White wax stains on plastic trim come from solvents in the wax. These solvents are not meant for cleaning the paint. They are actually just there as a carrier for the protective ingredients in the wax. Once the wax is applied to your car, the solvent evaporates, leaving the wax on the paint. The problem is, the solvents stain plastic trim.
The best defense against wax stains is to prevent them in the first place! You can tape off plastic trim if you’re applying your wax with a buffer. You can just be very careful when applying wax by hand. Accidents still happen so your other option is to choose a wax that will not stain trim. Many WOWO (wipe on, wipe off) waxes will not stain trim and you can identify them by the fact that they also do not dry to a white haze. Examples are Pinnacle Souverän, Pinnacle Signature Series II, Detailer’s Pro Series Max Wax, Wolfgang Füzion, Poorboy’s Natty’s Paste Wax, and P21S Concours Carnauba Wax.
If your wax of choice is an apply-and-dry wax, you can still remove wax stains from trim by acting quickly. You can use a dedicated wax remover, like Griot’s Garage Dried On Wax Remover or you can opt for Detailer’s Pro Series Cleanse-All Exterior Cleaner. It will remove everything from the trim, including any dressings, so you’ll want to reapply protection after cleaning the trim.
What I have heard of trying is just a plain old pencil eraser. Being fairly new to this I went out and bought a large pack of four….I’ll test them in the morning and give you a heads up on this technique. I hope it works on M105 as I did go over the line a bit here and there…If it works out we will have a cheap way of correctiing our mistakes.
Jeff
Learning why you are doing something prior to doing it will save you a big headache in the end. I always research everything there is about something before I take action. Otherwise I spend countless hours trying to repair things that are mentioned above.
I ran into this problem a couple of weeks ago, I cant remember what I used that stained the plastic though.
What I did was moisten a small cotton gauze, with WD40!! The stuff came right off, and no discoloration of the plastic either. The stuff you can do with WD40 never seizes to amaze me!
that’s not an easy thing to deal with, and you never know for sure which way is the right one in this or that situation
Great Post… Don’t you guys love when you get a client who hated their old detailer and you come to find the black trim in shambles. Love that wolfgang wax too!
thanks for sharing