A little before and after but still not happy

**Sam N.** · 11-26-2008, 01:00 AM

So a little back story on what happened with the car. I`ve had it for about two months and up until a week ago all I had done to the paint was some clay and Griot`s paint sealant (btw not impressed). I bought it from Tempe Honda so I have no idea about the cars past but from what I`ve seen I`ll assume that it lead most of its life in the Arizona sun without any protection from the sun. My hints to that would be that the car has quite a bit of hazing and the clear coat has worn through on the leading edge of the bumper. I also have no idea what the dealership did to it, nothing that was painfully obvious though (surprisingly enough).

So moving on a little. At the end of October I flew home to Seattle to see my family and while I was gone I left my car parked in my apartment complex. Well when I came back I discovered that I was parked next to a sprinkler that had sprayed down the front half of my car every morning for a week with the water then being baked into the paint by the sun every afternoon. So needless to say i had some horrible water-spots when i came back that were well etched into the paint.

so i tried all that i have in my very limited detail arsenal at this point which was some Griot`s clay, Griot`s machine polish number 3 (i was given a griots gift certficate at one point) and some Klasse AIO. Well the machine polish had a little affect but not enough for me to be willing to do the whole hood by hand. So I called up my Grandpa who lives in Phoenix to see if he could help. So i drove up there and we spent a little time with his rotary and some Meguiar`s polishes that he had. So I think what we ended up using was some Diamond cut (?) with a soft buff pad followed by the Griot`s on another Meguiar`s soft buff pad. this managed to take most of the water spots off but before they were completely gone I started to notice little cracks in the surface of the paint that I thought I remember meaning that the clear coat was starting to fail. So I stopped there but I`m still not particularly happy with the results.

Is there something that I can do to save the paint or am I pretty much SOL short of a respray?

**imported_MBenz** · 01-10-2009, 12:02 PM

I had those marks show up on a black suburban i did once and it is clear coat failure. It usually starts to happen when you machine polish paint on the front and hood areas of a car that has seen a lot of sun. You can either deal with the paint the way it is or get a respray.

**Envious Eric** · 01-10-2009, 12:19 PM

SOL, sorry

repaint is your only option

**Sam N.** · 01-10-2009, 12:22 PM

So did this just show up or did it get dug out of the archives? because i tried to post it a month and a half ago and it never showed up. but i kinda decided that i was probably going to have to just live with it.

**a.k.a. Patrick** · 01-10-2009, 12:23 PM

Nothing personal about your selection, but Honda has the worst paint I have ever dealt with......

That is some severe etching for a weeks worth of sprinkler duty! Those "crows feet" are the first indicator of clear coat failure.

At this point, all you can do is ride it out until its really worthy of a repaint.

**dave40co** · 01-10-2009, 08:38 PM

That CC failure is typical of Honda paint for that year.

**longdx** · 01-11-2009, 04:08 PM

I have to agree. Honda`s are wonderful cars but have absolutely the worst factory paint. That is the beginning of CC failure. The best thing to do is to protect/seal it and try to minimize the onset of the failure, but know that it WILL happen.

**Sam N.** · 01-11-2009, 05:39 PM

yeah, right now i have it in a couple coats of collinite 845 over some klasse AIO in hopes that it will be enough protection to keep it going for a while. because i`m pretty sure that i`m not gonna be able to do anything about it before i get out of school and considering that i just started thats still 3-4 years away. and i`m not even sure that i`ll keep it much longer than that.