Wenoticed clear coat failure on my dad's Acura TL back in November. He is downvisiting for a couple of weeks so we decided to try to do some repair on it. Iam by no stretch a pro, but the main focus was to improve the appearance andgive some level of protection to the base coat of paint. I was expecting tochip some clear coat off along the edge of the trunk lid. This would not be thecase, as you can see below the entire trunk lid was stripped of it's clearcoat. Stripping the clear coat took about an hour and a half. The entireprocess took about 4 hours. Thisis how the paint looked at the start of the project. Anotherbefore image My dadpeeling the damaged clear from the trunk Clearcoat all gone and trunked masked off - ready for clear coat Clearapplied and car is parked outside to cure. After3 days sitting in the Alabama sun it was time to move on to the next step - wetsanding. Before wet sanding - you can see the lack of levelness in the paint Wet sandingin process. Finishedproduct - there is some small level of orange peel left, but it looks muchbetter than at the start. Thank you for taking the time to read about this project -
Sweet project man looks great what did you use to peel the paint off and what did you use to put the clear on just a can or actual spray gun
IMO, Hondas have the highest rate of paint/clearcoat failure. Their paint is really thin from factory. Great work BTW ... where did you locate the tape line on the back of the trunk (where the license plate is located). If I'm not mistaken, there's a feature line there. Did you blend it there?
We used a razor blade to catch the edge of the clear to chip it away. The car is an 05 and outside of the paint warranty. I have found online that this is a common issue with the Red TL's. We used rattle can for the paint - I do not have a paint booth, we had to use the garage (moved the cars out to protect from overspray) I scribed a line on the curve at the rear of the trunk to make the transition this is where we blended. If you know where it is, you can find it.
Wow thaat came out looking great man. So you used a rattle can to clear the trunk, sanded and polished to a brilliant shine . . . . . saved a lot of money there. I may need to try this on a spare hood or something tos ee how it turns out. How many coats of clear and what brand?
We used Plasti coat brand paint - It was the only clear coat at the autoparts store. These were 8oz cans. 2 full cans were used. This was 4 coats of clear coat on the trunk. I wanted plenty of clear coat to sand down to smooth out and get a decent shine to the paint.
It would be interesting to put a gauge on it and see what sort of thickness is there. Through my experience with rattle cans I've done some pretty crazy stuff, including performing a clear blend using UPOL clear and Sikkens SRA solvent reducer. Just out of curiosity, what did you do to prep the base coat for being cleared? I'm not all too sure this is going to hold up too well if you didn't scuff the surface before hand. Also, what did you do about the edges of the panel? Did you open the trunk and clear it there as well? If it de-laminates again take the deck lid off, tear it completely down, and use a gray scotch bright to lightly scuff the entire surface. Wipe it down with alcohol and allow it to dry. You may want to have a can in each hand when you start out, keep it extremely wet to the point where you think it will run on the horizontal surfaces. Make your side to side coat, using about 60% overlap. Cover the entire surface of the trunk. Do the same crossing over, using an 80 percent overlap. Make sure you get the edges just wet enough to cover every time, and spray the back side of the deck lid on every coat. This is the only way it won't peel again. If you can, get some U-POL clear #1. It's UV resistant and gives a very nice finish.
Sorry to bump this. But what grit did you use to wet sand on this? do you think you can do half a body panel and will the clear still match?
That would depend on what typer of vehicle it is as some clear coats on cars now days are tinted. If it's a older car you should be good.
