Pro tip: Stripping old wax with dish soap ruined my finish

I tried using regular Dawn dish soap to strip a 3 month old coat of Meguiar's wax off my black Honda Civic before a fresh application. The water beading actually got WORSE somehow and left weird streaks that wouldn't buff out. Spent 2 hours with a clay bar trying to fix it. Has anyone else had dish soap backfire like that on them?

3 comments

3 Comments

jasonf351mo ago

Ngl, the wrong Dawn is a real thing. If you used the platinum or the one with the little scrubbers in it, that stuff leaves a film on purpose. Also, three month old wax is still pretty fresh, so dish soap alone might not touch it. You probably just smeared it around instead of actually stripping it.

ward.jamie1mo ago

Yo @dylan_brown30 have you ever seen what happens when someone uses the wrong soap? My buddy did the exact same thing last summer. He thought any dish soap would work and grabbed the kind with the blue scrubbers in it. Man, his black truck looked like someone had poured milk on it after he dried it off. He had to re-wash it three times with just water and a microfiber to get the film off. The original blue Dawn is the only one that actually strips wax without leaving that weird residue behind. He learned the hard way that reading the bottle matters way more than he thought.

dylan_brown301mo ago

Did you use the blue original kind or one of the other ones like the platinum or the antibacterial stuff? Because I've heard the regular blue Dawn works okay for stripping wax in a pinch but the others have extra stuff in them that can bond to the paint and cause exactly what you're describing. Also how hard was your water? If you've got hard water coming out of the hose that can leave mineral deposits that look like streaks when they dry.