Etching around emblems???????

[RAG]

I pulled some emblems off for a customer and there was severe etching that traced the emblems :think:



Here's the full story...yesterday a new customer (pretty sure he's also a new Autopia member) came over for the preliminary stage of his detail black Acura ('02 I think) - we agreed that his emblems had to come off, since the word "Acura" was spaced out across the entire trunk and the car needs intensive polishing to remove the defects to an acceptable level (my 5 step buff with wool for sure)...plus a lot of ugly crud had built up in/among all the emblems.



After I pulled them off, I could tell we were going to have a ring/ridge tracing where the emblems used to be (I've pulled off quite a few emblems in the past and have noticed this phenomenom on black vehicles particularly). So I busted out the 3000 grit and sanded lightly before buffingw with my 5-step process. But guess what - the etching was clearly not going to be removed...in fact, it was clearly all the way down to the metal in some places.



In trying to figure out what happened...here's the theory the customer and I came up with. Basically, hard water deposit and chemical etching took place as a result of all the build up around the emblems (if a few water spot deposits can etch paint, a build up of these deposits surely can). The likely reason it was so severe was because the car is black and spent it's former life (previous owner) in Arizona and Las Vegas, so the paint probably got smoking hot...not only does this heat soften the paint, but possibly it also expounds the chemical reaction process (just a theory).



ANY OTHER THEORIES OR POSSIBLE EXPLINATIONS?

 

[RAG]

BTW, I've seen this happen on other black vehicles in my area, only not so bad that it couldn't be removed by compounding with a wool pad.



And I'll see if we can't get some pics.

 

[Accumulator]

I've had this happen too. I sometimes wonder if it could be related to the emblems being applied to just-applied paint (yeah, I know they're baked/insta-cured/etc. but still...).



This was obviously the root of it back in the days of single stage- e.g., my Jag's side marker lights/door handles/etc. are all "embedded" down in the paint to one degree or another. When you pull 'em off for whatever reason you know there'd be no way to fix it short of a repaint.



In this case, I agree that the outlines probably held contamination that caused the problem, but I still wonder about the during-manufacture possiblility :nixweiss