Strange one here. We just bought a 4 year old white VW Up Gti. Washed it this morning and noticed a lot of rusty specs all over its white panels. Not pleased. These are hard and stuck fast. anyway, to my relief they entirely come out with polish and a strong finger nail action So could be iron fallout anywhere with our driving and parking etc. BUT I was wire brushing my gutters on the drive 2 days ago. The white car was parked miles away, at work, when I was doing the bus work so no chance of direct contamination. Campervan goes back in garage and white car returns and is parked where campervan was, on the drive. could some of the particles of iron have blown from the drive surface onto the new car and bonded themselves on and rusted??? anyone seen this? An example picture from the web below
More likely from the garage or vendor using an angle grinder and peppering it with hot metal some time back. Now its finally started raining and there is dew in the morning and it starts to rust...
It was in a workshop where they were reconditioning the alloy wheels before I picked it up. Alloy wouldn’t do if of course, but workshop environment maybe. hopefully no one from late bay community has come across this?
Trouble is this was the other new family car. So work on the camper and rust spots on new car transfer potential…
When I lived in Sheffield I got this visiting steel works. I had a white Ford Escort and one time I followed a skip wagon taking away dust arrestor contents. It stuck so bad I had to get a body shop to polish it out.
Using a detailing clay bar should pull that and other contaminants out of the paint Polishing it out can scratch the paint finish
You can buy big poly tarps to cover stuff if it worries you. And also to catch the flying dust. Or switch to sandpaper and stop firing red hot metal around. I did the front of my bus mostly under a polytarp or used a bit of plywood as a target for angle grinder sparks. You can set fire to polytarps if you try hard with an angle grinder though..stop and let it cool down...
My plan was to do work on open drive, park the other car round the corner for the day. After finishing work I’d hose the area down with water, so any particles would swell and rust in situ, so they’d be less airborne for return of other car
Driving behind or near a car with worn out brake pads or having metal on metal brakes causes lots of this. My mates white amorok chewed a pad and he drove it home. The rear cover was peppered in rust spots.
If anyone’s interested I totally sorted it with a spray on product from Halfords called Iron Out. you can see in the photo all the iron is purple spots. Leave it 5 minutes and wipe and wash the car - easy as that
A cheap fix used to be to use a weak solution of Phosphoric acid to remove the fallout from steelworks around Sheffield. Rinsed off with plenty of water it did the job. I suspect the stuff available now is a similar product. My brother in law's Savanna beige beetle turned almost orange once when parked in Attercliffe.
Yep you’re probably right, although they do state it’s pH neutral and phosphoric acid certainly isn’t. Smells like acid too on your hands afterwards. Coca-Cola is dilute phosphoric acid, so I reckon it’s this kind of strength with some kind of purple die
Yep you’re probably right, although they do state it’s pH neutral and phosphoric acid certainly isn’t. Smells like acid too on your hands afterwards. Coca-Cola is dilute phosphoric acid, so I reckon it’s this kind of strength with some kind of purple die https://www.halfords.com/motoring/c...ducts/auto-finesse-iron-out-500ml-550308.html
Also maybe lucky it's just the bits of angle grinder metal flecks that are just rusting and hasn't penetrated the steel under the paint .
