Tree Sweat Pitch and Sap All Over Your Car or Truck Finding Out the Best Cleaner to Remove It

Okay. Where is this thing? Ah, this looks like it right up here. Holy cow, look at these things. I thought this looked like a junkyard before. Oh, man, this is bad. That's never gonna come off, or maybe it will. Looks like we got an idea for another video.

Now, before we get into trying to clean this up, I wanted to go over something real quick. In the summertime, it gets really hot outside, everybody knows that. Everybody also knows you never park underneath a pine tree in the summertime. Why? Because it's gonna drip out those big old globs of pine sap. Well, something else to mention, though, is even hard trees like this or hardwood trees like this, they still sweat a little bit, they're gonna spit out these little droplets. You're not even necessarily gonna be able to see it, but that's eventually gonna come down, it's gonna sit on here, cause a whole bunch of little bubbles of little sap droplets on there and then, of course, all the debris is gonna adhere to it. This doesn't feel very good, it's gonna be a little bit hard to come off of here. Is this gonna happen in just one day? It might not look exactly like this, so probably not. But you might find after you park your car, you go inside, you come right back outside, it looks like it missed it a little bit, a little bit of raindrops or something on it. You go ahead and you touch it, and it just smudges. That's kind of the sweat that's coming from these trees.

Okay. So, I need to get all this crud off of this thing so I can take it for a road test. I don't wanna drive around with this thing looking like a mess. I've got a whole bunch of different things up here that I wanna give a try. And believe me nothing specific about this, I didn't go ahead and pick anything because I needed it to be a certain way. I just grabbed whatever I could find around the house and in the shed and everywhere else. So, let's go ahead and start spraying it on here and see what we can do. Something to think about before we start spraying anything is what we're gonna use to try to get the crud off of there after we spray it on. Now, obviously, you're gonna wanna try to use something smooth and soft, you don't wanna go ahead and damage your paint. There are some things that you could try to use that's gonna be able to get this off, but it might leave some marks, especially if you have a darker vehicle, maybe a black or something like that.

So, using this pad right there really isn't the best. I'm gonna go with something that looks a lot more like this. This is a nice microfiber cloth. It's nice and soft, it's not gonna do any damage. Hopefully, it's gonna be able to get this stuff off of here. If not, you know, we'll try a couple of other things. And at the end, I guess if we had to, we might use this brush. Right off the bat, I want to let you know that putting anything other than what's specified to go on your vehicle's paint could potentially damage it overall. I wouldn't recommend using half of these things that I got on here on your automobile's paint, only because I don't really know what the long-term effects are. Maybe it's gonna be able to go ahead and get off some of that sap for you, but what might it do to your paint in the long run? I really can't tell you. Our cars right here that we're gonna be dealing with, I'm not worried about the paint, I just wanna see if it would get the sap off. Let's give it a shot.

One quick thing to think about is if you happen to have a pressure washer handy, that might be better to go ahead and try to spray on here ahead of time. That way there, you can get all of this loose debris off before we start doing any other cleaning. Let's try this quick detailer spray. Let's let that sit for a couple of seconds. Let's give it a little scrub. Ooh, okay. Not bad. Quick detailer, check. Now let's try a little Quick Shine Wash & Wax. Works pretty good too. Boy, I could do the whole car this way.

Could you, though?

No. That worked pretty great. Now, I'm gonna move along to some soapy water. Just run a little spray bottle here. Okay. Well, soapy water seems like it's working but not so good. The soapy water seems to be working. If I press really hard, it can seem like I get it up. But of course, the more I press, the more chances I'm gonna be scratching up my hood. Now, for this strip, I'm gonna use some peroxide and water. I just wanna see what this is gonna do. Let that sit on there. Let's give this a try. Once again, I got to really try to press down on this to get it to do anything. It'll work if I scrub at it, but it's not my favorite. I don't think I would go with this. Take all day to do a whole car. Now, I'm gonna try some heavy-duty degreaser that just happens to be green. It's working pretty good. A little more. Just let it sit. It's been sitting, let's try it again. That's coming off a little easier. Still not the best.

Now I'm gonna try some wheel and tire cleaner. This stuff right here is essentially just supposed to adhere to the brake dust and stuff that you might have on your wheels. I'm gonna try it on this because I wanna know. Okay. Let's see what this thing did. It's taking it off pretty easy, actually. Okay. All right. Ooh. Look at the dirt. Let's try some glass wipes. Now, I'm gonna scratch up this whole hood trying to use this. Maybe just for glass. Now, let's try some interior detailer. Let us give this a try. Well, that works good. Definitely seems like the ones that specifically say detailer in them work the best. But that's on the quarter panel here, the hood is a lot worse. Let's just give it a try on the hood. Yeah? Still up there on the list.

