Paint Oxidation or Clear Coat Failure?

This blog post will be on how to determine whether your paint is experiencing oxidation or clear coat failure.

Here is a great example of oxidation versus clear coat failure.

The practical difference between clear coat failure and oxidation:

In this example, we see examples of BOTH oxidation and clear coat failure. One is fixable with compounding alone and one is not. Can you spot the difference?

The paint is oxidized, and the headlights have clear coat failure. The peeling effect is the giveaway for clear coat failure. Anytime clear coat is peeling, it is clear coat failure. Oxidation instead gives a hazy, foggy, cloudy, or chalky appearance. You can see this in the reflection of the sun in the example not giving a clear reflection of the sun.

After cleaning and compounding the vehicle you get an appearance like this:

After Prepping and Compounding

Before Prepping and Compounding

While the paint could be restored back to new, you can see (if you zoom in) that the headlight has not been restored. The headlight has to be sanded down, and compounded, and clear coat reapplied in order to be restored.

Why the paint could be restored

The paint could be restored because there was still paint and clear coat on the vehicle. When measuring with a paint thickness gauge like the NEXPTG measuring device you can see how thick the paint is and thus how much you can polish before you polish through the clear coat A.K.A. “burning through the clear”. This vehicle was showing about 4.5 millimeters of thickness which showed that the paint could be fully restored safely. A vehicle that has 2.5-6 millimeters can be compounded or paint corrected.

Here is a picture of clear coat failure on paint to give you a reference:

Clear coat failure example

Another example of clear coat failure

Headlight Restoration vs Paint Restoration

Headlight Restoration is different because there isn’t any paint and it’s only plastic. Plastic can be sanded and polished without any paint being taken off so you are working with the physical plastic itself rather than the layers of clear coat and paint. Paint restoration includes sanding and polishing the clear coat until oxidation, scratches, and other paint defects are removed with the clear coat still leftover.

What Causes Clear Coat Failure

Usually bird droppings, but any type of acidic solution that is dropped onto the clear coat will quickly begin to erode. This is why car wash shampoo is usually pH neutral to preserve the clear coat and/or the coating applied to the vehicle. Here is an example of a client’s vehicle in which a bird egg dropped on to:

Bird Egg Dropping on Vehicle

This caused irreparable damage to the clear coat in less than 10 hours being left like this. Ouch! Always make sure to have a towel and quick detail spray on hand to avoid this type of problem.

Conclusion & Solutions

So that’s about it without getting into the nitty-gritty science of it all, this will help you figure out if you’re dealing with clear coat failure or simply paint oxidation. If you have clear coat failure, you have to get the vehicle repainted, but if you have paint oxidation, we can help with that! Just shoot us a message in the contact us form at the bottom of the homepage and we can work out a plan of action. To prevent clear coat failure, we recommend regular maintenance of your vehicle and towels and quick detailer spray on hand to remove bird droppings and other acidic chemicals before they cause damage.

Stay shining San Diego!