Windshield Cleaner

[ew1usnr]

I applied Rain-X glass water repellent, "The invisible Windshield Wiper", to the windshield of my Falcon. See: https://www.rainx.com/product/glass-water-repellents-cleaners/rainx-original-glass-treatment/#.Vt9y99AppXg

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That proved to be a mistake. It might work well on a new windshield with a smooth surface, but my 53 year old Falcon windshield has all kinds of little pits and scratches. The Rain-X dried to a haze that could not be buffed off, and it filled and highlighted all the little micro-chips. The hazy film caused a terrible glare when the sun would hit it at an angle during my morning commute to work.

The Rain-X site says: “Rain X® Extreme Clean is the best product to use to remove Rain X® from a glass surface.” I thought "Man, I need some of that stuff."

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I stopped at O’Reilly’s on the way home from work and bought a 12 oz bottle of it for $6.29. I rinsed the windshield with water and used a damp cloth to scrub it with the X-treme Clean. The cleaner was somewhat like thin white toothpaste and evidently contained a gentle abrasive. I rinsed the windshield with water and then buffed it dry with paper towels. It cleaned the film off the windshield and left it sparkling and clear.

It is nice to have a clean windshield again. :)

[dhbfaster]

Dennis, Did you get the RainX with the cleaner mixed in? Combo cleaner/rainx repellent? My windshield is not old, but I used regular rainx on my other cars and it works great. Then one time my wife bought the stuff with the cleaner mixed in as a combo, but it did exactly what you described. I got like a white haze that was difficult to get rid of.

[Luva65wagon]

I've used RainX for years, but have gotten lazy about using it the past few. This year should have been using it the most! But I've never had issue with it on old or new windshields. It always dried to a haze, but then you were to sprinkle a little water on the windshield and polish to a clear sparkle. Never used the mix, so will take what Don says as true on that front.

Prior to RainX I also always used a good glass polish with cerium oxide to remove all the other crud. Generally that made the windshield crystal clean and often, depending on how much time I spent on it, removed a lot of small scratches. Not the pits. Then RainX never showed up as present until it rained and the water sheeted off.

The downside with RainX is that it does wear off and as it does you use your wipers and it then deposits onto the wiper blades. So be sure to wipe the blades with lacquer thinner and clean the windshield, with a good glass polish, before reapplying RainX again.

[ew1usnr]

My windshield is not old, but I used regular rainx on my other cars and it works great.

Uhhh, ... I may have misdiagnosed the problem.

As I drove home yesterday I scratched at inside of the windshield with my thumbnail and found the haze was on the inside. That caused me to remember that I had tried wiping the inside of the windshiled with Rain-X defogger a couple of months ago. It had initially looked OK, but had evidently created a haze over time:

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I wiped the inside of the windshield with "Invisible Glass" glass cleaner:

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[Luva65wagon]

Now... as for RainX AntiFog... I tried that one time and swore never again. A clean windshield defogs fast enough. This stuff seemed to slow the defogging IMHO and/or left the windshield appearance looking yucky very quickly. Maybe on the bathroom mirrors, but not my car.