Clear Coat Etching

[Joet1992]

Hi All,

New on here and just looking for some advice. Recently bought a new motor and unbeknownst to me at the time, upon closer inspection when cleaning the vehicle saw that there are spots of etching likely caused by bird poo.

The question is, with this etching, which looks like it's etched into the clear coat, with the bird poo removed, will the paint just stay etched and appear as a cosmetic defect, or will it progressively get worse over time?

Parts of the areas are a little rough to the touch. Any help would be appreciated.

Thank you

[Joet1992]

Bump, any advice would be great.

[Squiggs]

Bird poo is acidic and can attack the lacquer, more especially if the car is in the sun on a hot day.
Usually the etching stays as it is, if you're unlucky it can lead to lacquer peel. Either way there's usually no easy fix, the area would need to resprayed.

[Joet1992]

Thanks for the info. Is there a hack to this, say touch up with a touch up stick, and buff down to same level as surrounding paint so as to cover it?

Just a thought, save respraying over something so small.

[Squiggs]

There's about a 99.99% chance that you won't make it look any better and every chance you'll make it look worse.
As I said there isn't really any quick fix solution.
The best you might hope for is to get someone experienced on it to wet sand and polish up to improve it, but it's risky and may cost half the amount of getting it repaired properly, depending on where the damage is.

[hman]

I found that carefully using a touch in paint to fill the depth, allowing it to dry and then wet sanding and hand polishing with g3 gave good results - it it took out the whiteness on a black car and made it a lot less noticeable - be very careful to keep the area wet whilst sanding and only small amounts of sanding before g3 - repeat until a good finish.

Warning: you can "burn" through clear coat easily if you dont take care - particularly where the paint goes around an edge...

[Joet1992]

I should have said my car is black. That's likely the route I'll go down. Some are so small you'd never notice them without knowing they were there...perks of owning a black car eh!?

[taxboy]

Like most things related to bodywork the answer is it depends on just how bad the etching is. I'm loathe to get the car painted unless it really needs it.

My suggestion is start with the mildest form of correction first. As an example mycar suffered from seagull etching last summer. When I got home I tried Autoglym SRP first as this is filler heavy. It improved the look a fair bit but I could still see it. I bought a bottle of Meguiars Ultimate Compound from Halfords and 5 mins later all gone and I'd applied a bit of wax on top.

This may or may not work for you. If the etching goes deeper then IMO I would take it to a professional detailer to see if they can machine it out before considering the paint route.

[Joet1992]

With the ultimate compound, is it something that requires a few applications or is it a once and done product? Also, how rigorous do you have to be with its application? Let the product do the work or put some proper elbow grease into it!?

Thanks for all the replies!!

[taxboy]

Joet1992 said:

With the ultimate compound, is it something that requires a few applications or is it a once and done product? Also, how rigorous do you have to be with its application? Let the product do the work or put some proper elbow grease into it!?

Thanks for all the replies!!

It took a couple of goes by hand applying a medium degree of pressure but I certainly didn't have to really scrub at it and I was being cautious. I'm guessing you are not looking to do a large area

[Sheepshanks]

Joet1992 said:

I should have said my car is black.

Daughter had a Magic Black Seat Ibiza and that had a massive spodge of bird crap on the bonnet which left the area faded when I washed it off.

On her car, Autoglym Paint Renovator got rid of most of it - may have done more but it feels quite aggressive to use so I didn't want to go too far. I'd tried T-Cut first and that did nothing.

[Summit_Detailing]

It depends on the severity of the etching but some can be removed by machine polishing, others need some localised wet flatting.

Worst case scenario the panel would need repainting.

cheers

Chris

[Joet1992]

The areas I'm looking at doing are the size of the head of a screw, a few smaller. Would you say you could treat areas this small like you would stone chips?

[rainmakerraw]

You can remove the majority of bird poo etching using a hair dryer. No, really. See the how to thread on DW.

[dangerousminds]

rainmakerraw said:

You can remove the majority of bird poo etching using a hair dryer. No, really. See the how to thread on DW.

This. I use a heat gun moving back and forth over the area and it disappears after a few seconds.