How To Keep Your Vehicle Clean During LoveBug Season

The dreadful lovebug season is upon us and those annoying pests can wreak havoc on your car proving to be difficult to remove and eventually eating away at your clearcoat if you don’t clean them off in time. 

Many people have asked and wondered: How do you keep your vehicle clean during lovebug season and how can you easily clean those annoying bugs off your vehicle?

What are LoveBugs and Why are They Bad for Your Car?

Lovebugs have long been an annoyance that appears once a year during a several-month-long season. They are essentially little flying insects that are usually paired together with a mate and fly in tandem together. They are mostly black in color and have red heads and grow to about 6 to 9 millimeters in length. They are rather weak flyers and end up swarming in grassy or vegetative growth areas and are often attracted to the exhaust gases emitted from cars.

While lovebugs don’t bite, they are harmful in other ways and one that we recognize is being harmful to your vehicle. Primarily, lovebugs can damage the paint on your car because their bodies turn acidic over time and somewhat react to the sunlight. Moreover, lovebugs can clog vehicle intakes and be a major nuisance on local highways and Interstates by splattering all over your vehicle’s windshield, grille, and paint. 

Keeping Your Vehicle Clean with a Sealant is the Best LoveBug Prevention Method

Unfortunately, it’s impossible to avoid lovebugs when they are in the height of their season. Female lovebugs can have around 200 to 300 eggs but with a rather short life cycle – but long enough to end up splattered all over your vehicle. However, when they are swarming during ideal conditions, they can cause major damage to your vehicle if it is not properly protected.

The key here to help keep your vehicle clear of lovebugs or how to easily clean them off your vehicle is to first protect it with a sealant!

Using a trusted and long-lasting sealant, like TopCoat® F11® or TopCoat F11PRO, will ensure that decaying or splattered lovebugs on your paint and grille don’t have a chance to eat through your paint’s clearcoat with the acid in their bodies. Once you have dead lovebugs all over your vehicle and it hits the sunlight, the acid will start to react and etch your clearcoat or all the way down to your vehicle’s paint causing damage that’s expensive to fix.

Lovebugs are difficult to remove if you don’t have a sealant on your paint. When you’re left with no protection, lovebugs may react with your clear coat and cause major damage. You might as well throw a bottle of acid on your paint if you drive during lovebug season without a sealant on your vehicle. Even worse, those who wish to remove lovebugs on a vehicle that hasn’t been protected with a sealant will be forced to use harsh and abrasive chemicals to help dissolve the lovebugs. Using harsh chemicals that may have many unknown abrasives or even VOCs (volatile organic compounds) could end up causing more damage than the lovebugs.

Use of a sealant like TopCoat® F11® or TopCoat® F11PRO® will provide a barrier between the acidic lovebug and your paint’s clearcoat giving you an opportunity to easily clean or wipe away lovebug splatters. Best of all, TopCoat® F11® and TopCoat® F11PRO® are both environmentally friendly water-based formulas all free from harsh chemicals, abrasives, and VOCs that could also potentially cause damage. There’s no other sealant as effective as TopCoat® F11® and TopCoat® F11PRO® that can make this claim with a long-lasting formula that lasts for months with TopCoat® F11® or may last 12 months or more when you use TopCoat® F11PRO®. That means you’re protected all through lovebug season!

Lastly, TopCoat® F11® and TopCoat® F11PRO® have many advanced technologies to help fill in micro-scratches that may have formed with the removal of lovebugs, such as self-leveling technology to fill micropores to keep dirt and dust from sticking, sun-activated self-healing technology to keep the paint looking new, mycroglide technology with non-stick characteristics, and provide a hydrophobic protective layer that resists water and lovebugs,

Bonus Tip: If you have not protected your vehicle and it has been through several lovebugs and you need to clean them off, we recommend using TopCoat® Spritz®, which is a quick dealer formulation that will help dissolve and safely remove old and dried lovebugs. After the removal of the lovebugs, we recommend protecting your vehicle’s surface using TopCoat® F11® or TopCoat® F11PRO®.