I usually park my car in the same lot at my work place and construction has been going on in the adjacent vacant land. Lots of dust settled on my car before because of construction. But today I just noticed infinite number small dots of black tar on my car as they laid black tar road right next to the parking lot, maybe the wind blew the stuff.

This is the first time ever that I saw such thing on my car and wondering how I can get rid off the tar. It's all over the car, even on the glass windows. I don't know how expensive the job is to get rid of the black tar dots on my car.

Worse, my car color is Gold and it is visible clearly. Wish I had a black car

 

It's gonna cost you about 15 bucks. get a claybar and some Qucick detail spray and get to work!

 

do i have do it today itself ?!?

there went a complaint to the construction company responsible and they suggested not to get the car washed as they will get to us back tomorrow morning ... i'm not alone, all in all abt 40 cars are affected, though some of the cars are dark in color and is not soo visible on them ...

 

try just bug and tar remover first, if that doesnt work then clay it.

 

it kinda sprayed all over the car, will that bug and tar remover bottle sufficient to clean the whole car ? thx

 

Park somewhere else, and use a car cover if you can't park somewhere else.

 

Listen to me- DO NOT LET THEM TAKE ARE OF IT. You do not know if they will take proper course of action and the place they have you bring it to may wind up royaly ******* up your finish. They may buff it and burn your paint etc. and then your gonna wish you still had the tar specs. Claying is so simple and effective that if you do not take this route first, then you hav nobody to blame but yourself for any further "damage" to you vehicle. Use this incident as an excuse to give your car some TLC. If you wash-clay, polish and wax your car, I guarentee you will be happy with the results. Your car will look 1000 times better than even before the tar incident. Industrial fallout is common. THIS KINDA **** IS EXACTLY WHAT A CLAY BAR IS MEANT FOR. Don't risk any further headaches. Trust me on this one.

 

thx formoraccordman for your advice ... i'll make sure only to get it clayed, polished/waxed .. be it they or me ... those ppl said that they haven't taken a decision yet but might want to reimburse if we get it detailed ourselves ... one more day to wait

i haven't waxed my car in the past 1 yr, infact I never detailed any car till now, this is kinda my first car ... had an Acclaim for 2 months before this car ... i only washed my car couple of times and used the tire dressing, and cleaned interior leather seats and carpet ... that's it ... defintely a newbie w.r.t. detailing ...

 

Why would they personally do it themselves? they do contruction not detailing. If they are gonna pay for reimbursments then take it and get a free full detail on their cash

 

I did not say that they would do it themselves. I said that they might send you some crappy place that does not know what they are doing and may wind up truly damaging his otherwise fine paint. You stick a high speed polisher in the hands of an inexperienced person and viola- you have a much bigger problem on your hands. I speak from experience. His safest bet is to take care of it cheaply, safely and effectively with the advice I gave him. wash- clay, compound, polish, then wax.

 

j/w how often do you wash our car?

 

Get them to buy you a porter cable at least hah hah.

 

good q ... from May thru October once every month, after than maybe once in 3 months

 

The more you wash/wax your car, the harder it is for things like tar to stick/stay stuck to it.

 

You will need to try a couple things.

First, Clay Bar:
Try this first, in that it wont strip wax and its the safest thing for paint

If that doesnt work, then Bug and Tar remover:
Only problem is that it also will remove any and all waxes that are on the paint, so you will have to rewax.

If those dont work, Mineral Spirits:
If it gets to this point, get a professional to do it unless you are experienced with using them. The car will have to be polished (to restore oils to paint) and rewaxed after using these.

 

I used some bath oil that my Mom had lying around. Avon Skin So Soft actually works pretty good at getting the tar off! I was surprised - and your car will have a nice "woodsy" scent!

 

haha- your kidding- I dunno how good that stuff could be for trim. But i guess if you are desparate. It works.

 

Hey, its cheap so I was pretty happy. I used it after I did the DTM mod to my taillights cause I got black tar all over the place. I figure if its okay for your skin, it's mild enough for the car. It seems to work kind of like Goo Gone.

