Clear coat issue on 2000 Mercedes, able to be saved?

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I'm picking up a 2000 Mercedes E320. I would rather not like to paint the hood, improve the look or polish it out to would be my preferred thing to do. The hood looks just like this picture, just very hazy. Is it able to be revived at all or do I just need to start off fresh?

[Detailing by M]

Re: Clear coat issue on 2000 Mercedes, able to be saved?

Sorry no saving CC failure.
You have to repaint.

You can sand off the CC and polish the base coat.
this is not recommended as the Base coat is very thin and needs the CC to protect it.
The base coat is just there for color then the CC protects it

[SVT Lightning]

Re: Clear coat issue on 2000 Mercedes, able to be saved?

It's toast sorry to say!

[Michael Stoops]

Re: Clear coat issue on 2000 Mercedes, able to be saved?

That sure does look like pretty advanced clear coat failure, the only cure for which is to strip and repaint. You might see a pretty sizeable improvement immediately after compounding with something like Ultimate Compound, but once the clear is failing any such improvement will be very short lived. It could be as little as a few days before it starts to look like this again, or it could take a couple of weeks, but it's not going to be a permanent fix by any stretch of the imagination.

You can sand off the CC and polish the base coat.
this is not recommended as the Base coat is very thin and needs the CC to protect it.
The base coat is just there for color then the CC protects it

Well, yes and no. Sure, in theory you could sand off the clear coat but doing so uniformly and without taking off too much of the color coat below it would be quite an accomplishment in itself. And you'd better have a pretty darn high skill set for sanding to do that! But even if you did successfully sand off just the clear, polishing the base coat won't do much as the base coat is there just for the color. But "just for the color" means just that - the color. No protection, no gloss. You can polish it forever and it will never hold a gloss. It's just color. All the gloss comes from the clear coat, and once that's gone you've got essentially a matte finish - or a fairly bright satin - but you'll never have a real gloss out of it.

Unfortunately, the only real fix is to strip it down and fully repaint it.

[civiljake]

Re: Clear coat issue on 2000 Mercedes, able to be saved?

I did this search because I have the same problem with the hopes of restoring the CC to some degree to get a little more life while i save up for a decent spray job. I guess this much oxidation has to be repaired at the paint shop. One question I have is, what does "strip" mean. Are you guys talking about going down to bare metal or sanding the base coat to create a paintable surface?

[Detailing by M]

Re: Clear coat issue on 2000 Mercedes, able to be saved?

^^^
well strip all the CC off and with that you'll problably sand right through the base coat.