Looking for advice with top surface pitting...

[Jester7677]

Need some help or feedback on the top surfaces of my Black Audi '04 S4.

Attached is a shot of my problem. All top surfaces of the car have pits with the hood being the worst. If you look at the attached picture, around the light bulb, you see specs. Those are actually pits and are very hard to photograph. I'm the second owner and I don't know how it became this way. The paint was pretty damaged by acid rain/rain spots when I picked it up so perhaps they were just masked. I believe that the previous owners allowed the car to sit under sprinklers, in the sun, often. Windows have water etching/spots that I have not been able to remove, but it's bearable.

To try and remove these pits today alone, I did the following with my Flex using the entire speed range...

White pad with Menz 106
Orange pad with SIP
Yellow pad with SIP
Different yellow pad design with SIP
White pad with Menz 106 over all tops as it became clear that I would not be able to remove, so I gave up...

After that I used Danase Wet Glaze followed by 1Z Glanz Wax and FK 425. Car is shiny as hell, looks good, but the tops always look like they have a bit of dust on them due to the pitting. It's very noticable being as shiny as it now is... most people will not notice (i think), I do. Right now I'm going to pretend that it's not there, till perhaps next spring, but looking for professional thoughts.

[Jester7677]

Here's another picture... (further away from the paint and with the garage door closed, but zoomed in...)

[docrice]

I have this exact same problem, although I had presumed that these pits were accumulated from years of micro-debris hitting the hood from freeway conditions (construction trucks releasing dried mud / dirt from their tires and trailers, etc.).

[wannafbody]

Pitting can be from sand, dirt, or salt. It could also be from atmospheric fallout. You can use a compound to make them less noticable but you won't be able to remove them.

[Jester7677]

Docrice, could be. Having machinery for polishing means I'm obsessive, and these are pissing me off.

Not sure how to correct.
Not sure how to hide... Perhaps Carnuba based wax?

I'm hoping that I'm not creating them, rather revealing them the shinier it gets... !

Wannafbody... Your depressing me...

[Bunky]

I see little dings on the plastics on the fronts of cars and sometimes on the hood. Just like your windshield gets little dings from rocks, so does the rest of the front end. They cannot be removed but they always seem to fill up with polish and be even more noticeable. I am looking for advice on minimizing these as well.

[docrice]

Since these pits are more evident towards the front of the car as opposed to the roof and sides, I'm almost certain they're created from incoming road debris. The only realistic way to prevent them are via clear bra.

Correcting existing pits can probably be done by leveling the clear some more, but it's probably crucial at that point to have a paint meter.

The downside of polishing paint means that any obvious left-over flaws are much more noticeable. I have four now-obvious spots where bird-droppings have etched through to the primer due my neglect, and there's nothing I can really do about them short of getting the hood re-sprayed.

Otherwise repaint or live with it. Or drive on the road when no one else is around to prevent further pitting. Maybe one could fill them in with glazes, but to me that's just giving in to a temporary illusion and joining the dark side.

[Jester7677]

I'm willing to join the dark side!...

[baseballlover1]

Do you notice that they are worse on some days? If you do then they are bubbles in the paint. I have that in my 914 hood. I absolutely hate it. And there is nothing you can do if they are bubbles.

[Accumulator]

Jester7677- *MAN* that large point size makes your post easy to read

I have the exact same pitting on my M3 sedan. Two areas have it and it seems to come from two causes (the two areas are very similarly pitted but there are some subtle differences):

1) The repainted hood didn't display this at all until I go somewhat agressive with the rotary and then it had it *everywhere*. It appears to be from a crappy repaint job, and the term "solvent pop" comes to mind. My painter agrees that this could be it...it's sorta like tiny bubbles in the clear that become exposed as you remove the very top-most layer (of clear). The pits are quite uniform and look like "exposed bubbles" when examined under magnification. My hood is utterly *awful* looking, far worse than what's in your pics.

2) The front area of the roof *did* display this a little before some *very* aggressive rotary work, and now it's worse. This seems to be from road debris impact and the rotarying made it more obvious. Think of how a window looks when shot with a BB-gun: small entrance hole, conical wound channel, large exit hole; I suspect the same sort of thing can happen with stuff hits clearcoat at a high velocity as it looks *exactly* like that under magnification.

In both cases, the only solution is a repaint.

Oh, and our Audi A8 has some *nasty* water etching and our Denali XL has pitting from similar environmental [stuff]. The etching is completely different and the pitting is *also* different from what your pics show. Those don't get *worse* with rotary work, but they don't get much (if any) better either. They might benefit from wetsanding, but I'd rather not take off that much clear. These don't really *require* a repaint the way the similar-to-yours pitting on the M3 does.

Gee...sorry this was all so downbeat

[jfelbab]

To me, that looks like a condition called pinholing or solvent boiling. It's an effect in the paint that leave s small pinholes of gas in the paint as it hardens. I 've not seen this on OEM paints but have seen it several times on repaints. Regardless whether it is acid etching or pinholing, sadly, the only solution is a repaint.

[SuperBee364]

Does this look similar to what would happen if you applied an LSP too early to a freshly applied clear coat?