Water etching on autoglass

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Originally Posted By: PimTac
How about sudsy ammonia?


Ammonia is a basic solution, and they typically aren’t effective at removing mineralization. Don’t see sudsy ammonia working at all.
 
I think you have a pretty good idea of what has happened here, or could have happened. Glass being etched is common,
and the common methods to fix this by people that haven't dealt with this before, polish, bon ami, etc are totally ineffective as you have to level the surrounding glass via a specific glass compound, usually Cerium Oxide. It is messy and generally cannot be done with without a polisher, usually rotary. Like stated before, lots of misinformation when it comes to glass polishing.
Originally Posted By: CleverUserName
Originally Posted By: zorobabel
The concept of glass being dissolved by water seemed hard to swallow...


I believe acid rain and other environmental pollutants could etch Glass. I’m sure if you lived in Flint Michigan and washed your car with their polluted water it would cause damage to the glass or paint. No water is “pure” unless it’s distilled or filtered through reverse osmosis, and both these processes completely demineralize the water anyway so it’s not natural water anymore. It’s a reagent, or H2O.

I think the etching in question was caused by some kind of detergent or other chemical which was in the water used to wash to car. It could have dried on the glass and sunlight burned it onto the surface. I don’t know how it got there, I’m just trying to figure out how to get rid of it without replacing the windshield.
 
I was able to do mine with 3M coarse compound and an orange foam buffer followed up with 3M "Perfect It" and a black foam pad on a rotary buffer. Also works for bad water spots on paint.
 
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