drfernando

I'm not quite sure how to describe the paint. I guess the best word would be 'rusted'. I have not taken very good care of it over the years, I admit. I have to park on the street a lot, and in the past 5 years it has seen many mornings of being showered by sprinklers and getting those little water drops all around.

I didn't always get it washed immediately to get the water drops off. Sometimes I would let it sit for a few days (busy with work, etc.) I feel like that contributed most to this sort of paint peeling and awful look.

Anybody know how I can treat something like this? Touch up paint would be no good, right? I'm trying to get it to look at least somewhat decent without getting a full blown paint job. I live in SoCal so it's not like it has seen snow or excessive rain or anything.

Acer

iTrader: (3)

Wet sand and polish.But it really needs new paint.Can't fix it

zmcgovern4

iTrader: (2)

How often did you wax your vehicle?

If you choose to use a natural wax, you should reapply every 4-8 weeks.
If you choose to use a polymer sealant you should reapply ever 4-6 months.
If you have invested in a paint coating, you simply need to wash the vehicle, but no reapplication is required for several years.

Check out this article I wrote to help determine if your paint is protected.



Your pictures are tiny, so it is hard to see, but it appears to be clear coat failure. Clear coat needs to be protected from the environment by a wax, sealant, or coating. If it is not maintained properly, it will fail. Unfortunately the only way to repair this damage is to have the vehicle repainted.

pewterss

Everyone here is 100% correct, the only real way to fix this is a repaint. You can def wet sand it, then use a porter cable with a polishing compound to make it shiny again but this would only be a temporary fix before it fades away again.

drfernando

Damn. Thanks for the replies everyone. Only real way to fix it would be repaint I guess. At this point, with 200k miles on the car and a worth of around 5k, not sure it would make sense to invest over a thousand for a decent repaint.

I'll probably just ride it out the way it is.

pewterss

Do a a little wet sanding, and then compounding to shine it up then. Would use a DA buffer though.
If you decide to do it, def do some research and search youtube for some howto's, very easy.

Lexi66

Curious...what model year? Thanks!

LexBob2

With 200k on the car it's probably not worth an expensive paint job. It might be worth trying what pewterss suggested to see how it comes out. A detailer could do it too if you don't feel up to it.

drfernando

2001 with factory nav

UDel

I would carefully wet sand to make sure you don't remove paint or as little as possible, compound, polish, then try to spray the parts you worked on with clearcoat or apply a more permanent sealant like Opti Coat. Try your spoiler first, you should be able to take it off easily to work on it better, my spoiler paint is crazing and I need to do something with it like wetsand/clear coat, I think the spoilers or some spoilers are not painted at the factory and the paint doesn't hold up as well as the rest of the cars factory paint.

zmcgovern4

iTrader: (2)

This process doesn't make sense to me... if you were advising him to reclear it, he wouldn't want to compound and polish after sanding.

You would sand, spray, sand some more, then compound and polish.... but the car needs to be sanded down to base coat and completely repainted if he wants it repaired properly.

dstopsie

Call Joe at Superior Shine if you live in Los Angeles. He is the premier master detailer. If anyone can fix it without repainting its Superior Shine. Check his facebook page superior shine.

pewterss

Thought of you when I saw this video. Might be just what you need without having to reprint.
Watch the entire thing.
and then the second video as well