The never ending stain story

[SeanR]

Actually had to T-cut this mark off a few times

 

Drip from mirror

 

Anyone sorted it out?

[Linas.P]

Drying the car after washing usually is enough to avoid it. Obviously if there is water left in the mirror after washing and slowly drips from there and dries, then it will leave water marks. Rain water shouldn't do this, only ground water which is usually very hard in UK. 

In short - this is washing technique problem, I just wipe around mirror after washing and usually that is all it needs.

[SeanR]

I will try that the next time i wash it, cheers

[Newbie777]

1 hour ago, SeanR said:

Actually had to T-cut this mark off a few times

 

Drip from mirror

 

Anyone sorted it out?

Mine does this too, is there not a small drain hole under the mirror.

I just use soft drying cloth and wipes off

[zoricib]

I use a small leaf blower (around£25 from Amazon) to give the car a once over after every wash to get rid of water in between doors, mirrors etc. Or go for a short drive and let the natural airflow take care of that. 

[Boomer54]

1 hour ago, zoricib said:

I use a small leaf blower (around£25 from Amazon) to give the car a once over after every wash to get rid of water in between doors, mirrors etc. Or go for a short drive and let the natural airflow take care of that. 

I use a small hand from me clutching microfiber cloths to dry off the car everywhere. The problem with airdrying is any particles held in the water dry onto the car and potentially of course interact with the paintwork.

Full disclaimer, I don't know what I don't know, because my name is not Donald (sic).

[madasahatter]

What soap are you using, i normally drive about 100 foot then reverse back close then open mirrors

re shut them wipe the door and nothing there.

[zoricib]

28 minutes ago, Boomer54 said:

I use a small hand from me clutching microfiber cloths to dry off the car everywhere. The problem with airdrying is any particles held in the water dry onto the car and potentially of course interact with the paintwork.

Full disclaimer, I don't know what I don't know, because my name is not Donald (sic).

I don't have such a great paintwork so I need to worry about that - in my view though it would be the same as driving the car?

 

 

[J Henderson]

This is caused by corrosion on the aluminium parts inside the mirror.

Any water inside the mirror casing interacts with it and causes those milky deposits to develop.

Unless there's a product that could somehow "seal" the metal to prevent it from happening (maybe painting them with something?), I'm not aware of any possible fix outside of replacing the parts in question.

[Linas.P]

15 hours ago, J Henderson said:

This is caused by corrosion on the aluminium parts inside the mirror.

Any water inside the mirror casing interacts with it and causes those milky deposits to develop.

Unless there's a product that could somehow "seal" the metal to prevent it from happening (maybe painting them with something?), I'm not aware of any possible fix outside of replacing the parts in question.

Wow- that looks horrible! I had my disassembled my mirror in the past and I can't remember it looking that bad.

18 hours ago, madasahatter said:

What soap are you using, i normally drive about 100 foot then reverse back close then open mirrors

re shut them wipe the door and nothing there.

That is what I ten to do as well, just blast around the block after washing the car and park it and walk around one more time... and there are usually some drip around certain places - 1. is at the end of driver door 2. is this one from the mirror 3. is from the boot when you open it drips on rear quarters 4. is from the fuel filler cap. There may be few more on IS. But basically I just walk around and dry what has come out before it could dry and leave water deposits. 

[SeanR]

You know what, i was thinking there was more to it.

Was thinking a bolt or something in the mirror was corroding 

I say that because even after cleaning and tcut, it comes back.

Going to need Tcut yet again.

Think i will just have to wipe down the car every week under the mirror

[Linas.P]

41 minutes ago, SeanR said:

Going to need Tcut yet again.

Think i will just have to wipe down the car every week under the mirror

T-cut (if you literally mean it) may be your problem here, you see - fake polishes don't actually remove much of the staining, they would just fill it with silicone and make it less noticeable, so when you wash the car, you wash the silicone and it seems like stain is back. If you would polish the stain properly and remove it, then it would not come back so quickly.

Secondly, you don't need to wipe down it every week, that would just cause unnecessary scratching. What you need to do is to wash the car and blow the water from the mirror (as mentioned simply driving or accelerating few times can achieve it) and then clean the water than came out before it has time to dry on the paint and leave stains. So rather than every week, do it after very wash.

Also I guess it may be normal - if your car is parked outside and very dirty, and then it rains, then there is not issue. Rain simply runs down the car, mirror base is kind of obstruction, so it runs around and then concentrates under, leaving kind of mark where it was running. As my car is kept inside I don't notice this perhaps.

Generally speaking - if you dried and wiped the car clean after washing, there should be no stain on clean car under the mirror.

[SeanR]

I think the streak is just coming down with the rain.

Tcut and polished the car with expensive wax, it was bone dry

Ps, dont know why my text is underlined lol

[J Henderson]

4 hours ago, Linas.P said:

Wow- that looks horrible! I had my disassembled my mirror in the past and I can't remember it looking that bad.

Full disclosure - not my mirror! The picture is off the Internet.

Who knows though, mine might actually look similar as I also suffer from this issue. Haven't had my mirrors apart since 2017 though to confirm.

I find the streaks clean up quite well by going over them with a clay mitt. Having a silver car, I can get away with doing just this without having to polish out any marring caused by the claying process. 

 

[Linas.P]

1 hour ago, SeanR said:

I think the streak is just coming down with the rain.

Tcut and polished the car with expensive wax, it was bone dry

Ps, dont know why my text is underlined lol

T-cut is not a true polish, I think it is what detailers nowadays would call a "glaze", basically it can remove some water spotting and oxidation, but does not have any paint/stain removal capabilities. Putting the wax on top also does very little here.

