Early Clear Coat Failure?

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Dunbar42

New member
I bought an '04 BMW 330i a few months back and had it professionally detailed. The detailer told me the clear coat was very thin on most of the cars 90 microns vs 140 new (he only polished with 106ff.) Yesterday I put on some glaze and pink wax and I noticed these strange hairline looking scratches all over that can only really be seen under florescent light. But they are oriented more like cracks than scratches. Do you guys think this is the early stages of clearcoat failure?



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It's hard to see under normal conditions, here's what the same area looks like without looking very hard.



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I have seen clear caot failure that looks like that before. Where after the paint is cleaned and heavily polished they show up as white cracks in the clear mabye 1/4" long. It is tough to tell from the pictures though what this is.
 
Yes, the detailer used an expensive Defelsko paint guage (more details here.) Here is a graph, these indications are a bit high because he said after he recalibrated the unit he was getting indications closer to 90 microns on the low end. It's nearly impossible to phtograph these cracks but the more I look they remind me of poor bumper respray where the paint cracks.



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They look like regular scratches to me too; the cc failure I've seen always looked different than that. I don't mean to sound arguementative, but to me they look exactly like normal scratches.



I'd inspect them with magnification under good lighting (fluorescent is just terrible for this IME). I'd be utterly astounded if it weren't just normal scratches...the scratches look nothing at all like any cc failure I've ever seen :nixweiss



90 microns is mighty thin, you might want to start thinking about what you're gonna do long-term. I hate to sound all negative, but I'd be planning a repaint or a replacement myself; my M3 is in somewhat better condition and I'm having it repainted.
 
Hopefully you're right Accumulator, I'd like to get another 1 1/2 years out of the car when the CPO and maintenance expires. Any tips on how minimize and further damage? Obviously I won't be polishing it but I wonder if I should stick to WOWA products and spray waxes like OW? What products give the best UV protection?
 
Dunbar42 said:
Hopefully you're right Accumulator, I'd like to get another 1 1/2 years out of the car when the CPO and maintenance expires. Any tips on how minimize and further damage? Obviously I won't be polishing it but I wonder if I should stick to WOWA products and spray waxes like OW? What products give the best UV protection?
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I think I'd use a high filling/concealing glaze and a wax..not sure if the issues are so bad that a paste wax wouldn't work. The problem with WOWA stuff is that it won't hide much. The spray wax might be a good idea. Sorry, no idea about UV, but I simply wouldn't worry about it (yeah, the thin clear has probably lost most if its UV protection ability, but for 18 months..eh...if it fails you could try to get 'em to repaint it for you under a CPO claim).



I'm certain you don't want to hear this, but I'd repaint/replace before there's any chance of this becoming a big deal. If you trade, a dealer won't even think about the marring and they're supposed to have "expert knowledge" so I might let 'em figure the thickness issue out for themselves; if, OTOH, you sell to a private party...well...I would disclose the issue or I wouldn't sleep nights ;)
 
Another option is to see if there is a X-kote dealer in your area. Ask to see some of their work first.
 
Thanks for the x-kote suggestion, that looks promising. Car looks fine for now, hopefully she stays looking this good for a while:



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