Take a look at this black car.

[jerry@robs]

I cleaned my officemate's 97 Mazda 323, black... The paint was horrible... Not because of all the swirls and scratches, it's the quality of the paint. 80% of the car's surface contains little dots of white specs (even under the hood and trunk) that looks like acid corrosion (like what you get from battery terminals), door jams aren't even painted (only the grey primer shows)... Take a look at the interior sheet metal, there's a hole in there... and the trunk!



I used my 9227C with a W7000 foam cutting pad and M84 Meguiar's Compound for cutting, W9000 buffing foam pad with DACP for polishing and top off with #26... I had to use a wool pad on the hood. Speed 2-3.



The result on several panels were good (not great), such as the hood, passenger door, the rear driver door and the rear left quarter panel. The rest of the paint had too much of those white corrosion specs that can't be helped even after claying, compounding and sanding. BTW, the other doors/panels were poorly repainted, almost no wet sanding, uneven finish.

See those white spots beside the rust spots? Those are everywhere in pinhole sizes on the exterior as well. It seems that most non-clearcoated areas exhibit that problem.



Take a look at the engine bay (after detailing and polishing of valve cover) and take note of the shock towers, those white spots are there as well.

The paint on the bumper even chipped off at setting 2 with a non-abrasive foam pad (W7000) and DACP! When I looked at it, it is as if there wasn't even any primer on it. Just rubber, then paint.



Any experiences on these situations?

 

[DaGonz]

It looks like this car was a "salvage job", totalled by an insurance company then re-purchased...then a half assed attempt to make it look good for resale.



The white spots and corrosion make me think that the car had been through hell!



My thoughts.....



The car was submerged in salt water at one time. That would account for the white staining in the trunk area taht was under the original carpeting.



The other tought is that this car was in the area of the volcanic ash cloud from the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the late 1990's.



Volcanic ash containis sulfuric acid, highly corrosive. This car might have had exposure to volcanic dust, which is so fine that it would go through any door and trunk seals. The combiantion of volcanic dust and rainfall would have caused the sulfuric acid to reliquify, then eat into the paint finish.

 

[jerry@robs]

Could be... I'm from the Philippines...



But I doubt it coz the car was made/sold in 97 and the previous owner lives in the metro... so salt water and volcanic/sulphuric acid may be out of the equation...



According to the current owner, the car was pretty neglected (appearance wise)... It's the previous owner's second car so it wasn't used often 23K miles in 5 years. (Manila has this stupid plate number ban scheme wherein you can't use a car with a certain ending number on your plate on a given day, so people buy 2nd cars to use on that day)... So engine/tranny wise, it may be a good deal... But the car NEVER parked on a decent garage. It was parked under a bunch of plants in a garden... I guess grass was underneath the car as well...



With all our rainfall, it could've increased the likelihood of rust... But I still don't understand why the rust and corossion started from inside... areas that are rarely damaged like underneath the trunk was affected as well....



When I first saw the trunk (it was dark then) I though the previous owner might've spilled some acid or something on the trunk... but the carpet was intact... only the metal surfaces were affected...



I'm quite possitive that it may be a bad paint prep job (poor primer and rustproofing)... But this car sure made my work look ultra crappy... First time a friend/customer left not feeling totally satisfied...