Cleaning up adhesive residue on my car

If you have been following my posts since last week, you'll know I had a bit of a car trouble to do with a door that refuses to close, and at that time my temporary solution was to tape it shut with masking tape until I can repair it.

Well, the masking tape did it's job. On the downside, it left a bunch of ugly and stubborn residue stain on the areas where I taped.

So today I broke out ye olde can of soft99 automotive wax, a piece of clean microfiber cloth and got to work on the metal body parts first.

image credit : logon.my

The process is simple, just pour a small amount of the wax on a corner of the microfiber cloth and start rubbing on the residues using my finger. At this point, it is important to note that the wax has some abrasive quality which helps it to scrape the adhesive residue off. This also means that I cannot apply too much force or too much speed or it may damage the surrounding clear coat layer of the paintwork. 

General rule of thumb - if the finger that you are using the apply the wax is feeling some heat through the cloth, STOP and wait for a few seconds before resuming. I learnt this the hard way when I burnt the clear coat on the Persona's bonnet.

The stain looks small in this photo because I have actually removed some of it. It was way worse when the tape was freshly removed.

It took a few rounds to tackle each area, but eventually most of them came off.

Moving on to the glass area, which are generally tougher that clearcoat, so I can use more force and in faster motion to make quick work of the residues.

For the rubber area surround the rear three quarter glass I had to use concentrated car shampoo (basically just pour some of undiluted shampoo onto the cloth) and rub real hard. I couldn't use the wax because rubber and plastic areas will trap wax particles on their surfaces that could not be wiped off, leaving very visible white wax residue on them.

There is still the last part of the vinyl-ed surface around the door window frame which also prove to be uncooperative, because the vinyl surface is rough and the adhesive residue has lodged into the microscopic crevices of the uneven surface. I will need to try something which I will share in another post if I am successful.

After an evening of elbow grease, so far I am happy with the result, now I just need to find time to deal with the vinyl-ed windows frame.