Paint "improvement" tips

[bnam]

Here's what the roof and trunk of my car look like thanks to a cheapo paint job done about 8 years ago.

Any tips on how I can improve the looks to tide me thru until I get to a repaint?

I'm thinking of sanding with 180 then 400 and so on and then rubbing compound etc. Is 180 too much grit -- should I start at 400? Or not enough?

Thanks!

Byas

[SteveK535]

I always wondered if this clear coat failure mode was salvageable. Many of my e28 friends had the same condition with the factory paint. In my mind you should be able to strip the clear coat and wet sand the paint to get it nice again, but it seems like it would be touch and go getting the clear coat off without taking paint with it and going too deep. Sorry, don't know the answer, but someone should.

[Tito3]

Start with 600 and work lightly and finish off with a 1200 or 2000 grit. You never want to start with too heavy a grit because you will create deep scratches that will just ruin the paint. If 600 is not enough start with a 400 and work you way up. Fiinish up with a polish and sealer wax. Clear coats are very tricky so go slow in an inconspicuous area first to gauge your results. Remember alot depends on the quality of the paint that was used to repaint your car. You dont want huge strips coming off because of previous bad prep work.

Good luck.

[ThatGuy]

That clear coat will continue to flake off no matter what you do to the car. Sanding or polishing it with anything will only expose more base coat which has no UV protection and will just turn dull again.

Attempts to sand off the clear and re-clear will also not work. You will inevitably sand through the base into the primer because the base coat is very thin.

All you can do with that is wash it and put a little wax on it to make it look a little better than bad. Sorry.

[mattdanchris]

First of all, you should not try this, but I did it. On my son's dark green Honda Civic the clear coat looked like yours. Since it was really ugly (white flakes on dark green), I figured I had nothing to lose. I used a single sided razor blade at an angle and gently scraped off the whitish clear coat ( keep the blade flat and be careful not to go into the deeper green paint. Use a new blade often). When I got to "good" (clear) clear coat I stopped. I then used some rubbing compound on the bare paint (green) and polished it all with good wax. What I ended up with is an all green car that was dull in spots and shiny in spots, but looked a whole lot better than before. A 15 footer. I do not know how long it will last with no clear coat protection, but there was no clear coat there when I started anyway. Do not try this!

Carl

[Harv]

Sometimes you can blow off bad clear coat with compressed air.

John

[tlapham]

I did exactly as described above with scraping the clear coat with a razor blade, then polished using TR-3. it came out great. I did that to the entire hood, roof, and trunk of my E21, came out amazing!

I re-polish it about once a year with the TR-3. It took me about a year to finally get it all, it is a slow, painstaking process with the scraping and buffing a little at a time, but if you aren't going to paint anytime soon, its not a bad option.

[Harv]

You would be amazed at what a can of Ajax and a washcloth does to a faded Malaga car. Trick is that you must wash off all the residue after and immediately wax. Down in Fl in the used car lots they hire homeless bums to "detail" the cars. You can't give a bum a buffer so.......

John

[bnam]

Will try the razor blade approach as well -- don't see too much down side.

Byas

[Mike Self]

instead of a razor blade, use the edge of an old credit card or key card from a motel/hotel. It'll scrape off the whitish dead clearcoat without harming the color coat underneath.

I did that to my Delfingrau E30 over several years, as the clearcoat died, and while the underlying grey color coat was dull, it was better than the whitish crazed clearcoat... at least it was even on all the horizontal surfaces where the clearcoat had failed.

mike'

[potentialm20]

I scraped a large section of roof with my fingernails (I'm not suggesting this approach, but I also wouldn't use any metal tool) on an old saab 900. The end result was surprisingly nice. If you can work it back to were the clear coat is still attached well and keep it waxed it might look decent.