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-   -   Bird droppings causes paint corrosion in Swift (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/technical-stuff/229480-bird-droppings-causes-paint-corrosion-swift.html)

Thanks to Rahul Patil for sending this in. Heartfelt gratitude for sharing it with other enthusiasts via this Team-BHP page!

Rahul Patil bought a Maruti Swift ZDI Plus in May 2018 in Aurangabad, MH.

Unfortunately, bird droppings have caused the body panels of the Swift to rust. It has been confirmed that the paint corrosion has been caused due to external contamination (bird droppings). This has been confirmed by Nerolac Paints. It is said that the panels are rusting from the inner side. Rahul is miffed that bird droppings could cause such an issue with the car and would like an explanation from Maruti on how this could happen.

The owner wants the affected body panels to be replaced as he claims it to be a manufacturing defect. But the Maruti dealer has offered to repaint the panels and will be charging the customer 50% of the costs involved.

This is ridiculous! The car is awesome to drive, but the amount of obvious cost-cutting is simply appalling. Cheap plastics, tin-foil like body that bends and dents waaay too easily, no under body protection, and now this! Crazy!

(Before the Maruti fan boys start on me- we own the new Swift too, beginning to wonder if we made the right choice!)

[Mods, please put this in the official review of the car too.]

It is a well known fact that bird droppings can have that affect. They have a high acidity. It can cause defects on your paint within 48 hours. Check your car manual, but most likely it will worn you for this and advise is to always remove any and all bird droppings as soon as possible.

Over the years some of our cars have suffered from bird droppings. My wife had a Ford Fiesta and at work it always had to be parked underneath trees. So she would come home with a car full of bird droppings. And I would clean them off every day. Unless, I was travelling, which was very often. And it started to show quite quickly. Not to the point of rust, but certainly very visible to the eye.

So yes bird droppings can and will cause serious damage to a car’s paint. To the point were, if left untreated, it might start to rust.

Whether there is an actual paint defect in this particular case is hard to tell I would imagine. It appears as it is already confirmed that the bird droppings are the true cause?

So the morale of the story: Irrespective of the quality of your paint work and the amount of wax, bird droppings will affects your car paints badly. You need to remove it as soon as possible. If you don’t all bets are off.

Conversely, if you have a paint damaged by bird droppings, you simply have not taken proper care of your car.

For those wanting a bit more science to why and how bird droppings cause problems:

https://www.automotivequalitysolutio...paint-etching/

Or just google, there are about a billion articles out there that all say the same. Clean of bird poop asap, or otherwise expect trouble

Jeroen

Its unfair for the owner to blame Maruti for his inaction.

Like Jeroen mentioned, bird droppings does cause corrosion if left untreated.

For sure, bird dropping is corrosive. However, the corrosion would have started from the top surface and propagated down the 90microns of paint till the bare metal, no? How is it possible that the rust pops outwards from the base metal, due to vulture poop or whatever? Or am I definitely missing something??? Poop has to eat through clear coat, base coat, primer then metal and not really the reverse way, methinks. The cracks seems to protrude outwards, too. Why does it look like "poop spray" and not "poop drops" like it is made out to be??? I have a bit of doubt, if it's at all bird poop. Birds don't poop in "mists" :D that too on a vertical surface. Roof, OK I can still believe a flock of birds doing their stuff...but doors, doubtful.

This isn't a manufacturing defect.
Bird droppings are corrosive, and if left on the paint for long can leave behind such marks or worse can eat into the paint;
this is more pronounced if the car is left in sun for long periods with bird droppings.

I have had this happen to a couple of cars, and re painting is the only solution and manufacturer is not liable to fix it for free.

A clear case of people not going through the owner's manual properly. It's clearly mentioned in the booklet:


Ask any car detailer and they'll tell you, bird poop is so dreaded because of a reason:

https://youtu.be/ytmz8sXiFxk

https://youtu.be/wUqdEOYk_9U

It's improper to blame any car manufacturer for this or expect them to bear cost of repair. The clear coat is damaged because of that. But not sure what has caused rust to appear like that. A better wider pic would have helped the analysis better.


Regards,
Shashi

Oh man, that shit is awful for the paint. I had open (street) parking while in Bangalore and my Corsa bore the brunt of the dump crows took day in and day out. It riled me up so much, I ran to scare them off every time I heard/saw them sit on the tree above my car. (Yep, I know I was encroaching on their space).

My car had the paint erode off at a couple of spots on the roof and hood. To date, I am very particular about not parking the car below trees or structures birds could be sitting on.

This case isn't like Hyundai i20 which is known to have paint peel off; so, I'm pleasantly surprised Maruti/dealer have offered to bear some of the cost to repaint.

Based on the pictures, can anyone explain as to how the corrosion occurs in places OTHER than where there appears to be fractures/damage on the paint surface?
This is the exact same question lapis_lazuli raises. If it were due to the bird poop, then it implies the external paint is compromised. Shouldn't the rusting then have happened at points where there is a fracture in the paint? Atleast based on the pictures, I can see none of the rust spots occurring at the damaged surface.

Using a wax polish periodically will reduce the penetration of the dropping into the paint. As someone mentioned already, the acid in their dropping is bad for the paint.

Just one more reason to use a 'car cover', guys. Helps protect your car from the elements, especially in India where we have every kind - please also read my simple guide on keeping your car shiny.

Rightly said. However, I think many like me refrain from using our full/proper car covers for open office/market parking because of the hassle of putting a heavy cover on and taking it off.

For example, I have TPH Pilot 373 at home which is microfiber lined and very high quality but also quite heavy. I have open parking in office and bird droppings are constant head ache, with the occasional monkey dropping thrown in.

I have been thinking about getting a secondary 'quick cover' just for this purpose.

Something like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKWLU2MOmHk

However, the best I could find on Amazon India was this:

https://www.amazon.in/dp/B082CLD73H/...NsaWNrPXRydWU=



The issue with these seem to the lack of positive reviews. I contacted TPH covers to check if they could customize something like this. They are hesitant due to the lack of demand for such products.

What do you guys think?

One of the many reasons why new cars come factory fitted with these adhesive covers on the top portions of the body:

Bird Droppings are Acidic in nature. The scientific reason I am aware of is that water adds to weight and that is reason why birds consume less water ( around 60% of human body weight is water). Hence due to less consumption of water, bird droppings are highly acidic and for sure will damage paint on cars. I left one spot untreated in my Innova on hood which has left is mark. Baleno 1.6 sedan we owned also suffered from the same.

Would be wrong to blame Maruti here.

I absolutely second this notion of bird droppings correlating to rust. Our Hyundai Accent had the same issue. I would love to go ahead and even add to the variant of bird droppings that made it worse, in my case Pigeons. Complete menace. Their droppings are extremely stubborn and stick like Araldite and I was surprised in some cases even with pressure wash and scrub they stick to the body of the car so hard and require manual point scrubbing.

I was appalled to see the roof of the car had minute white splotches, similar to a camphor tablet lit over the roof, only eventually to find out that the paint has indeed been eaten up by the rust droppings that wasn't take care of as soon as the droppings were laid upon.

Lesson to be learnt, if you see droppings all over your car, especially roof and trunk, act on it immediately. If you let it bake, it will definitely eat your paint surface and make it look terrible post wash.

Glad someone brought this thread up.

Cheers!
VJ