Severe Neglected Bird Etchings

[pizzaman]

My car: 2008 Suzuki SX-4 Crossover. I bought it new in June, 2008. Presently has 28,000 miles. It has spent most of it's life outside. I have it in a garage now.
I haven't waxed my car in at least 2 years. I had other priorities.
Now I'm paying the price. I washed & clayed. Then I used ultimate compound. i used ultimate polish and finally a single coat of ultimate wax. all was done my hand.

First photo you can barely see 2 bird etchings on the passenger side of the hood. The bad one is a little smaller than dime sized. The smaller one is about 1/3rd the size of the large one.
They really don't look that bad unless you are fairly close up to the hood. They really bother me though.

The following 3 photos are of the larger problem area.

The last photo is the smaller etching













I ordered some touchup paint in the 1/2 oz. bottle size. The Suzuki paint bottle and the clear coat bottle should be in today.
I ordered some Meguiars sandpaper in 1500, 2000, 2500 and 3000 grit. I got the sanding block too. i'm looking for some advice please.
at this point I may just clean the area with alcohol and just let some paint flow into the area. I'll do 2 thin coats, then do a coat of clear. Then do the ultimate compound, uptimate polish and finally ultimate wax. Please give me some opinions.

After doing a little research, I prob should have bought spray cans.

[greg0303]

Re: Severe Neglected Bird Etchings

The only way to make them disappear is to level the surrounding paint to the depth of etched bird dropping (it's the same process like scratch/ swirl removal).

Couple options:

1. use aggressive paint cleaner again and try to really work it in using moderate down pressure (one more round of Ultimate Compound or M105 Ultra Cut Compound, you could use terry cotton applicator instead of soft foam one);

2. use sandpaper to level the affected area, I would start gently with 3000 grit wet sanding and then follow with UC/ M105 to remove sanding marks;

3. car polisher would make this job more effective/ faster, you could use M105/ UC/ foam cutting/ polishing pad or D300/ microfiber cutting disc.

Try not to go too crazy and don't remove too much clear coat. If it's really deep you better use a touch-up paint.

[Mark58]

Re: Severe Neglected Bird Etchings

The only way to make them disappear is to level the surrounding paint to the depth of etched bird dropping (it's the same process like scratch/ swirl removal).

Couple options:

1. use aggressive paint cleaner again and try to really work it in using moderate down pressure (one more round of Ultimate Compound or M105 Ultra Cut Compound, you could use terry cotton applicator instead of soft foam one);

2. use sandpaper to level the affected area, I would start gently with 3000 grit wet sanding and then follow with UC/ M105 to remove sanding marks;

3. car polisher would make this job more effective/ faster, you could use M105/ UC/ foam cutting/ polishing pad or D300/ microfiber cutting disc.

Try not to go too crazy and don't remove too much clear coat. If it's really deep you better use a touch-up paint.

I agree 100% last thing you want to do is trying to touch up with paint. Try everything as gregg said first. You can't go wrong. if it all fails last thing to do is touch up. In most cases touch up will never be the same.

[Michael Stoops]

Re: Severe Neglected Bird Etchings

We are very, very hesitant about your plan to sand, touch up and shoot some clear over this. You could very easily go from a couple of annoying little spots to a couple of sizable blotches of mismatched paint. This image is really troubling, however:



We've seen more deep etchings from bird droppings than we care to remember, but even those showed metallic in the deepest recess of the etch. Yours looks to be missing the metallic completely, which tells us that this is very deep indeed. By any chance are you able to feel the edge of these etchings with your fingernail? And that you may have a heavy metallic content in the clear coat - perhaps a multi stage paint with a pearl finish? If so, matching that is going to be a real challenge with a bottle of color touch up and a rattle can.

Now, if you're highly experienced in this sort of thing then maybe we're being overly concerned. We just don't have a real good feeling about the process on these defects.

[Meticulous-Detail]

Re: Severe Neglected Bird Etchings

They almost look like paint chips, rather than bird etchings! Are the etchings smooth or can you feel them with your fingernail? Maybe a very light wetsand and then compound and polish.

[pizzaman]

Re: Severe Neglected Bird Etchings

Yes, I can feel the edges With my fingernail. i'm pretty sure the spots were dried on bird droppings, but they could have been tree sap. There have been little spot mounds in those areas for at least a year. About a week ago i washed the car with dawn thoroughly. I ended up rubbing the areas with a terry towel. This rubbing did get rid of the dried on substance whatever it was. I was left with these craters. I went through the full detail with my car. I was going to save any real problem areas for later.

I agree this is a pearl paint with some metallic flecks in it. It appears to be the exact same color that comes on some GXSR sportbikes. I do like the color. I had a fiberglass bodied zx10r sportbike custom painted awhile back. It was a 3 stage paint green pearl. Yes it was hard to touchup. I ended up buying 2 different bottles of pearl from the Testor's model paint line. They have a regular mixing kit with multiple bottles so one can try different ratios of paint. i ended up mixing my own color. It took a few tries. when the color dried it dried a darker shade so my custom mix had to be actually appear lighter in the bottle. Candy colors are beautiful, but they are very very hard to match when touching up I agree.

Am I experienced at paint repair? No. This is why I'm looking for guidance. i'll see how the Suzuki paint matches up with the small etching. If that looks OK, I'll try the larger one. Can I buy the M105 compound in a retail store? Or is that an online order only? That ultimate compound is an amazing product. The ultimate polish only improved the finish a small amount. The liquid ultimate wax darkened the paint as you all said. It was the ultimate compound that made the most dramatic difference.

The larger area has been rubbed repeatedly and firmly with ultimate compound and a 4" orange foam pad. Then I went with the polish and then wax. This is the original factory paint. Hood and rock chips seem to have been a problem on the SX-4 forums I used to frequent. I have very few paint blemishes on my car except for these 2 etchings. I should get the Suzuki touchup paint today. I'll start working on this tomorrow Saturday. I'll try the small area 1st.

Thank you for your replies.

clark

[Mark58]

Re: Severe Neglected Bird Etchings

You should be able to buy 105 at Automotive paint stores , but call first to make sure they carry Megs products. (Most of them do)