Now I'm gonna try something that I didn't talk to you about before. I've got some penetrant spray that we sell on our site. I'm gonna go ahead and try to spray it down on here, let it sit for a minute, and I wanna see what it does. I'll do this one with a rag. Nope. Not so much. No. Okay. It's getting hot out here and I wanna get this over with. What I noticed is as I come along the side here, we used the quick detailer on the door, came out great. I went along over here, a little bit of Wash & Wax, also amazing. As I came up across the hood, things stumbled across a little bit. The soap and water, worked all right, peroxide and water, sure, a couple other things, not so much. Took a lot more elbow grease, and I didn't really like it very much. And then as we came across the hood, what we came to find out was that the wheel and tire shine right here, that one actually did pretty good. It cleaned it up pretty nice. We tried a glass wipe, not so much. But the interior cleaner, this looks like it's got a perfect, nice shine to it right here.

So, something that I was thinking about though, is that all across the top of the hood, this really took a brunt of all the action from all those little droppings that were coming down and the debris that collected on top. You can tell that this is in much worse condition than the side panels or quarter panels themselves. So, I don't really think it's a perfect test. What I wanna do now is I'm gonna try the things that worked well on the fenders up along the hood in the same areas that are very dirty, just like the other areas that we tested. So, right up here, let's go ahead and try our interior detailer again. Just try it up on the dirtiest part of this hood. Of course, we'll let it sit for one second, let it do its job. This is some pretty thick stuff. With some scrubbing, it's coming off but without scratching up my paint. I don't think I would wanna do this on my black truck, that's for sure. Quick detailer.

Once again, I really got to scrub it. Hmm. Okay. Let's try this. Well, the Wash & Wax seems like it works pretty good. You just got to go a little strong on the wash. I need something that's a little bit more abrasive. Let's try this. Hmm. Not bad. Okay. Let's try this thing off a little bit so we can take a look. Oh, no. Oh, no. No. Every time. So, in conclusion, getting all this stuff off the exterior of your paint is gonna be a little bit of a tough job if you don't have the specific stuff that you should be using. We went ahead and used a whole bunch of miscellaneous things that people might have laying around inside their garage, shed, or even in the basement. And of course, these are the things that we came to find that work the best. They're not necessarily meant for doing this, they're not necessarily meant for exterior work, so there's always the possibility that it could be doing damage to the paint or even the clear coat that's on it. That's something to think about.

One last thing that I wanna mention real quick while we're talking about that, in general, is if you're trying to scrub it off of there, definitely don't use something that looks like this. You're always gonna wanna make sure that after you go ahead and you clean down your paint, you're gonna want to reapply some sort of wax to it. So, I'm just gonna go ahead and put on a little bit of this, and then we'll just gently wipe it in. And that's gonna do all the protecting. Perfect. And that's why you wanna make sure you protect your paint after you're done. Talked a lot about paint, now let's talk about glass.

I'm just gonna go ahead and spray on some of this glass cleaner. And then we're gonna try to scrape all this off with a nice razor blade. Let's go ahead and spray this and wipe it down. Not bad. If you don't happen to have a razor blade and the debris isn't too thick, you can just go ahead and spray on that glass cleaner. And then we'll just use a rag and we'll start wiping it down. The only problem with this is this is gonna take a whole bunch of clothes just to get this clean. Well, chunks are coming off all over me here. Wow. Nasty. Still feel a cloth sticking to it. I should have used the razor blade first. Get this off of here. It's getting off easy. Nice. Let's wipe it down. Ooh. Well, don't use one of these.

Okay. So, we did what we had to do on that test vehicle. Why? Because we don't really care too much about that paint and I can try out pretty much anything I wanna do. Now, this car right here is one of our fleet vehicles. Essentially, we just use this when we wanna get around. They were nice enough to let us use it, but when I took it through the carwash because I wanted to get off all that crud that was on it, look at this. Boy, that did a real good job. Not. All right. So, I left all the windows down because, well, why not? No, I didn't. Anyways, we're just gonna continue on by spraying this down. We're gonna let it soak with some water. I'll continue on by adding a little bit of soap to this. And of course, you can use carwash soap, or even some gentle dish detergent if you wanted to. Let's write my name. Len.

Now, let's use some soap. I'm gonna go ahead and write my name. L-E-N. Looks like an M, I don't know cursive. Let's use a microfiber on this. Now, I'm not pressing very hard and I'm definitely not making circles here, I'm just going nice and light just trying to get off the majority of all this crud. Okay. So, I've got this all washed down now. I took off the majority of all the gunk that was on it with a little bit of dish detergent. Now, the next thing I wanna do is just go ahead and spray this down so it's nice and rinsed, and then we'll continue on with a light wax. Let's gently wipe this down. Okay. This looks a lot better. I think the boss is gonna be happy, maybe I'll even get a raise. Who knows?

Anyways, I hope you liked the video. Maybe you learned a little something. Maybe you've got some tips and tricks of your own that you wanna talk about. If you do, leave it in the comments section below because I always love to hear from you. If you like the video, smash on that like button for me. It'd mean the world. While you're at it, go ahead and subscribe and ring the bell. That way there, you can be kept up with all of our latest content. Thanks. That looks pretty good. Oh, a frickin bug in my eye. You wanna be very careful because these are sharp and, of course, I need to tell you every little step just in case you happen to hurt yourself. If you don't happen to have a razor blade and the...debris and the...

Dirt.

And the dirt, the...