Removing Gas Stain on Boat

[Harley5229]

Hi, so I recently bought an 18' jet boat and it has some gas stains on the hull. I will probably have to wetsand these out but wondered if there are any tips or products suited to remove gas stains? I'll be doing it all by hand. BTW - the part I will be working on is painted with automotive paint and not gel coat. only the bottom of the boat is gelcoated. Any tips, etc?

[Murr1525]

If you are working on automotive paint, (though the same principles apply to gel coat more or less), you should give these links a read first, to get a good feeling for everything.

Also, can you tell if it is a stain, or any physical etching into the paint also? To remove and an etching would be like a scratch or swirl, so similar ideas apply.

Meguiar's 5-Step Paint Care Cycle
Step 1 Wash
Step 2 Clean
Step 3 Polish
Step 4 Protect
Step 5 Maintain

Suggested Products for Taking Care of a New Car

What it Means to Remove a Scratch

How To Remove Swirls By Hand

How to remove a defect by hand with ScratchX

1986 Ford Bronco II - Extreme Makeover

Rotary vs. PC vs. Regular Orbital Buffer

Recommended Products - G100a Dual Action Polisher

Using the G-100 to remove swirls with the Professional Line

Each one, teach one... Ferrari Fiorano 355 F1 Spider

I am not as familiar with the Marine Line of Meguairs products, but you also can give those a look over at least until someone more familiar with them comes along.

[Mike Phillips]

Before sanding, do some testing with some paint cleaners or even some machine applied products from our Professional Line.

Gas stains or any stains for that matter are either topical, that is they've only affected the very outer surface or they are below surface because the offending chemical in this case gasoline has penetrated into the paint.

If the gas stain has penetrated into the paint then it's a matter of how deep has the stain penetrated and how much film-build do you have to work with.

An easy and completely safe test would be to try some ScratchX or Deep Crystal Paint Cleaner on the affected area, apply either one of these two products 2, 3, 4, maybe even more times and see if you can see improvement, if you can then continuing with one of these products may solve the problem, if not then you might need to actually use a compound with a rotary buffer or a cleaner/polish with a DA Polisher.

Do you have any machine polishers?
If so, what type?

Now how about a picture of your Jet Boat, we kind of like these kinds of boats.

[Harley5229]

Thanks you guys. Thanks for the links too. I have been reading up and there is a lot of good info on here.

I don't have any machine polishers currently so will doing it by hand. The other reason is also the location of the gas stain. If you look at the pic below the gas stain runs from the gas cap forward to about the same distance as the steering wheel. It's about an inch wide the whole way down. Not a lot of room to run a machine (and many curves, dips in hull itself). NOTE: Stain is on opposite side of boat so can't see actual stain in this pic.

I like th eidea of trying the ScratchX a few times first to see if it has any effect. That would be a lot earlier than wetsanding etc.

I'll give that a try and then update you on the progress.

[Murr1525]

At least you have an area to focus on, which is good as focusing your effort is key to using ScratchX. You can do a search for how to use it, but here are the basics:

1. Keep your work area small.
2. Apply some to small area.
3. Work in with a lot of passion. If it were a car, it should almost be rocking on the springs. Work it till it goes from a creamy color to greasy clear, then wipe off.
4. Check results, though you would likely need to try 2 - 4 applications.

[Harley5229]

Well I ran home, bought some ScratchX and gave it a shot. After about 5 passes gave up because could see no difference.Looks like the stain is deeper than I thought. I attached a couple pics of the stain. It was raining so ignore the raindrops (and the dirty boat)!





Looks like I'll be wetsanding in my near future.

[TanyaFox]

I got this problem too. But I call immediately a cleaner to help me out to get the gas stain