Avoiding the top summer paintwork hazards

You may think that summer is a good time for paintwork. After all, unlike in wintertime, your car paintwork is neither being bombarded with salty grit, nor it is battling rain, hail and snow as frequently. Yet, hotter weather places different demands on paintwork, causing it to deteriorate to such an extent that repainting might be the only option. Even so, with a little bit of care and a few minutes of time, you do not need to be an expert to avoid costly paint damage.

Sunlight

The ultraviolet (UV) rays in strong sunlight are not just bad for your skin. It also degrades car paintwork. While automotive finishes contain UV-resistant pigments, these break down over time. When these additives deplete, UV then attacks the paint's molecular structure.

On cars with a 'solid' paint finish, this causes the finish to lose its shine. Fortunately, you can use either a polish, or a more aggressive paint-cutting paste, to remove the oxidised paint layer. The reveals shiny and undamaged paint beneath it, restoring the car's look cost-effectively.

Yet, should your car have clear paint (lacquer) applied over the main colour coat, you will not be so lucky. After years of UV exposure, a white crust (as pictured) that forms on the affected panel will soon start to peel. This leaves the matt colour beneath. Unfortunately, polishing out the damage will yield a temporary improvement at least. When this happens, the only solution is to repaint the damaged area.

While garaging, or covering, your car poses a temporary solution, the majority of car waxes offer UV protection. Therefore, applying a wax product to the paintwork by hand will augment the paint's remaining UV protection, making it last longer and look better, too.

Unfortunately, waxes do not last forever. Dependent on the quantity of rainfall, even the best products last for six months, at most. They also cannot protect against the damage that summer weather brings.

Feathered menaces

Perhaps the most obvious additional menace is bird muck. While birds poop all year round, wet winter weather tends to remove it from cars fairly speedily. During summer, the secretion can etch permanent marks into the paint, a process that is amplified by hot sun exposure, meaning that you will have to take steps to remove it. As you can scratch the finish, when wiping dried poop away, ensure that it is thoroughly wet through and soft, first. While there are various products you can buy to help, the simplest (and cheapest way) is to cover the deposit with a hot water-saturated rag for at least several minutes to pre-soften it.

Making their mark

Avoiding parking beneath trees reduces not just bird poo from harming your car's paintwork but also sap. Like bird muck, it can leave permanent damage behind, when baked onto the paint by the sun. It also can set rock hard, so well-meaning owners can carve scratches into their paint, as they try to scrub it away. As with bird muck, sap must be softened before removal. Again, while there are dedicated products that can help, a cheaper and more generic product is tar remover.

Tar and bugs

Once baked onto your bodywork by heat from both the sun and engine bay, insects can be extremely stubborn to remove. Again, tar remover is your friend. Spray the product onto the crusty deposits to soften them and wipe the remnants away, afterwards.

As its name intimates, tar remover also eradicates road tar deposits - those little white dots that become so prevalent especially on light-coloured cars during summertime. A complication with those black dots is that they tend to contain tiny grit particles, so wiping them away after a tar remover soaking may scratch the paint. Therefore, dab the spot carefully, until it disappears.

Suncream

One would have thought that sun cream, or sunblock, would be great for car paintwork, as it protects from UV rays and is waterproof. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Like bird muck, the product etches into the paint finish and, being waterproof, means that it is especially difficult to remove by normal car washing. Additionally, hard scrubbing is almost sure to scratch the paint, making things worse.

As with bird muck and tree sap especially, acting sooner gives you a greater chance of preventing permanent paint damage. The first stage is to try a lightly-abrasive car polish on the mark. Should that fail to work, the lotion may have stained the paint, meaning that an abrasive compound may be necessary. Should this fail to work, it may be worth consulting a body shop, to see if a professional machine polish will cure the problem.

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