Film on the inside of car windows.

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I remember when I got my used car I barely made it home because they had gone crazy with the spray detailer. It rained on the way home and I could barely see from the streaking.

Muliple applications of window cleaner didn't touch it. Had to resort to dishsoap, water and elbow grease to finally get that stuff off.
 
Originally Posted By: Quattro Pete
Originally Posted By: mrsilv04
I've never used any sort of shampoos or cleaner on the seats or carpet.

What about a dashboard protectant like ArmorAll or 303?


Nope. Can't stand to use the stuff inside. Many times, when you make the dashboard shine, then it reflects into the windshield... and it also attracts dust like a magnet.

Might as well wipe everything down with some 5w-30.
 
Originally Posted By: mrsilv04
Originally Posted By: Quattro Pete
Originally Posted By: mrsilv04
I've never used any sort of shampoos or cleaner on the seats or carpet.

What about a dashboard protectant like ArmorAll or 303?


Nope. Can't stand to use the stuff inside. Many times, when you make the dashboard shine, then it reflects into the windshield... and it also attracts dust like a magnet.

Might as well wipe everything down with some 5w-30.


There are a whole bunch of protectants that are specifically matte and no-shine, but are a bit boutique and hard to find unless you order online. Can find plenty of comparos on the detailing forums with pics to find the best no-shine one.
 
Meguiars and Armor All both have no shine protectants on the market now and one or both are available at just about any wal mart in my area.
 
Originally Posted By: Quattro Pete
Originally Posted By: mrsilv04
I've never used any sort of shampoos or cleaner on the seats or carpet.

What about a dashboard protectant like ArmorAll or 303?


Armorall will fog your windows up? That explains a lot for me.. haha
 
Originally Posted By: kschachn
It can be caused by a variety of volatile organic compounds, a lot of times it is from plasticizers in flexible plastics. The downside is that once they are gone (and the film disappears) the plastic starts to degrade.


+1

Originally Posted By: raytseng

There are a whole bunch of protectants that are specifically matte and no-shine, but are a bit boutique and hard to find unless you order online. Can find plenty of comparos on the detailing forums with pics to find the best no-shine one.


Most of those products, in real life, add very little protection. They're mostly for appearance.
 
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Originally Posted By: The Critic
Originally Posted By: kschachn
It can be caused by a variety of volatile organic compounds, a lot of times it is from plasticizers in flexible plastics. The downside is that once they are gone (and the film disappears) the plastic starts to degrade.


+1

Originally Posted By: raytseng

There are a whole bunch of protectants that are specifically matte and no-shine, but are a bit boutique and hard to find unless you order online. Can find plenty of comparos on the detailing forums with pics to find the best no-shine one.


Most of those products, in real life, add very little protection. They're mostly for appearance.


I agree with both statements.
 
For me, it is just as much technique as it is cleaner. I use Sprayway, and am very happy with it. But my routine is to use Sprayway with blue shop towels for two cleanings. Then I follow up with a light application of Sprayway on a microfiber towel for a final cleaning. This works great for me, for cleaning the vinyl film of the inside of the windshield. I use the same method for cleaning the outside of the windows.

BTW, is your truck a Chevy or GMC? I used to always drive GM products, and always had to deal with vinyl fog on the inside of all the windows. But I've recently noticed that my Subaru doesn't get the foggy film on the inside of the windshield anywhere near as bad as my GM cars have. Since then I've often wondered if GM cars are worse at vinyl fog than other cars.

I have never understood the idea of cleaning windows with newspaper. I tried it a few times. It never worked better than any other method. Then one time, after trying to clean my windows with newspaper, I looked at my hands and saw how filthy they were with ink. It suddenly occurred to me that just as much ink had to be on my windows. Ever since that day, I've often thought it amazing that anyone would try to clean a window by smearing newspaper ink all over it.
 
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Originally Posted By: The Critic
Most of those products, in real life, add very little protection. They're mostly for appearance.

What do you recommend? Granted, I'm not in sunny California and my vehicle spends a lot of time in the garage, but I'd like to hear your recommendations. I tend to use the Meguiar's Professional Vinyl & Rubber Cleaner/Conditioner.

As for the more general issue of film inside car windows, I've taken to keeping a glass microfiber type towel in the glove box. They're good at buffing out that film when that's all I need to do, and the inside isn't so dirty as to justify a proper job.
 
Originally Posted By: Garak
Originally Posted By: The Critic
Most of those products, in real life, add very little protection. They're mostly for appearance.

What do you recommend? Granted, I'm not in sunny California and my vehicle spends a lot of time in the garage, but I'd like to hear your recommendations. I tend to use the Meguiar's Professional Vinyl & Rubber Cleaner/Conditioner.

