Black streaks

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Joker

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After a winter ashore, much of the white grp in the cockpit has acquired black streaks. You can buy 'black streak remover', but looking at the label, it's just the same as all the other cleaners with <5% surfactants.

Is there any kind of wax or polish which will take them off, or is it just Cillit Bang and elbow grease?
 
I use sponges like MoodySabre'e for cockpit scuffs, but for cleaning of the topsides - which suffer badly from grey streaking - I have found Autoglym's Engine and Machine Cleaner very good. It may sound an odd choice, but with marine hull cleaners I was having to go over many streaks two or three times, whereas it typically gets virtually all of them - and general dirt - all off in one go (and a 1l bottle is enough to do the topsides twice on a 32 footer). Whatever its detergents are, they do seem to work very well on sooty hydrocarbons

PS Got the idea from a caravan forum, where someone got streaking over winter on his parked caravan in an urban area - so it's not just me! Other similar products may work as well, but it worked so I stick with it.
 
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Pink stuff from pound land. Cleaned the whole boat and removed yellow staining which I couldn't get out with G6 farcela. Cheap as chips and very little effort.
 
Bobc said:
What, this stuff?

http://www.poundland.co.uk/cif-floor-cleaner-wild-orchid-1-litre
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It comes in a small tub, I bought it as an alternative to skippers choice, and it proved to be a far better universal cleaner in my opinion. Just before lift in I was asked to buy for several other owners as they were amazed how good it was. Cleans everything a very mild abrasive cleaner. We now keep it in the house as well as the boat. Google it, you can order from amazon but buy for a quid in pound land. I cleared the shelf of the stuff that's how good it is.
 
Having tried quite a few cleaners, particularly Cream Cleaner that is usually excellent for a wide variety of jobs, we found they mostly worked but with varying amounts of effort. We then bought some Black Streak Remover and found it does what it says on the bottle - almost no effort required.
 
vyv_cox said:
Having tried quite a few cleaners, particularly Cream Cleaner that is usually excellent for a wide variety of jobs, we found they mostly worked but with varying amounts of effort. We then bought some Black Streak Remover and found it does what it says on the bottle - almost no effort required.
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Have to agree, as when we owned a caravan black streak remover did exactly that, and as you say with minimal effort, spray and wipe off
 
vyv_cox said:
Having tried quite a few cleaners, particularly Cream Cleaner that is usually excellent for a wide variety of jobs, we found they mostly worked but with varying amounts of effort. We then bought some Black Streak Remover and found it does what it says on the bottle - almost no effort required.
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Yup - I haven't found anything that shifts black streaks like......black streak remover. Brilliant stuff but doubtless there's some generic equivalent that's much cheaper. Nevertheless, if there is, I haven't found it yet.
 
Black streaks should effortlessly wipe off with a microfibre alone.

If not.... the surface is porous and is holding on to the stains.
Looking at a black streak under a microscope is very telling.

It is all down to surface condition.

Products will remove stains from the highs and lows, but they will invariably fill up again next week.
 
Has anyone used Mer on grp?

I use it on my caravan about this time of the year after winter storage. It gets the streaks off and makes any new ones easy to clean off during the season.
 
Floyd Raser said:
Has anyone used Mer on grp?

I use it on my caravan about this time of the year after winter storage. It gets the streaks off and makes any new ones easy to clean off during the season.
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Yes, Mer is your typical 'cleaner/polish/wax' all in one. What I used to like the most about it was the fact it could be applied in light rain.
I no longer use it as techniques change, knowledge improves, but it has to be up there as one of the all time great products.
 
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I've used Mer to clean a whole host of things including, steam engines, classic cars, boats, uPVC window frames, vinyl upholstery, plastic baths, brass, chrome......
Never once have I been disappointed with the result..... It wouldn't surprise me if you could sterilise baby bottles with it and use it as an aid to artificially inseminate pigs......???
 
Alpha22 said:
I've used Mer to clean a whole host of things including, steam engines, classic cars, boats, uPVC window frames, vinyl upholstery, plastic baths, brass, chrome......
Never once have I been disappointed with the result..... It wouldn't surprise me if you could sterilise baby bottles with it and use it as an aid to artificially inseminate pigs......???
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Well I've got loads of it so if I get bored this weekend I may just try out your theories. Or not. :cool:
 
Joker said:
After a winter ashore, much of the white grp in the cockpit has acquired black streaks. You can buy 'black streak remover', but looking at the label, it's just the same as all the other cleaners with <5% surfactants.

Is there any kind of wax or polish which will take them off, or is it just Cillit Bang and elbow grease?
Click to expand...

The discussion has been interesting, but the conclusion I draw is that not all cleaners are the same, even if they have some common composition statement like '<5% surfactants'. One has to think about what one is trying to remove. Black/grey streaks are likely typically to be hydrocarbons from the atmosphere deposited in rain and snow, and if that is the case in a particular circumstance a cleaner designed to deal with hydrocarbons is probably optimal. I wasted quite a bit of time and effort in the mistaken view that mine were from the aluminium of the toerail itself - not an uncommon assertion when I was searching for a solution.
 
Hydrozoan said:
The discussion has been interesting, but the conclusion I draw is that not all cleaners are the same, even if they have some common composition statement like '<5% surfactants'. One has to think about what one is trying to remove. Black/grey streaks are likely typically to be hydrocarbons from the atmosphere deposited in rain and snow, and if that is the case in a particular circumstance a cleaner designed to deal with hydrocarbons is probably optimal. I wasted quite a bit of time and effort in the mistaken view that mine were from the aluminium of the toerail itself - not an uncommon assertion when I was searching for a solution.
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Very true. I am highly sceptical when it comes to yachting products at exaggerated prices, so Black Streak Remover came as something of an eye-opener.
 
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