bird droppings

[readie]

hi ive just had my bonnet resprayed as it was in a bit of a mees ie bad chips &swerls i noted some bird crap on the car after i came home from work so it had been on there for about 8hrs? when i washed it off it left a bad mark ive tried to polish it off with no joy any advice would be welcome

[JPC]

How fresh is the paint mate? What more than likely to have happened is the alkalines in the bird droppings have etched into the clearcote. This is something i come accross quite a lot and removing it needs quite an aggressive plan of attack. Firstly machine polishing, which never comes close but it's good to see how it reacts. Then the next step is wetsanding. Then polishing again

I wouldn't recommend any of this is the paint is fresh. This is when it's at it's most vulnerable, as you have found out.

It can take weeks for paint to properly harden up

[pirelli@40!]

JPC - So what's the best approach to dealing with the old 'rats with wings' dropping then? I only ask as i get my fair share of the white stuff on my car (when my other half nicks the best parking spot on the drive) and the last time i got so frustrated that i foolishly went to work on it with cold water and a cleaning mitten; and so hard infact that as well as removing the stuff i managed to mark the paint work (black pearl effect) with what i'd describe as 'scrub marks'.  I'm not quite OCD (yet) about the whole cleaning process but would certainly welcome any advice for beginners (products, tools, methods etc)......

[JPC]

Well, your between a rock and a hard place with getting bird poo.

You need to get it off the paint as soon as you can really. If you see it on the paint, you want to take it off the same day however you can.

Best bet if your out and about is to use a pressure washer at the shell garage or something, but just use the sprayer with clean water, no shampoo. That should get rid of it.

Failing that, you could spray the poop with quick detailer or something, let it loosen off a bit then wipe. Yes, this might marr the paint but doing this would be a lot less harmfull than leaving it on the paint.

The preferable choice though would be a full wash routine with snow foam and wash mits etc. but who has time to do that everytime a bird poos on your car?

Its about damage limitation really.