 

thx for suggestions ... that bath oil felt like kidding but looks like it works !

anyways, here are the pics if you wanna see if i can do it myself or need a pro to do it ..

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...there/tar1.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...there/tar2.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...there/tar3.jpg

 

Don't mean to hijack, but my question seemed too close to make one of my own..

Would a clay bar work for my problems as well if mine was much worse? I have quite a bit of tar and even paint on the bottom-side of my car. I've tried some cheap tar remover and the stuff stuck on my car wasn't even phased by it. It's been on there for well over a year, btw.

 

I just went to a detailing shop to get an estimate on getting the black stuff (tar we thought but asphalt as the construction company claims) off of the vehicle. The person is long-trusted detailer for one of our co-worker. He sprayed some kinda solvent at 4 different places on the car and those dots simply melted and came off without even rubbing with a cloth or sthg. Anyways, he said, he gotta get rid of the asphalt, wash, clay and the estimate is $170.

I'm just wondering if someone here knows what solvent it is that can get the asphalt off and where can I buy it ...

thank you.

 

hell yea i wanna know too

 

You can do this 100% witout a doubt on your own. wash-clay-polish and wax. it is that simple. I knew this from the first post. The clay will do everything PLUS whatever solvent he used. With FAR BETTER results. YOu will acutally have a glass like paint finsih after you clay. Go do it already- no reason to make the guy 170 dollars richer to do something so simple. I can only lead you to water, but I can't make you drink

 

The commercial shops always get the good underground products. I think if we as consumers found out about alot of these products, their businesses would go in the trash.

 

BK1. We as consumers DO have access to the "underground products" Many pro shops use 3m, Meguires, mernzerna, klasse and presta products among many others....... All available on line...also in some discount shops. Many times, pro shops put these products into clear bottles in order to make the consumer believe that what they have in the bottle is a magic potion that only they have access to- thus justifying the cost. In all honesty, the thing about detailing is that results are acheived by 85% preperation and tecnique. The last 15% is up to the product. Sure you will find many exotic polymers that will last longer than your store bought turtlewax....and they do cost more, and last and shine better, but that ARE available to us. Many polishes that are offered at auto discount stores are fillers, and not real polishes. Thats why when you bring it to a shop and they actually remove the scratch instead of filling the scratch, thus making it never return- the customer feels satisfied with their "purchase".The pro shop will use a polish that actually burnishes the paint scratch, but these types of polishes are readily available to us online. You are really paying for their labor, and hopefuly skill at using a rotary. if you cars paint is in decent shape and simply needs a pick me up, then a shop is absolutely not necessary in order to acheive awesome results. If on the other hand one is lazy or phiscally unable to do an exterior detail, then by all means- bring it to a shop- but I am willing to assume that most of us here are young enough and or in good enough shape to do a detail.

 

True, I was talking about things like BG44K and autorx.

 

Did you let the tar remover soak to loosen it?

 

$170 to remove the tar?..thats sounds a little excessive, to me anyway..a bottle of tar and adhesive remover and a bug sponge should work fine..spray it on let it soak for a minute or so then scrub it

 

well, here is an update ... good news is that the responsible construction company is paying those $170 I have an appointment for tomorrow morning at the same place and the guy over there said that he is gonna first wash, next get the tar/asphalt off the car, then wash, then clay and then polish and wax the car ... cooool ...

now i want your suggestion ... i did hear someone sayin abt some sealants or sthg before here ... can you tell me what i should do after i get my car tomorrow ...

i'd like to maintain the car from now on ... would like to spray those Meguair's instant spray stuff when i wash the car from now on ... plz suggest ...

 

cool ... the detailing shop did an excellent job in getting those tar/asphalt dots off the car ... they even clayed/polished/waxed the car after the removal process ... hufff! they brought back the life into the car's paint ...

if someone living in chicago 'burbs are lookin for a good detailer, go to this place ... it's in Lake Bluff off Rt.41 and Rs 176 and it's called Clean Getaway Hand Car wash and Detailing.