Cloudy Paint

[Ian Simmonds]

Now the car is back from 6-months awaiting parts (see other thread), it’s obvious the paint has deteriorated markedly. Don’t get me wrong, it was never a concours winner, but it’s still markedly worse. I’ve got several areas of peeling lacquer which I’m resigned to, but the bonnet is the biggest ‘eyesore’ to me. It’s gone a milky/cloudy. It’s hard to see in photos, but if you look bottom right to middle, hopefully you can see it.



I had a little go at it with the MOP when the car came home and it did improve, but was back within a couple of weeks. The paint and lacquer don’t appear to be failing or about to peel, it’s like it’s got almost a chemical reaction going on.

Any thoughts as to how to tackle this folks?

[steve briance]

Any idea if it is the original paint or respray work?

Looks very similar to how my bonnet did and mine also responded well to compound polish... Right up to the point i polished through what was a very thin lacquer coat which had been sprayed on previous repair.

[Ian Simmonds]

Hi Steve, yes the bonnet was resprayed about 10 years ago. The whole car was resprayed previously to that around 22-years ago. So there’s a lot going on there.

[steve briance]

The only suggestion i have is maybe to see if a sealant of some sort may delay reclouding once you've revived it again? Thinking along the lines of it being sealed from oxygen/moisture/uv/traffic film etc which all could be accelerating its deteriotation.

Sadly it sounds like hiding the symptoms rather than curing the illness though.

I hope you get better informed answers from elswhere but it seems like yet more paint is required. Mine was done all over 5 years ago and ive not had to do anything other than clean it since!

Ps, if you do get the bonnet done again, get a clean and strip disc in an angle grinder and get it back to bare metal. I did the whhole shell of a saab 99 recently with those discs. I used 5 and spent several days doing it but it saved a LOT of cost in bodyshop doing the prep and, it rules out any reactions that the next layer paint might have with the unknown layers of paint beneath.

An area the size of a bonnet would only take 2 to 2.5hours, use the face of the disc rather than the edge to reduce chances of removing metal which the edges can do.

[nip]

Have you tried to machine polish it I'm sure it would come up as good as

[bluequattro]

Flat with various grades of sandpaper, machine cut and polish
I did it last week with a very faded non-Audi and it has really improved it, but go steady, if it has been painted it may be thinner than normal
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[John.]

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I'm a firm believer that you CAN polish a turd, you too?!

[bluequattro]

Oh yes. I’ve polished all sorts recently now I’ve stopped breaking them

[Farhazaftab786g]

This has also happened to my S2 recently. Mine is worse and has just been spreading over the last few weeks. Around a month ago it was clear with zero clouding. This has never happened before either, ill try mopping it when i have a chance