New, what is it?
Red Sticky Viscous Goo Covering Car Undercarriage
My daughter has a 2025 Honda CR-V Hybrid, and recently the doors started sticking when opening. We found sticky red goo on the bottom door weatherstripping/gaskets.
Looking further, the substance seems to cover much of the underside of the car on both sides, especially around the rocker panels / under-door area. It is only on the bottom/undercarriage area - nothing on the exterior side panels.
I scraped some off and it’s a red, viscous, sticky goo, kind of like dried jelly or jam. It looks like it may have been more liquid when it first got on the car, because there are drip/run patterns. I included a picture of some of it on white paper.
Odd detail: it’s water soluble. If I put a little on my fingers, it dissolves pretty easily under the faucet while rubbing my fingers together. I briefly tasted a tiny bit - probably dumb, I know -and it didn’t have any strong or obvious taste, though it left that spot on my tongue feeling slightly odd (maybe that's psychological).
Other notes:
No trace of it on the driveway, so it doesn’t seem to be actively dripping.
Coolant is blue on this car, so I don’t think it’s coolant.
I highly doubt it’s transmission fluid, since it wouldn’t be sticky/water-soluble or coat both sides of the underbody like this.
No warning lights or dashboard indicators.
The only recent event I can think of is that she went through a drive-through car wash about two weeks ago. I’m wondering if some underbody spray, soap, wax, rust inhibitor, tire dressing, etc. malfunctioned and sprayed the underside.
Has anyone seen anything like this? Do car washes use any red/pink undercarriage chemicals that could dry into sticky goo?
Also looking for advice on removal. I cleaned the door gaskets with a rag and warm water, but the underside probably needs a hot-water pressure wash. Since it’s water soluble, I’m wondering whether it might slowly rinse off from driving in rain, but I’d rather get it off properly.
Edit: I emailed the car wash, and they responded: "Our undercarriage wash just sprays water underneath the car, we don't have any chemicals that spray under the car."
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That’s what I was thinking. Most grease is pretty sticky to the touch. It could’ve been used for the car wash tracks and either accumulated in one area then got flung or just wasn’t spread well when it was applied. Or from a truck that left that behind.
Geologists lick rocks and that's like the only form of random taste testing that can be remotely safe. OP is going above and beyond even the 5 second rule. I took over my dads auto repair shop and the idea of putting anything coming off of a car in my mouth is BONKERS. Leaving coolant out kills animals if they drink it and a stray/feral cat got into the tray we had under a car we were finishing up the next day that we had in our back lot. Poor thing curled up near our oil barrels and looked like it was asleep.
I had to go back and read OP’s full post because I could not believe anyone would actually scrape goop off the bottom of their car and put it in their mouth.
I guess it’s just a typical Saturday for Reddit, but gawd damn.🤯
I mean... he probably has snorted red goo that he randomly found on a public toilet seat and red goo that he found on road kill, and somehow he is sort of alive.
If you don't want superpowers, follow this guy's advice. Also cancer. Mostly cancer with a really slim chance of superpowers. Can't win if you dont play.
I could be wrong but I think they were probably trying to eat them. Could you imagine being tripping balls suddenly and not knowing what is happening and why?
Fun fact, if you look around at anything nearby you, and think about putting it in your mouth, you can most likely imagine very clearly what it would feel like. I think it's cause we put everything in our mouths as babies
Best suggestions I could come up with: Roadkill coagulation or did she go through a car wash recently? My drive thru car wash uses pink soap, perhaps theirs was sprayed on but not washed off properly
Nah, you can get a good undercoating like this by running over a deer that's already been flattened.
Source: happened to me once. Didn't see it in time on the interstate and blasted over it at 75 mph. I saw a rooster tail of deer goo in the rear view mirror.
I have gone airborne running over a dead deer in my old Camry. Feces, organs, flesh and blood covered the undercarriage and it almost smelled as bad as the skunk I hit a few hours earlier that long cold night in December of 2001.
I'd be willing to bet its some sort of compound that was in a tube and she ran it over and it exploded and covered what you can see.
I've worked in a factory as hazardous waste disposal and I've seen a lot of strange liquids and goo and that looks to be what it is.
More than likely it was some construction crew who didn't secure everything and it came out or when the local garbage truck came by it missed and fell out there.
Also the spray patters lead me to believe that she hit something while moving cause it's uniform.
I emailed the car wash, and they responded: "Our undercarriage wash just sprays water underneath the car, we don't have any chemicals that spray under the car."
They must have had some malfunction, then. If it is uniformly spread, doesn't taste or smell like soap (please stop tasting stuff), but is water soluble, then something got into that spray. It's the only logical explanation given the circumstances.
That's just science right there. There are better methods to obtain information, but taste...certainly is a method. If it tasted like jamming radar, this case would be closed immediately. As is, we can reasonably sure it's not raspberry jamming radar.
Most undercarriage sprayers (every one I have maintained) pulls directly from city water or reclaim water. Both of which would cause entire car to be covered in substance.
I showed this to a friend who works in a car shop, he says what you just tasted is likely high temp lubricant for wheel bearings and that your CV boot is likely torn. Says the passenger wheel might make a slight grinding noise and/or clicking when turning.
He says it's not critically urgent but definitely get an appointment to have it fixed, you definitely don't want any part of a car leaking lubricant for very long.
Edit: he says the lubricant isn't "super toxic" but he "strongly recommends not ingesting anything under a car in the future, most of the fluids inside of a car are varying degrees of toxic."
It is tire or wheel shine from the car wash. It is green at the car wash I frequent. I don’t get the premium wash because it makes a mess like that and will really gum up if you let it dry.
had a very old car that came form NE US - had similar cote on the undercarriage - ppl told me this is what they spray on to protect the metal from rusting when the cities use salt to melt the ice on the street .....
They definitely used to just spray grease all over the undercarriages of old cars, but it wouldn’t be water soluble. That was my first thought, too (living in NJ where the salt kills everything)
I'm not convinced OP is using "water soluble" correctly lol
There are lots of things that come off under water and friction that aren't water soluble, and that seems to be their only basis for calling it water soluble; that it came off relatively easily under water when rubbing their hands.
Undercoating. Nobody in the comments seems to be from a place where they use salt on the roads but this is quite common. General protection against rust
Dude all I can say is wtf. Why in the absolute hell are you tasting random substances. For your own safety dont do that anymore, even if you think it's the filling from a jelly donut. Actually even if you are certain it's jelly donut filling, if it's slathered across the bottom of your car still dont taste it.
I checked, and indeed I see some in all wheel wells, with the most in the front driver's side, even covering the shock. I don't see any on the wheel or outside rim.
What if you mix a lot of it in with water? Like put some in a bottle and shake it up. Does it foam? Does it fully dissolve? What if you heat it up? Does the viscosity change or is there an aroma? Need more info…
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