Not sure what to advise you here - you can try clay mitt maybe, it should remove stain, but not scratch paint too badly (like clay bars). Other option is to get some actual paint polish and triple-foam pad and polish that area, but the problem here - there will be shiny polished spot in that areas and the rest of the car still scratched, so it will stand out like sore thumb. And doing entire car by hand would be extremely hard. 

To be honest, it is kind of hard to tell what you dealing with here from the picture, if it is really just water stain you may be able to clean in off with MF towel and vinegar. If it is really residue from oxidating aluminium, then it may need to be mechanically polished with polish. If it is just rain moving dirt on the car and forming such shapes then it may be the case of just washing the car. It does seem like there is excessive amount of white residue, especially coming from mirror housing, but it is very hard to say what it is, @J Henderson maybe right here, maybe aluminium frame in mirror is oxidising inside, but nobody would be able to confirm it without taking mirror apart. 

[SeanR]

Cleaned the marks off yesterday, had resort to using turtle wax cutting compound.

No expert, but cant be doing this every month, will end up with no paint left on door lol.

I've not cleaned the car for maybe 6 weeks, no choice now but to go out with a sponge and bucket at least once a week, just in that spot to keep the stains off.

Blasted gap under mirror with water best i could but likely wont help much.

Have some car carnauba wax so give it a coat in that area.

See how it goes.

[LenT]

1 hour ago, SeanR said:

No expert, but cant be doing this every month, will end up with no paint left on door lol.

I've not cleaned the car for maybe 6 weeks, no choice now but to go out with a sponge and bucket at least once a week, just in that spot to keep the stains off.

Well, I do have a suggestion, Sean, but it depends on how much you want to spend on a 14 year-old car.  Look for a good local Detailer and have a ceramic finish applied.

I did it on my 2015 IS250 over three years ago.  It turned out to be a three day process but the results were excellent and road dirt, bird lime and such like are easy to remove.  In fact, a heavy rainfall does the washing for me!

You can see the initial results on my LOC page.  

[SeanR]

Supposed be really good that, would have it on a new car but not my old car, too expensive. Guy at work just paid £250 to have it done on his new motor from the dealer.

 

Think the salt on the roads recently has exasperated the issue. Never seemed so bad last year. Aluminium hates salt water. Remember having a new motorbike years ago and going out one day in winter without cleaning it off afterwards properly. The aluminium swingarm looked a mess, like pitting from the salt.

[McShmoopy]

I'm encountering this same problem myself, I suspect it is corrosion in the wing mirrors but I'm planning on taking them apart to do a few upgrades / modifications such as sequential LED indicators, BSM glass mirrors and puddle light LED changes. I only want to take these apart once so I may try an anti corrosion spray or coating to prevent further staining and then polish out the stains. 

[Thelongterm]

My off-street car park is at a steep 30 degrees which brings it's own problems coming out of the car as the doors are heavy on the IS, one thing I noticed is that I never get those white marks unless the car is parking on a flat surface for a while.

[scudney]

I occasionally get them if I take my car to the car wash and I just use one of my many Polishes and that gets rid of it. I don't get it when I hand-wash my car using a hose pipe which is what I do more often than not 😆

[J Henderson]

So, I decided to investigate what was causing this, and as suspected, it's the aluminium mirror frame that's corroding.

Thankfully, mine are nowhere near as bad as that image I posted earlier in this topic. 

They're still quite crusty though! I was greeted with a shower of aluminium oxide dust when I split apart the outer shell.

I cleaned the frame up as best I could with some APC and a stiff bristle brush. That got rid of the bulk of the loose debris.

I then masked up the mount/base and brushed on a coat of metal primer.

This is the stuff I used. Whilst that was drying, I cleaned up the two halves of the mirror shell and the puddle light.

Everything put back together, but now with smoked sequential turn signal. These cost a whopping £2.32 from AliExpress so I'm going to be skeptical about their longevity.

I quite like how they look though. The silver/black contrast is pretty much the theme all over my car. Here's the OEM one on the other side for reference.

Unfortunately it started chucking it down before I could repeat the process on the driver's side mirror. I'll have to wait and see if I get a break in the weather tomorrow, to finish the job.

I'm not sure if this process will be enough to help eliminate the streaks, or whether I ought to apply something else, but I figure it should at least help. I'll report my findings.

[J Henderson]

Did the other side a little while ago and this one was a bit more heavily corroded. There was probably a bit more grime built-up inside the the two halves of the mirror shell too.

No problems with the structural integrity of the frame or anything. It's still solid, it was just covered in that powdery crap that causes the streaks on the door.

[McShmoopy]

1 hour ago, J Henderson said:

Did the other side a little while ago and this one was a bit more heavily corroded. There was probably a bit more grime built-up inside the the two halves of the mirror shell too.

No problems with the structural integrity of the frame or anything. It's still solid, it was just covered in that powdery crap that causes the streaks on the door.

Good effort mate! I may need to do exactly as you've done, I considered getting some corrosion inhibitor / protection spray but a spray paint can or brush might do the trick. Let us know if the stain makes a return after a car wash 

[SeanR]

Update.

 

Bought a ceramic coating, just done it and will see how it goes.

9H MR Fix, it was cheap .

 

Not expecting miracles, just hoping it helps for a while, rather than keep t-cutting.

 

John above did it the correct way but it looks too involving for lazy sod like me