Bird bomb defuser kit

[George Jetson]

Its been awhile since anyone posted about this, so I thought I'd relate a little story to the group. Two days ago I parked the car and went in for lunch. When I came out, the hood of my car had a nice big bird bomb impact on it with a couple of secondary splashes across the hood. We have a nasty species of bird here called Russian Blackbirds by the locals (great-tailed grackles), which seem to eat and drink nothing but hydrochloric acid.

I always take the car to the hand wash on the following day, so I foolishly did nothing to remedy the insult until then. The dried matter came off very easily, but the owner of the wash brought me over to look at an angle to show me that the main impact zone and a couple of the secondaries had left a mark which had etched into the finish.

Long story short, it took them about 15 minutes of various compounds and wet microfiber cloths to remove and restore the finish back to good as new. He gave me a tip, which I will pass along to the group. Always carry a bottle of seltzer water (unflavored) and a microfiber cloth in your car. As soon as you see the bird bomb, soak it down with the water and gently remove it with the cloth. If you get to it quickly enough, the acid in the poop won't leave an etch. If you don't see it until after it has dried for some time, then you are going to need some kind of compound and polish to remove it. Again, time is of the essence. If it etches too deeply, you may even need to have the panel refinished.

 

[kort677]

thanks for the tip, another sure fire way to avoid incidents like this is to avoid parking under the places where they roost

 

[George Jetson]

thanks for the tip, another sure fire way to avoid incidents like this is to avoid parking under the places where they roost

Looked like mine was a fly-by bombing. Open parking lot with no trees. The scorching Texas sun probably contributed to the easy bake.

 

[Haxster]

Sometimes sh*t happens and there's not much you can do about it.

Burned into my memory as a kid was when the family was on the highway between LA and Santa Barbara. A flock of birds flew over and synchronously dropped their load on our windshield. It was impressive! My dad could barely see through the mess and had to pull over to clean it up as best he could. (No windshield washers on a '55 Pontiac).

 

[Petra]

Yes, speed is everything when it comes to dealing with that sort of thing... When traveling, I keep a little cleaning kit with me consisting of a spray bottle filled with a wash concentration mix of distilled water and Optimum No-Rinse, two nice fluffy microfibers for paint cleanup, and a couple glass cleaning microfibers. For bird removal, I spray the surface with solution, soak the surface of the microfiber, then lift the stuff off. ONR also works well as a glass cleaner.

 

[AudubonB]

I think I did try to preserve the event with a photograph, but can't find it.

One of the very few drawbacks of living on the banks of the spawning grounds of 40 percent of all those splendid Copper River Reds is that when we have a flyover.....

well, I'll finish with I and my cars say thank goodness bald eagles also don't eat blueberries.

 

[bmah]

Heh. My S85D didn't even make it out of the parking lot at the factory before it got bombed by a seagull. Literally happened during the ten minutes between when our delivery person moved it out of the building and the time we walked out to drive the car away.

Bruce.

 

[Dborn]

The other substance you need to worry about is cement/concrete. Years ago I was parked in the street next to a building site. Some splotches of concrete, I guess drops really out of the side of the bucket, landed on my car and I neglected to deal with it immediately.BIG MISTAKE. Wash it off asap.

 

[Vince Cobelo]

This is why mine was coated (CQuartz) within the first week of delivery. In Florida we have birds, trees, bugs every pestilence that can mess up a car's paint. I swear by the coatings and 3M clear. They are worth every penny.