One nice spring day when you are washing your car you decide, “Hey, why don't I give it a wax too!” While you are waxing the car, you are a bit too enthusiastic with the wax and cloth… and you get it on your plastic and rubber trim. Whatever, you will just be more careful. As you continue waxing it is hard to control all the wax and make sure it doesn't get on the plastic and rubber. When you are done waxing, letting it dry, then buffing it out, your car looks great. Then you say, “Hey, what is that white gunk on my trim?” It is tried wax!
What are you to do? You try washing it off with soap and water. Doesn't work that well, right? I know, because I tried it.
The car care experts over at Griot's Garage have a good solution for this problem, Dried-On Wax Remover. It removes dried wax, that you might otherwise not be able to get off your car. How does it work? Pretty well actually. I had some dried wax on my Honda Accord that was bothering me for a couple months. Click on my pictures below to see the before and after.
It can be hard to see from pictures how well car cleaning products work, but I think you can tell the Dried-On Wax Remover is a good solution to getting that pesky dried-on wax off your car.
What the pictures I took did not show, was that some wax that was really on there took several applications to get off. There was some residue still on there, so I used Meguiar's Ultimate Black Plastic Restorer to give my car's trim extra pop and mask any remaining wax residue. I noticed the bottle said that you might need to use a toothbrush to scrub off the really tough dried wax. I have not had been willing to try this yet, but I am fairly sure if you did scrub the residue remover in with a toothbrush it would work. It worked well enough without it.
Overall, Griot's Garage Dried-On Wax Remover definitely works at getting the pesky dried wax off your car's trim, for the most part. It is a good solution to a common car waxing problem.
re groits garage dried on wax remover: I tried it a million times and it simply does not work. it looks like the wax is gone for a few minutes then once it dries the white stuff is right back. WD-40 works better at half the cost. groits speed shine is great, but this stuff is junk.
Thank you for sharing your experiences Tom.
I found it to work ok on some dried-wax spots, but sometimes it just wouldn’t do the trick. The bottle does say you might need to take a toothbrush and scrub in the wax remover. I am just not inclined to do that though.
So you have used WD-40 with good results? Will that discolor the plastic at all? I haven’t heard about that trick, but I am tempted to try it.