As for the more general issue of film inside car windows, I've taken to keeping a glass microfiber type towel in the glove box. They're good at buffing out that film when that's all I need to do, and the inside isn't so dirty as to justify a proper job.


+1 I like this idea and the Meguiars prof. stuff is awesome. Smells like leather and gives a detailed look. Not a greasy shine
 
Originally Posted By: Garak
Originally Posted By: The Critic
Most of those products, in real life, add very little protection. They're mostly for appearance.

What do you recommend? Granted, I'm not in sunny California and my vehicle spends a lot of time in the garage, but I'd like to hear your recommendations. I tend to use the Meguiar's Professional Vinyl & Rubber Cleaner/Conditioner.

As for the more general issue of film inside car windows, I've taken to keeping a glass microfiber type towel in the glove box. They're good at buffing out that film when that's all I need to do, and the inside isn't so dirty as to justify a proper job.


I use nothing.
 
I can easily clean the 'film' off, but I don't think cleaning it off at a time is the main issue here - lots of stuff can clean it off, and like the OP said, i have also used a dry MF towel, and it did work well, but I wonder if there's anyway to keep it from reappearing.

I can believe that in a new-ish car, the dashboard material off gases etc, but why does the inside of the windshield of our 212k mile, 2003 Elantra STILL get this 'film' ?


The car is kept very clean interior-wise, and no one smokes in it. I rarely use dash cleaner products on the dash, mostly just MF cloth and water. I USED to use 1Z dash product a LONG time ago, but since it achieved beater status, I just clean it/wipe it with no product.

What we need is some sort of PREVENTATIVE measure, but IDK if it exists.

One product that I tried is the Rain-X Anti-fog for INTERIOR glass, which did work pretty well.
It was a REAL pain to apply to the inside of the w/shield though: not only due to the general acrobatics needed to apply anything well at that angle, but the product itself caused haziness/streaking which was hard to clear well.

When I finally managed it, I felt like I broke an arm and my back.
However, i noticed that it did indeed prevent the film from coming back for sometime, and it did prevent fogging as well ( could easily see it where i had missed a corner which still fogged).

However, horrible ease-of-use level has discouraged me from applying that stuff again...
Perhaps I need to gather some energy and re-try it.
 
My 94 gets the film as well. I don't think it has anything to do with off gasing of interior plastics; like I said, it's simply dirt in the air that lands on the windows and or residue left over from atmospheric or human induced water vapor that condenses and dries on the windows. When we get humid/cool weather or the windows fog from my breathing, I have to clean the film off immediately or I can hardly see at night from the glare.
 
Originally Posted By: The Critic
I use nothing.

For me, it always depended on the vehicle. With the Caprices in the taxi days, those had a dash you could take a snooze on, so something shiny was not a good idea. I prefer to find something with a minimum of petroleum distillates, too.
 
Originally Posted By: Garak
Originally Posted By: The Critic
I use nothing.

For me, it always depended on the vehicle. With the Caprices in the taxi days, those had a dash you could take a snooze on, so something shiny was not a good idea. I prefer to find something with a minimum of petroleum distillates, too.


smile.gif


Back on topic:

You guys do know that you can get whole sheaths of newsletter, which is newspaper paper with absolutely no printing on it for about the same price as dirt (cheaper, actually) at just about any place that sells moving/packing materials, even Home Depot, right?

If you really have had it with film, and want to bring out the big guns, use ammonia. Ammonia will take just about any deposit off of glass, including window tint glue. I rarely have to resort to such extremes.

I clean my glass by running a fresh razor scraper gently across the glass, using Spraway or Stoner's as a lubricant, and wipe away the liquid and whatever deposits are caught in suspension. I have never put a single scratch on glass this way, and it takes anything and everything off. I use glass specific microfiber towels for the final cleaning.

Obviously, you would never want to use either process on a vehicle with film tinted windows.
 
Originally Posted By: DoubleWasp
You guys do know that you can get whole sheaths of newsletter, which is newspaper paper with absolutely no printing on it for about the same price as dirt (cheaper, actually) at just about any place that sells moving/packing materials, even Home Depot, right?

That's interesting to note. I've used newspaper quite often, particularly years ago before microfiber made it big.
 
I think you will notice the 'film' more often when the windshield defroster fan is used. Film in my cars are always worse in the dead of winter and dead of summer when air conditioning/heating is used the most.
 
On mine, it gets like that when i turn on defrost (on humid or rainy days mostly) BUT if I turn AC on WITH defrost on, it clears up instantly.
 
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