Super Heavy Mineral Deposits and/or Ruined Paint?

[Adrian Avgerinos]

For about a month, one of our cars (2000 Ford Escort) was sitting undisturbed in our assigned parking spot located underground at our apartment complex. Unfortunately the charging system took a dump a couple weeks after Thanksgiving, and with the mayhem that is the Christmas season, it took me about 4 weeks to fix the problem.

Shortly after the repair, my wife noticed a large rust colored spot on the roof of the car, and how it matched perfectly with a rust colored spot on the edges of a seam in the ceiling directly above the location where the car was parked for so long. At first I thought it was something like rusty mineral deposits from a leaky water line. However, no amount of washing, clay-bar usage, polishing compound, etcetera, seems to make any difference. It actually looks like something ate through the paint and then oxidized the bare metal below.

Here are some photos I took a few months ago:

http://mechanicalanarchy.com/paint/

Semi-recently I took a closer look at it (in better lighting) and found I was able to scrap/chip bits of it away using the edge of my pocket knife. I have no idea if the **** I was removing was mineral deposits or damaged clear coat (or both), but there was blue paint underneath which leads me to believe that the rust color shown is not due to the sheet metal below the paint.

Is this one of those situations where I just need to sand the affected area down to the primer and have it repainted? The rest of the paint isn't in great shape anyway (I think the clear coat is failing) so I'm not keen on repainting the roof only and the paint isn't bad enough to warrant painting the whole car.

If I sand it down, can I rattle can the affected area to seal it until I have the time/funds to get it professionally painted?

Thanks for your time,

Adrian

[Mike Phillips]

Re: Super Heavy Mineral Deposits and/or Ruined Paint?

Is this one of those situations where I just need to sand the affected area down to the primer and have it repainted?

The rest of the paint isn't in great shape anyway (I think the clear coat is failing) so I'm not keen on repainting the roof only and the paint isn't bad enough to warrant painting the whole car.

If I sand it down, can I rattle can the affected area to seal it until I have the time/funds to get it professionally painted?

Thanks for your time,

Adrian

Here's the picture after resizing and uploading into your gallery on this forum. It's a little more browser friendly at 700 pixels wide.




After scraping a section off this mineral or whatever the contaminant is off, try applying a paint cleaner like ScratchX or Deep Crystal Paint Cleaner to the area and see if you can restore clarity and gloss to the paint.

If portions of the car already have clear coat failure and you don't want to repaint the entire car then see if you can fix this area to an acceptable level with one of the above products.

[ZoranC]

Re: Super Heavy Mineral Deposits and/or Ruined Paint?

Would attempt with one of those paint decontamination products help with something like this?