy microfibres and went to town a bit on the wheels. Microfibred the wheels again when I got back and microfibred the little streaks off. Weekend done. On Monday or Tuesday after that weekend, it rained. Horrible blood rain. The car looked like it had been playing in a sandpit all night. All that hard work down the drain - the car is black btw.

I left it with the sand on during the week, partly due to lack of time and partly due to frustration and partly because I though it might rain again that week. Come the weekend just gone, I went out in the motor on Sunday but thought beforehand that I'd at least try to hose off the sand after selecting a little test area with good results. Car is then hosed off and I thought the little run might do away with the droplets (watermarks) etc. When I got back (it was at least an hour), the droplets were still there. I'd parked half way through the journey - and it was bright that day - yesterday. I didn't bother with any QD; this involves wiping the car with dry watermarks, potentially swirling it and all that sort of stuff.

It rained again today.

All of the watermarks are gone, car looks like I applied QD yesterday... The car has a slight coat of dust from the pollen and general cack in the air from today - but the point is that the rain's fixed what the rain, followed by little droplet watermarks from a hosing, did (normal hard water rain, I'd say). There was a thread (or possibly a few threads) on water hardness not that long ago. At the risk of sounding like a muppet, perhaps someone could tell me whether they have experienced "Soft Rain" after "Hard Rain" or "Blood Rain"? It works wonders when you get it! Closely followed on my part by thoughts about why the rain can be hard and soft like that. Is that a thing??

Stevo

You've experienced an unfortunately not good type of rain. Acid rain. It also sounds like you suffer from the same dust issues I do in London. Car looks like it's had a few grains of sand in the rain.

I also experienced this last year as you've mentioned it;

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/weather/11525166/Blood-rain-to-fall-on-Britain-as-red-Saharan-dust-blows-in-from-Africa.html

Now that really scared me (fellow Obsessive Car Detailer :thumbsup: )
 
I fell your pain! I have a black astra as my daily and noticed that it now looks cleaner now than it did on monday! The back was covered in really dusty water stains after driving through the rain which have now noticeably cleared up. Although in my case I think it may be due to the council having surfaced dressed my local roads causing a dust/slime layer on the car that didn't stick.

I'm always getting dusty water spots on both cars after any rain awayway. I don't think there is such a thing as 'hard' rainwater, but more accurately its dust within the atmosphere being dragged out by the rain (same thing happens with pollen).

I'm actually researching QD's/Waxes/Sealants with Anti-Static properties, so far FK425 sounds promising. I've been using Sonax BSD which gives amazing beading but actually makes the problem worse (the rain droplets dry out and leave dust spots behind). I would rather have a product that 'sheeted' rather than beaded.
 
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