Helpp!! I want to spend $50 to fix this. Possible?

[bobarmet4]

PICTURES BELOW. I think this is clear coat failure. Or is it oxidation??? No chipping or if it's there, very light. The problem is on the roof, trunk and hood. Doors and side body are fine! (Ignore the streaks in the last photo - those are just streaks from wiping). MY QUESTIONS:

If i take a rustoleum and just spray it AS IS without sanding or anything, any problems with this? The shine on the rest of the car is quite dull now but I think it should be okay. I dont care so much that it might look a bit different from the sides of the car but main things are: I DONT WANT TO SAND AND I DONT WANT TO SPEND $200 TO FIX THIS.

All ideas welcome!!

[Michael Stoops]

Re: Helpp!! I want to spend $50 to fix this. Possible?

Unfortunately what you have here is an advanced case of clear coat failure. The only way to fix this is to sand away the old paint and repaint the panels. Anything else you do that might slightly improve the appearance (and that's all you can do here by buffing or rubbing out the finish - make a very slight improvement) will be very short lived, like a matter of days.

What's happening here is that the clear coat is quite literally breaking apart and crumbling. The color coat under it will never hold a gloss because it's not designed to. All the gloss and UV protection is in the clear coat, or in this case was in the clear coat. If you just spray any paint over the top of this the clear will continue to break up underneath that fresh paint, taking the fresh paint with it. You would have to sand it down to prep first. Even if you got a proper color matched touch up spray paint you'd be hard pressed to get it looking decent over such a large area, and the gloss level from a rattle can job isn't going to be all that high either, at least not without some serious buffing to (or maybe even a bit of wet sanding) to bring up the shine. There really is no easy fix here that is going to look very good, sorry to say.

[ChevyNick]

My brothers truck had that same CC failure on its roof. Just this past weekend, my dad wet sanded the roof until all the clear coat was removed. Then he wiped it down with alcohol. After that he sprayed it white, I think he used 4-5 cans of white at least on the roof, and a couple cans of clear. It doesn't look great, as Michael said, its hard to get such a large area looking perfect with a rattle can. It looks a lot better than it did. Will probably wet sand it a little bit, wheel it out, and call it good.

[SpoolMe]

Re: Helpp!! I want to spend $50 to fix this. Possible?

50 bucks will get you enough sharpies to make it black again

[Jbirk]

Re: Helpp!! I want to spend $50 to fix this. Possible?

You can paint the car yourself with several spray cans of paint... get the color code from the door... Thing is it WILL cost you more than $50.

You will need to sand, strip any wax or contaminates, spray a self etching primer, sand, sand, spray, spray, spray, sand, clear, clear, clear, clear... sand, sand, sand, sand, sand... polish, polish, polish...

Good Luck. I have seen a couple of well done paint jobs on this forum from members who have never painted.

[t5er]

Re: Helpp!! I want to spend $50 to fix this. Possible?

On my car, I painted some trim strips about 4 feet long and an inch wide; I spent $40 on primer, spray, and clear. $40 was exclusive of sand paper and tape and time. There is a lot more surface area to cover on your job. I think you'll need around $80 in supplies alone.


Edit to add - You can always roll on some Acrylic-Enamel paint. I've seen this online. Look it up.