Clear coat on roof and trunk lid speckled with tiny shallow craters

[link626]

I don't know how to describe the issue.

I have a 5 year old lexus with dark charcoal color.

under the right lighting and angle, I can see tiny craters (size of dull pencil tip) in the clear coat on the roof and trunk lid. These panels clearly get the most sun exposure.

It is not orange peel, as the rest of the car does not have orange peel. and these craters do not have smooth edges.

the whole roof is covered in these tiny shallow craters.

looking from a few feet away, the paint is still shiny.
I tried 1000 grit polish compound, and it didn't help with the craters.

Is this sun damage......... is this the stage before the paint starts peeling ?


looks fine from a distance. I can't capture the craters on camera....

[1994Gen1L]

Re: Clear coat on roof and trunk lid speckled with tiny shallow craters

Well, it sounds like clearcoat etching, tiny little etch marks in the clearcoat itself. This can occur due to rail dust or rain drops depositing tiny particles in the clearcoat. Not keeping the surface cleaned with a clay bar overtime will allow the contamination to etch itself in the clearcoat. It will look as if the vehicle is covered with tiny sap droplets.

I currently have the same concern with my 1994 Oxford White clearcoat F150. The truck was alot worse off when I purchased it in 2009. I have used my Meg's DA with yellow polishing pad and Ultimate Compound (UC) to remove the swirls and medium scratches on the paint. There are still numerous deeper scratches and etching marks that have damaged the clear coat.

Did you attempt to clean the surface with a clay bar prior to the compound? If you have a DA polisher, you may be able to improve the appearance of the clear coat with a polishing pad and UC or even the new DA MF kit from Meg's.

Good luck,
James

[Michael Stoops]

Re: Clear coat on roof and trunk lid speckled with tiny shallow craters

It is very likely that what you're seeing are tiny impact craters caused by little bits of debris hitting the car while it's on the road. A dark, non metallic color will show these more readily than any other color, and we see it all the time on older cars that come into our garage here at work. A very close inspection of lighter, metallic colors can reveal these as well, but you need to look for them really hard and at pretty close range.

Unfortunately there really isn't much of anything you can do to remove these, and even if you did do something as aggressive as wet sanding to remove them, you're just going to accumulate more over time. And obviously you can't do repeated rounds of wet sanding. Some paint finishes are a bit more susceptible to these, just as some are more susceptible to stone chips and some are more scratch sensitive than others.

[link626]

Re: Clear coat on roof and trunk lid speckled with tiny shallow craters

yeah that makes sense.

good to hear I'm not the only one with this problem.