Lawn treatment or pesticide damaged / stained exterior

[veonix84]

Only had the vehicle for 2 weeks.
Just washed it with normal car cleaner and only one side appears affected.
The staining looks like extreme car wash or water spots.

Did my landscaping, pest control, or lawn care company corrode the stainless steal?

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[SCTesla]

BKF will remove it. (Ask me how I know).

 

[veonix84]

Thanks.
Going to order some as well as a motorized buffer.
It seems buffing it very hard clears it up.

 

[NightOwl]

Costco baby wipes.

 

[vinsk]

water from Sprinklers maybe? Try Sprayaway, it works for stains and cleans glass as well.

 

[cybercoffee]

I would be wary of any powered buffer on the finish, making the factory finish nonuniform...try bkf first with no buffing first

 

[HaulingAss]

I would be wary of any powered buffer on the finish, making the factory finish nonuniform...try bkf first with no buffing first

I did the left side of my Cybertruck a week ago with a Festool RO 150 FEQ 6" (dual action random orbit sander). It looks great! The key to getting a uniform finish is to use the right tools and abrasives, use a light touch, don't bear down, move along at a good clip, and follow a pattern with a lot of overlap between strokes. Alternate vertical and horizontal patterns.

All of the scratches on the left side were very fine so I started with a 320 grit non-woven pad (like a Scotch-Brite), moved to a 500 grit metal polishing pad (Festool Platin, not non-woven) and finished off with a 1000 grit metal polishing pad (Platin). If you have deeper scratches you can start with 100 grit non-woven pad. You could also go from the 320 grit non-woven pad to a 800 grit non-woven pad and skip the 500 and 1000 grit polishing pads, if you like a bit more texture to your polish.

Now it has a nice uniform glow and all the micro-scratches from mud and branches are gone. I decided the fine scratches on the lowest metal panel (from beating through brush while muddy) looked good, so I left that orientation of the panels untouched. They are low and angle in such a way the scratches don't show as much, and they look more natural.

Use a vac as you sand to extract the dust so your abrasives last longer, the Hard Frickin' Steel (HFS) is not a misnomer, it's really hard. Still, the Festool RO 150 made pretty quick work of it by using the heavier cutting action mode first and finishing off with the more gentle polishing mode. Between grits I sprayed 50% rubbing alcohol/water on the sanded areas and wiped off with a microfiber. This prevents polishing in the binders used on the abrasives and cleans up any particulate matter left on there. When I was finished polishing, I washed it with lemon fresh Joy dish soap in a bucket of water and rinsed well with a hose sprayer and dried with clean microfiber. After doing this you want to let it self-passivate before getting oils or waxes on it, or driving through harsh chemicals. I think I was lucky because it received a couple days of rain to speed up the passivation.

Just know that you can bring the panels back to new anytime, just by polishing them with a RO sander. It's mostly for polishing any fine scratches you may have picked up from off-roading but it will also take care of any stains at the same time. Don't try this on a painted vehicle because it will go through the clear coat almost instantly and it won't be too long before you are down to the primer. ?

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