I can't find any reference to this "Andy Rooney" apologizing about "Rain-X" in the entire web.
The closest I could find was this very tough to read law paper which discusses Andy Rooney and Rain-X in the footnotes but nowhere else.
I will add my 2¢. I have mixed feelings about Rain-X and it's competitors. The kid may have been right. Removing the stiff is a little tough, but it does come off and even if you do nothing it will slowly wear off.
Of course there are other things that it may be including some very find scratches on the windscreen. They will not come off without help.
You may have some luck with an auto glass shop. I will soon be looking for one to do some polishing as mine has a lot of fine scratches caused by me when I used a towel that had some fine grit on it and I did not notice it until after I had thoroughly cleaned the windscreen. Funny thing Rain-X did help hide the problem somewhat.
on 10/6/2007 5:37 PM Mark D said the following:
Once on a whim, I drove 45 miles on my commute home in a rainstorm and never used my wipers. The Rain-X is not so good at misty rain, or when going slow, but at 55 mph or better, the rain shoots up the windshield and is gone faster than the wipers could swipe it..
No Andy Rooney references, but I can say that RainX does work when first applied, at least. But the glass has gotta be clean (and this is the step most people apparently skip), you have to buff it out after applying, to remove the excess. Once when visiting my sister and BIL, as I was packing up for the long drive home, he was trying to be nice and insisted on doing my windshield. (a storm was brewing, etc...) Well, for my sister's sake, I let him do it, and to my surprise it has actually worked and held up pretty well. I had tried it several years before, and had the same experience others reported, of smears. Of course, this car spends most of its time parked in garage, so my experience may not be typical. (I drive the beater minivan around town, and only use the 'good' car for road trips.)
aem sends....
Yes.
Drive in a Florida rain storm that drowns a frog, so heavy one has to pull over and wait for the rain to stop. You will see the benefit.
IIRC, the first application requires two or three applications that are allowed to dry between coats. The window has to be clean - (try some coke-cola) to cut real grime.
Second application - clean the window as normal and re-apply the rain-x
-- Oren
"I don't have anything against work. I just figure, why deprive somebody who really loves it."
Check and see what's in your windshield washer reservoir.
Instead of the blue windshield washer solution, I use an orange washer solution that contains Rain-X.
The stuff will indeed make your windshield "foggy" when applied in certain weather conditions, and the sun will indeed make it hard to see. I find that when the windshield gets foggy in sunny conditions, I have to use the sprayers to keep the windshield wet so I can see. The wipers themselves will not clear the fog.
My wife and son stopped using it for this very reason. I, on the other hand, have always hated the constant flap flap flap of wipers and am willing to put up with the foggy streaks for the pleasure of driving
65...errr...I mean 55 MPH in the rain without wipers.
You could try cleaning it with 0000 steel wool and aerosol window cleaner (I prefer Stoner's Invisible Glass) that is my regimen for hard to clean windows. If it is still spotty you might want to follow up with some kind of polish.
nate
To find what is inside Rain-X, I first tried calling Sopus Products in Houston at 800-416-1600 but they are only open 8am to 5pm Central time. Their web page says Rain-X is composed of methanol
I look again at Shell Oil's Rain-X only to find it's made out of "unspecified surfactants" and water!
Sell the car. You're too stupid to own one.
1) you couldn't handle instructions written for somebody with a 4th grade education and successfully followed by a hundred thousand people. You used too f****ng much. 2) you couldn't figure out how to open a web browser, point it to a search site like google, and then come up with a clever search string like "how does an idiot like me remove rain-x?" Or perhaps just the last two words; first match:
It's proprietary formula so not surprising to not find precise formulation. I posted the constituents from the MSDS earlier in the thread. It's a water/methanol carrier w/ a small amount of another organic as the water shedding agent...
In general, to find out stuff like this about proprietary formulations, look for the MSDS -- it's required to list ingredients and general range of amounts although not exact formulation as noted above.
--
"DanG" wrote on 06 Oct 2007 in group alt.home.repair:
I got interested one time and looked up how Rain-X works. Of course, I didn't keep the web sites, but here's a summary of what I remember.
The organic chemicals bond lightly with the glass molecules, leaving one end of a branch sticking up, kind of like fur all over your windshield. The exposed branch does not like water. It's non-polar, and water's polar, for you chemistry geeks.
Proper application requires that there be NOTHING on the surface of the glass. I mean NOTHING. Not even AIR. Correct application requires a hard vacuum. Oxygen blocks proper bonding. When they put this stuff on at a factory, they use a vacuum chamber.
Since few of us can afford to put our car on the Space Shuttle just to get a windshield coating, we have to make do with cleaning the heck out of the glass chemically. That means you have to clean with a variety of chemicals to remove the variety of contaminants -- acids and bases to remove water deposits, organic solvents to remove oily stuff, detergents to remove the other solvents, etc. Do all this and enough of the Rain-X will bond to give you the effect you want. Don't do it and you'll get a splotchy, unsatisfactory result.
I cleaned my MINI Cooper windshield with Windex when it was brand new, then applied Rain-X. It worked great for the years I had the car. I never had to apply a second coat. (Gee, I miss my MINI, but it wouldn't haul my table saw to a job site.)
Real brilliant guys at Kragen!
Sounds more like you have dirty glass with some wax spotted on it.
You want to clean the glass and remove any crud on it, Go and buy some ammonia based glass cleaner. Apply it and wipe the glass down really good with it. Then use some crumpled newspaper to buff it dry. The glass will be about as clean as you can get. Replace the wiper blades as well.
Rain-X works very well if applied to CLEAN glass. It also has removal instructions on the bottle!
Yes sir. Trade secret stuff.
Did you say once? Bring in the Black Hawks or words to that affect?
The MSDS I recall mentioned protected formulas. Secret stuff. Never clear to the consumer.
-- Oren
"I don't have anything against work. I just figure, why deprive somebody who really loves it."
give the windshield a good scrubbin' with an SOS pad. That'll get rid of the rainx and the bugs.
s
Actually, you are quite wrong. It is NOT required to list ingredients and general range. It is only required to list HAZARDOUS ingredients. You can completely avoid registering inert compounds, if you wish.
Not for everyone, dude. Some like it, some hate it.
Glad you like it. The one time I tried it, I got a yellowish film all over the windshield that was pure hell when the sun was in front of the car. Really reduced my visibility under those conditions.
I've had that fogging problems with every solution I"ve ever used. I do now use the RainX stuff because it works well in really cold weather, unlike the blue crap. I had doubts when I first bought it (store was out of Prestone) but now I use it all winter and their green stuff in summer.
Careful, that steel wool can ruin many new windshields. Some seem much more prone to scratching than they used to be. Perhaps they put some sort of coating now?
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