Abouth this paint......

The red part of my paintjob is in great shape. The problem is with the clearcoat. It is discolored in spots and coming off in in patches. Is there anything I can do to make it presentable until I can get a repaint done?

The red part of my paintjob is in great shape. The problem is with the clearcoat. It is discolored in spots and coming off in in patches. Is there anything I can do to make it presentable until I can get a repaint done?

Color sand and high speed buff. Making a car that needs a paint job look like it doesn't is an artform all to itself. If you're asking the question, odds are you aren't ready to do this, very few people have the knowledge and the touch. I'm not one of them. If you're lucky enough to find one of those people within a couple hundred miles of where you are, it's worth making the trip and spending the money just to see it done.

Thanks, Digger! Up to this point in life, the only paintjobs I've messed with are the ones on scale model cars and trucks. If they come out bad, I just dunk them in a brake fluid bath and start over!! At least you've let me know it can be done. That way, when I take it to someone, it won't be so easy for them to tell me I gotta have a $5000 respray!!!

Thanks, Digger! Up to this point in life, the only paintjobs I've messed with are the ones on scale model cars and trucks. If they come out bad, I just dunk them in a brake fluid bath and start over!! At least you've let me know it can be done. That way, when I take it to someone, it won't be so easy for them to tell me I gotta have a $5000 respray!!!

When you start losing clear coat it gets pretty crusty looking and someone with the touch can color sand the cloudy clear coat away without hurting the paint underneath, take the oxidation layer off the faded paint that’s already lost it’s clear coat, without cutting through the paint, clean, buff and polish the car till it shines like it does with clear coat and wax it to last for months at a time. You will have to wax several times a year if you go this route, but if you’re only loosing the clear and want to keep the factory original paint, or make it look good till you’re ready to paint, it will get the job done.

This is something you can do at home with a couple hundred dollars worth of tools and supplies, but it’s also like playing a musical instrument. Unless you were born a virtuoso you need to take a few lessons and practice, practice, practice, practice, until you get good at it. If you’re thinking about doing this and you get a chance to watch a master at work, it’s worth the price of admission. If you want a lesson in paint restoration, go in the morning and bring doughnuts.

The old saying, you always pay for what you get, but you don't always get what you pay for and the best paint job I ever got was a Maaco Supreeme paint the whole car TV advertized special. I paid full advertized enamal paint special price, but after my car had sat in their yard for several days without being touched, I started bringing a dozen assorted doughnuts to the shop every morning on my way to work. A full week of bringing doughnuts every morning and my car still hadn't been touched, eight days into bringing doughnuts and the painter asked me which car was mine. On the twelth day I got my car back and it was not the taxi cab quality TV special paint job.

When considering paint and upholstry work, do not underestimate the power of doughnuts.

If you don't get ALL the clearcoat off then you will always see the change in level where the new clear went on. Never a good idea to try this trick, you might as well try spraying with the new protective clear film that is being advertised all over the TV lately.

My experience includes managing a "quickie" body shop in California and helping my brother in his Mopar restoration body shop in Louisiana. Yes, people really do expect a $300 quickie job to turn out the same as a $30,000 restoration but it just isn't going to happen.

If you don't get ALL the clearcoat off then you will always see the change in level where the new clear went on. Never a good idea to try this trick, you might as well try spraying with the new protective clear film that is being advertised all over the TV lately.

My experience includes managing a "quickie" body shop in California and helping my brother in his Mopar restoration body shop in Louisiana. Yes, people really do expect a $300 quickie job to turn out the same as a $30,000 restoration but it just isn't going to happen.

The secret to a good paint job is good preperation and restoration is considerably more involved that good preperation. People do this to make a car with crusty clear look good until they are ready to paint, or they don't want to paint at all. It's color sand to clean and feather, then high speed buff with multiple grits of buffing products topped off with the polymer of your preference. When clear starts to go, it keeps going. Anything you spray on failing clear is eventually waisted and extra work to remove and do it right. Clear goes where it goes, when it goes. If you have a great looking hood and the fender tops on either side are bruning out, color sanding those tops to the natural break of a body line is where you strip the clear to and then you squirt that section with clear, after that it doesn't take much when it's dry to make that lapping line dissapear.

When that new car trade in; is the 20 year old car that belonged to the little old lady that only drove it to church on Sunday and it sat in the sun every day of the week, this is something that's done all to often to turn that sun baked turd of a car into a real tutsy pie. It looks great for about 3 - 4 months or carwashes and then you need to wax it again. Or it's something that can be done to save factory paint one pannel at a time, not everyone has access to an auto paint booth, or even a clean garage, but if you put you hand to it, you can probably find an old tent at the thrift store and make a booth big enough to safely squirt a car one pannel at a time.

This is what you do for scuffs and scratches that don't go all the way to metal on an expensive and impossible to match metalflake paint and sometimes you can even do the ones that go to the metal. If you see one of those at the auction, or it comes in on trade, you can take it as a prize if you know a miastro that can save a 7 grand paint job. That is an art form that takes real talent and body shops will tell you it can't be done.