Water/Mineral spots on black paint

[MileHighMark]

Newbie here with a problem that's driving me mad.

My daily driver is a black 2007 Nissan Frontier pickup. The passenger side has some mild water/mineral spotting (from a sprinkler) that almost looks like oil spots on top of the paint. Hard to describe, and even harder to photograph. Here's a pic that sort of shows the spotting:


Waxing the truck with Meguiar's Liquid Gold gave it a nice shine, but didn't remove the spots/stains.

I found the following thread on google (which is how I found this forum), and was wondering if I should use clay or ScratchX 2.0 to remove the spots/stains.

http://meguiarsonline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=29379

Thanks in advance.

[Murr1525]

Re: Water/Mineral spots on black paint

Yeah, you will want to clay the car and use a paint cleaner. I would start with SwirlX though.

[Blueline]

Re: Water/Mineral spots on black paint

No expert here, and with all due respect to Murr1255, when I had had that problem with my black vehicle, ColorX took the spots off easily. Didn't need to clay and never have used SwirlX

[Michael Stoops]

Re: Water/Mineral spots on black paint

Water spots range from being very easy to remove - a little Cleaner Wax will get rid of those quick enough - to extremely difficult to remove - try a rotary buffer with a wool pad!!!

It all depends on what was in the water, how long the water spots have been there, how deeply have they etched into the paint, and how hard or "polishable" the paint is. Some level of cleaning action is required to remove them - Gold Class Wax doesn't contain any cleaners so unless you've got pretty whimpy water spots, they won't go away with a non-cleaner wax. Unfortunately, you don't really what you've got until you start working on them.

No matter which product you try - ColorX, SwirlX, ScratchX 2.0, or even M105 - start by working just a small area rather than an entire panel, or even a quarter of a panel. Especially when working by hand, concentrate that work area down to maybe 18" square and put some passion into it. On a black car it's best to avoid terry cloth as an applicator since a vigorous application with that material can tend to haze the paint. Stick with a foam wax applicator pad for this process.