[rlw]

I wanted to share a solution to a some bird dropping damage which occured to my '05 S60 last week.

The residue sat on the hood of the car no more than 3 hours, yet when I cleaned it off I found the acid had etched the clear coat. I rubbed some polishing compound onto the stain but when it made little impact I stopped and drove over to the local Volvo dealer, Best Volvo (fine dealership, by the way). Within 15 minutes they brought the car out with no trace of damage.

The solution: baking soda and water! Quite a relief. The Volvo manual refers to bird dropping damage as "permanent". Plenty of internet sites talk about polishing deeply into the clear / paint. Nowhere have I seen mention of baking soda.

I have to add that in 30+ years of driving all sorts of cars I had never seen such a reaction with the paint either.

 

[Auckland]

Hi there. Thanks very much for the tip about the baking soda. I wax my car with the Meguiars NXT Generation Tech Wax. I notice that about two days after I wax my car, the birds make a bee line for either the roof, bonnet or boot lid. Never an eight kilo twelve gauge mind you. Just the splatter type.

Also, just after I brought the car, I had it: cut, reglased and polished. The Meguiars NXT on top of that does a good job protecting the paint from an aerial top dressing. (Aerial top dressing is a term we use in New Zealand for the way/method which farmers use to spread fertilizer. Old DC3 aircraft are filled with fertilizer and the pilots release it over fields-very fast, very efficient). The birds noticed that too!!

Cheers