May white spirit damage the painting of a car? What if the car is
washed right after white spirit has been used? This is a Citroën C5
~2002 model

I have used white spirit to remove some painting from my neighbors
after I painted my house, and my neighbor claims that the white spirit
damages the painting of his car.

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Clarification of Question by tomas78-ga on 13 Aug 2006 12:26 PDT

If white spirit does not damage the painting, I'd be glad to get a
reference to a (preferable) reliable source of information, e.g. url,
book, article, etc.

In general, this is a paint thinner and it COULD damage a car's paint
if left on the surface more than "very briefly" and left unrinsed.

If you can see where the white spirits were used, then you have
damaged the exterior of the car.


Here's something in your favor:

Paragraph 3 - NOTE: this is one person's "opinion":
http://toyotaownersclub.com/forums/index.php?act=Print&client=printer&f=97&t=54161
..."The second enemy of the paint is the tree sap, that if hardened
could be very difficult to remove. I've found that the best way to
remove tree sap from the paint without damaging the finish is to wet
the sap spots with cotton-wool bathed with white spirit (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_spirit ), waiting about three
minutes and then rubbing gently by hand. This procedure removes
perfectly paper decals also. I can guaranty that white spirit is
absolutely neuter [sic] on the paint. White spirit is in fact an
ingredient of car waxes and polishes and naturally you can use it to
dilute them..."


An international study on white spirits:
http://www.inchem.org/documents/ehc/ehc/ehc187.htm

A suggestion... since you were paining your home, this would be
covered under your homeowners insurance policy. Call your agent and
ask him/her to send an adjuster to assess if any damage was caused. Be
sure to mention that it's your neighbor saying there is *damage,* and
that you don't think there is any damage.

LOL ... paining=painTing

Thanks, Cynthia! How do I mark this question as answered?