Bought a lightly used car recently. Great vehicle, but for some reason the previous owner allowed themselves to be duped into buying the ResistAll coating option when they bought the car new.
Fair play, I have heard that dealers will just coat every car they sell with this horrible stuff and then try to upsell you on it regardless. Shady behavior, but you are dealing with shady people. Never pay for this stuff. You may get it anyway though, and in that case you may experience what I did. Read on.
ResistAll is a ?nano? coating which is meant to protect your car from chips and scratches. What this stuff really does is coat your car in very thin coat of varnish. The dealer will apply it to your paint and the *windows*. You will probably never notice it on the paint, assuming it was properly applied. On your windows, sooner rather than later it will drive you nuts.
Friends, do not let this happen to you. Here in Hawaii, there is a lot of wind, and with the wind comes dust. This dust is abrasive as it contains silica and other hard particles. Over a very short amount of time, the ResistAll varnish on your windows will become a hazy film with millions of micro scratches that refract light at night. On the outside your windows will look like they have scratches from where the wipers have dragged dust particles over the varnish coating your glass. This drove me crazy. That is until I accidentally figured out how to get this horrible crap off my car.
Varnishes are designed to be difficult to remove. I tried alcohol, lighter fluid (naphtha), glass polish, Barkeeper?s Friend, Bon Ami, a razor blade*; nothing worked. I started pricing out new windshields, but luckily my car detailer accidentally discovered that water spot remover literally wipes ResistAll off of windows. Cue trumpets and angels singing.
This guy used a product called MX-7, which is basically a chemical stripper formulated for paint and glass with a low-hardness abrasive compound. Read that last part as: it will not scratch your paint or windows. You wipe a very small amount on your windows and off comes the horribly scratched varnish and you are left with the original clear glass. Wash your car after and you are in business. On my car there were spots where I had to do another application because the varnish coating was thicker in some areas and needed a second polishing to come off.
I am in no way affiliated any of the companies mentioned in this post. But I am quite happy that I can now see clearly through my windshield and I did not need to replace my windshield. Hope this helps you avoid frustration.
*By the way, do not use a razor blade on your windows, you will scratch them.
