How To Remove Armor All From Glass

Over at the Auto Talk Communities, fellow member "gudenteit" has a greasy trouble he'due south looking to solve, afterwards his granddaughter tried to assistance clean his windshield:

He writes:

"My granddaughter was doing an within/outside cleaning chore on my car a while dorsum. She must have thought that Armor All-blazon preservative would be a good matter on the windshield! And so now when it rains, especially when fifty-fifty only a bit chilly, the wipers smear, which impedes vision, particularly at night. I've tried different solvents on the glass in add-on to Windex; paint thinner, alcohol, acetone, gumout, lacquer thinner, fifty-fifty pelting-10. I've even cleaned off the wipers with lacquer thinner.

At that place was no improvement at all. I hired a professional waterless chemical solution motorcar cleaning guy, who used some sort of cleaner on it which didn't help a bit either. I think maybe the pelting-10 even made it a fleck worse, since it seems to exist a petroleum base? Other than a new windshield, is there anything I could do? Would pumice help or worsen the smear?"

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Crowdsourced solutions in the community were all pretty good:

armor-all-glass-2 armor-all-glass-1 armor-all-glass-3

But at this point, we're all just guessing what might work.

The starting time step in fixing the issue is to figure out what the heck is in Armor All to begin with. A quick Google search reveals the official .pdf of the Safety Data Sheet that Armor All/STP Products is required to have on file by the Occupational Prophylactic and Health Administration, so that employees can know about potentially harmful substances in the workplace. Information technology'due south besides required for local burn departments and emergency planning officials under Department 311 of the Emergency Planning and Customs Correct to Know Human action.

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It basically lists the potentially harmful active ingredients in a product similar Armor All. According to the SDS, Armor All includes:

armor-all-sds

Given that the boiling bespeak listed on the SDS is 212 degrees, the majority of non-hazardous ingredients are probably water, with some fragrance and inert materials tossed in for expert measure. The active ingredient here — and the one that's probably causing the bulk of the smear on gudenteit's windsheld — is mineral oil.

Mineral oil is a liquid by-production of refining rough oil to brand gasoline and other petroleum products. Cleaning information technology off requires an organic solvent stiff enough to float the mineral oil rest off the glass.

A little personal history: Earlier I took a gig as a writer, I spent a few years as an installer at a drinking glass shop well-nigh Boston. Prior to installation, windshields are subjected to all kinds of things that would go out a customer dissatisfied if you didn't make clean them off. Fingerprints, oily residues, dust, airborne contaminants and all kinds of nastiness need to be cleaned off prior to installation, so again after the installation is complete.

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We'd typically use heavy duty glass cleaner, the primary active ingredient of which is usually alcohol to polish a windshield to gleaming. Merely we'd also have to interruption out the big guns to clean off heavily greasy windshields. For that, we used Crest Industries Release-All. It's a heavy-duty spray solvent that's specifically designed to clean upward butyl windshield agglutinative. If yous don't clean that stuff upward apace, it has a half-life about the aforementioned as whatever'southward however floating around Chernobyl.

Trouble is, Release-All is pretty hard to find, and if yous tin can discover it, you'll accept to buy information technology by the instance, and so allow'south try and come with a suitable substitute.

You'll have a lot meliorate shot at finding a degreaser like CRC'southward degreasers at your local hardware or parts shop. In that location are several dissimilar varieties, from Quick Clean to Super Degreaser, but they all have the same bones active ingredient:
crc-heavy-duty-degreaser

Tetrachloroethylene is a superior solvent for organic materials. Its the chemical that's widely used by dry cleaners, and it's also the primary degreaser for the automotive and metalworking industries. CRC's Heavy Duty Degreaser uses it equally the primary ingredient, and you lot can find it in any decent auto parts store.

A few tips for using it:

Tetracholorethylene is pretty nasty stuff, so article of clothing gloves and apply information technology in a well-ventilated place.
Since you lot desire to clean the inside of the windshield besides as the exterior, y'all don't want chemicals spraying all over the dashboard. A chemic similar this can harm or discolor plastics, so spray it on a paper towel or a microfiber cloth first and so apply that to wipe the glass make clean.
Heavy Duty Degreaser isn't a glass cleaner, then follow that upward with a good glass cleaner. The best glass cleaner known to man is Sprayway. It not only cleans drinking glass to a completely transparent shine, but you could do a lot worse than applying its lovely scent equally a cologne.
Instead of wiping off the drinking glass cleaner with paper towels or microfiber towels, try using newspaper. It'due south non absorbent, so don't overuse the glass cleaner, simply paper polishes drinking glass to an outrageous polish. Just continue it abroad from textile trim on the A-pillars and headliner because the ink could stain it.

I'd be surprised if cleaning the windshield with CRC Heavy Duty Degreaser didn't solve the problem, merely there'due south one more than solution that I haven't tried that others claim offers great results. Permatex offers a product called No Bear upon Motorcar Glass Stripper. The link to the left is to Permatex's Australian site, but you can buy information technology on Amazon hither in the U.S. According to the site, it'southward "a heavy-duty cleaner peculiarly formulated for automobile windshields. It removes silicone build-upwards, hard water stains, mud, oil, bugs, and tar that other cleaners cannot." It's worth a shot.

Finally, there's a groovy windshield cleaning tutorial for the truly obsessive at Autogeekonline.internet. They recommend how to clean the inside of a windshield that's covered in years of cigarette smoke.

The final concern is the wiper blades. For less than $25, chuck the inserts in the trash and spring for some new ones. They probably need to be inverse anyway.

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Subsequently yous become it cleaned upwards, requite your granddaughter a hug for being such a proficient, helpful kid and let us know how you made out.