Can you remove bird poop etching?

June 20, 2022

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Can You Remove Bird Poop Etching?

It is so surprising to many people that bird poop will etch through your paint, but it happens all of the time. It can even damage your clear bra. No typical auto detailing will solve this – and if you wait long enough, even a cut and buff (compound and polish) might not be enough.

It’s incredibly imperative that you remove bird poop as soon as possible (and even bug guts).

Why does bird poop etch / damage paint?

Birds have no bladder. That sounds pretty convenient for us mammals that have to do number one and number two, but for your paint – it’s not great news.

Birds have an organ called the cloaca. Poop is mixed with uric acid from the bladder like a paint-killing witch’s concoction, and then deposited on your vehicle with no care for the money you spent on clear bra and/or ceramic coating. How dare those birds!

The pH levels of uric acid are around 3-4.5. Just for a frame of reference, everyone is taught about hydrochloric acid in school, which is around 1-3.5 on the pH scale. So that nasty acid no one wanted to touch in high school and junior high because it was so acidic – something similar is getting dropped onto your ceramic coating or clear bra.

When the vehicle paint or clear bra heats up during the day, it expands. The bird poop is allowed to seep into the surface, and when it cools off (which seems like never in the Killeen area in the summer, but we digress), it contracts around the acid. Over time, this permanently damages the paint.

Ok, but can you fix it?

Yes, we can fix it – if caught early enough. If too much of that Killeen heat is expanding and contracting it in, only a wet sand or clear coat/paint respray will fix the issue.

Ultimately, the goal is to get that poop off of your clear bra, ceramic coating, and paint ASAP! Ceramic coating will provide a bit of an extra layer of defense on top of the clear bra, so that is one of the many reasons we always recommend ceramic coating even if the clear bra is hydrophobic as is.

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