cleaning glass hard water marks (years of accumulation)

hi,

i've encountered this one guy who has a very clean car... 10 years old already, but still deep warm glowing shine... factory paint, not yet repainted in a body shop...

problem is... neglected glasses. weird but yes, it does happen. according to him, all he does is change wiperblades and clean with just a regular car wash... only thing is really neglected glasses... wiper streaks, water sheeting... etc... no scratches however.

it appears as if the glass is thoroughly clean, but with film beneath it, the marks can definitely hide the small bubbles even under good lighting and glass division as a technique.

here is what i did... i used a plain old rubbing compound on the glass... its a bit of an elbow grease, but perfect. i know i should have used a finishing pad and a circular polisher, but i think its still too harsh rather than doing it by hand. in particular, i usd 3m heavy duty rubbing compound. one satchet of it took car of the whole car. i used 3m rubbing compound. here it costs around 0.90 cents (converted to usd). after cleaning the windows with slip and blade (w/c didn't took off the hard water spots), i got a clean micro fiber, put a small amount of compound and worked my way in the glass. just keep on doing the circular motion until the compound is nearly dry. turn the mf over and wipe until dry. just do it repeatedly. i just used newspaper for final polishing.

to test the cleanliness of the windows, just use spray and bulid up the liquid until you see no further divisions between the "wiped" and "unwiped" portions of the wiper blades. another is the squeak test. a clean cotton rag should squeak across the glass and "should not" change tone or pitch, else there's still something between the glass and the rag.

i should have done only the windishield, but the owner wasn't too happy with just the windshield so he asked me to do it on all windows...

i know it may sound more on the glass polishing/detailing arena, but i guess it could be of additional value to tinting... a good prep work goes a long way

Ive always used steel wool to clean hard water spots on glass. It takes some "elbow grease" but it works great. I dont do it for every customer, but there are some vehicles that the hard water spots will show up so bad after tinting, that I feel it neccessary to clean the glass.

our detailing supplier gave me this chemical stuff used to clean spoke wheels and some of those hard yellow plastic sponge things. a few dabs on the sponge thing, wipe on the glass and all imperfections come right off the glass. then take some sealer wax to the glass afterwards. bam, back to new.

The Best thing to use and is readily availible is CLR calcuim lime rust. use a blue or white scrub pad and walahh. gone. Dont get on paint. I dont know if it will hurt paint but I dont want to find out.

wire wheel cleaner aka acid.. i buy 5 gallons at a time and cut it like 4to1 and acid wash whole cars with my pressure washer with no wand..anybody who says this is dumb is a detail pu$$y..if i only knew how to post pics. this does make shrinking bg alot more easy if they paying for the wash.