this is greg in the detail garage, and todayi'm gonna show you how to remove spray paint! a note on the windshield is one thing, but this explicit spray painted message "learn how to park" is another.
colored car tires for sale, the owner of this silver car didn't want tobe identified. she parked at 68th st. and myrtle ave. tuesdaynight, and woke up to this. "i know how hard it is to find spots in thisneighborhood, so i would try to leave space if there was space. so it was very upsetting."
another foul note instructing to "park right." police say this car was tagged overnight justtwo blocks away from the other. a surveillance camera at a nearby school capturedthis image which may be the parking vigilante, walking with spray paint. residents want this vandal caught. we're here in the detail garage and we'regonna try to fix a major problem, and that's spray paint vandalism. this always happens around halloween or somecrazy time of the year when kids go out and spray paint a huge car.
they usually mess up a car using differentcolor spray paints. as a detailing professional, i've encounteredthis problem many times. recently in the news, there was a guy goingaround new york city spray painting people who had bad parking etiquette. they were getting their cars spray paintedwith bad words all over them, and it was really messing up the whole car. this car actually got vandalized up the streetin broad daylight, they actually caught him on security camera running away. they were writing some crazy word on there,but they left just some residue behind.
we're gonna try to clean off this spray paintthe right way. if you go online you'll see a lot of differentmethods for removing spray paint. some people say to use oil, others say touse gasoline, some say to use rubbing compound. all these are really bad for the paint. if you use gasoline to take this off, itcan actually stain or mark the paint from rubbing it. it can ruin clear coat or singlestage paint. another method to fix this would be to userubbing compound. this is another bad way to remove spray paintbecause rubbing compound is super abrasive, and you're gonna
rub away all of this spray paint and scratchyour paint with the tough abrasives in the rubbing compound. we're gonna try a couple different ways toget it done right, and i'll explain how to do it. all spray paints are different--we don't knowwhat kind of spray paint this is, and we don't know how long its been there,or if there's any other problems with the spray paint. i'm gonna show you a few different ways ofhow to remove it. you always want to start with the least aggressivemethod.
this is some p40 detail spray in a professionalbottle. i'll try to use this first to take off the spray paint. we rubbed pretty hard, and it's really nottaking it off. it started to take a little bit off righthere, but we're putting a lot of friction on the there, and that's just taking off some oversprayresidue, not the spray paint intself. some people grab a compound, but we'll savethat to last if this next step doesn't work. i'm gonna try a method i've used for a fewyears, and that's using a natural carnauba wax. this is butter wet carnauba wax.
we're gonna try to remove this with carnaubawax and i'll explain why this will probably work. carnauba wax has natural oils that break down spray paint and cleanse your paint. butter wet wax is designed to cleanse andshine the paint a little bit and protect it, but those oils might help take off this spraypaint, so let's give it a try. butter wet wax is a liquid wax. i like usingcream or liquid waxes over spray or paste waxes because they're easier to rub over stains on the paint. i'm gonna go ahead and rub this on the paint... look at what it's doing, it's actually takingthe spray paint right off. i'll keep working over here...
you see that? it's actually removing the spraypaint! just by itself. butter wet wax is pure carnauba, it has no abrasives in it-- it's just a shine-enhancing protective-wax. i'm not scratching the surface, it's actuallythe natural carnauba oils and wax are pulling off the spray paint and cleansing the paintnaturally. there are some parts that may be more stubborn,but it easily comes off. spray paint is often hard to remove and alot of people often say to use compounds or heavy abrasives because spray paint actually embeds itselfinto the pores of the paint.
paint is actually porous, it's got a lot oftiny little holes in the paint, and the spray paint grabs onto those pores and can actuallystain the paint. people then rub it off with compound, andend up scratching the paint. but i'm easily able to take it right off. i'll show you it's not the pad that's taking off the paint, i'll show you it's the carnauba wax. i'll put a little carnauba wax on my finger,and i'll use my finger to take it off. look how the carnauba wax breaks down thespray paint. we use ultra-refined carnauba in butter wetwax. it's super pure, 100% brazilian, and it givesthe best results.
i'm taking it off right with my finger. i don't want to sit here all day, so i'llgo back to the pad. make sure to use a generous amount of waxsince you're using it to cleanse the paint. there are some smaller spots here that areharder to remove.. they're really embedded into the paint. but i easily got them off just with the carnauba. i'll go ahead and buff off the carnauba wax. there we go! look at what we've got. we almost got it allgone.
there are some lighter spray edges on thetop, i'll go ahead and take care of those right now. but the majority of the spray paint is completelygone! it came off in just a few seconds. so if you're one of those people in new yorkthat got your car vandalized, or you have a crazy ex-girlfriend that sprayedup your car, that's not a problem--don't even sweat aboutit because the carnauba wax can easily take it off! now if somebody keyed your car that's a littledifferent, you might not be able to take that
off as easy if it hurt the paint permanently. but spray paint is one of the easiest thingsto remove on a vehicle. got that overspray off.. now i'll get thelast bit of overspray off over here. make sure you work it into the paint, youmay need to rub a little bit harder, but it will break down the spray paint. this may not work on all spray paints, i haveno idea what kind of spray paint this was, or how it stained the paint, or what kind of additives are in it, so sometimes you might have to use a compound.
sometimes you'll have to use a machine polisherwith a compound like v32 or a cutting polish like v36 to take off the spray paint. spray paint is only on the top layer, so itwill come off. but i can't guarantee that the spray paintdid not stain your paint. if you get to it fast enough, it may comeoff very easily. we were lucky in this case because butterwet wax took off all the spray paint without harming the vehicle. plus we didn't scratch the surface and nowwe have a smooth black finish. so if next halloween your girlfriend comesto spray your car, you can easily get it off
no problem. first try the least-abrasive method usingour butter wet wax. if that doesn't work you can always grab acompound or polish, but always start with the least-abrasive method first and try butterwet wax. now you know how to remove spray paint froma car, hopefully you new yorkers can get it off andthe vandalism stops so you guys can get your cars looking great. you can easily take it off using butter wetwax! if you want to check out all of our cool products,go to our website
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always remember: have fun, stay clean, and keep on detailing!
