Water Spots Under Clear?

[sdjones121]

I've been lurking around for a month or two and I've learned a lot but I'm really struggling with a recent development on my car's hood. I recently purchased a silver 2003 Infiniti M45. It had a few light (almost white) spots on the hood that looked to be permanent water spots. I did a cut and polish with a DA and the spots stayed the same, no change whatsoever. Recently we had a good rain and the next day when I came out I discovered that I'd gone from a small handful of those ugly spots to a ton more all over with many spots being well over quarter sized. The paint feels perfectly smooth where these spots appear, clay, cutting, and polishing has no impact on them at all, it almost seems like they are under the clear. A number of the spots line up with chips in the coatings which makes me wonder if water is seeping under one or more layers and ruining the finish from the inside. That said though, not all of the spots have an obvious chip in the middle, some appear in places where the coatings look completely intact. Any thoughts on what might be causing this, what I can do to fix it, and what can be done to stop it from continuing to spread? I've done a fair bit of searching here and elsewhere but I can't find anything that looks quite like this, if I've missed a thread with the answer please feel free to let me know. Thanks for any help you can offer!

Here are a few pics of what I'm dealing with:

Chips in the middle of two light areas here.


No obvious chips here.

[Mantilgh]

Kinda looks and sounds like clear is failing or not sticking to the base coat? You say you recently purchased it. Maybe the dealer had it cheaply repainted.

Does it seem bubbled up, or can you put pressure on the spots and see it affect it?

[Mantilgh]

Here's my failing clear from a cheap repaint



Clear on the hood is gone, but there is clear on top of these spots on the fender.

How long ago did you purchase?

Maybe the pressure and vibration from polishing helped loosen it up some more.

[sdjones121]

I got it from a private party about five weeks ago, it could have been re-sprayed at some point but I know the previous owner didn't have it done. Though he only owned it for 12 months or so. The spots don't have any texture or roughness to them, if you felt them with your eyes closed you'd be unable to detect them and pressing on them has no impact on their appearance. The paint was fairly rough on it, I doubt it had ever seen any polish and very little wax. I've gotten some great results with a DA and it was starting to look fairly nice but this has really put a damper on the fun.

[Mantilgh]

I think mine was repainted about five years ago. It was a salvage yard find. I sourced the parts and a told the painter to just get it done as cheap as possible. Wasn't really planing on keeping it this long. I guess I got what I paid for.

[FUNX650]

Water-spotting occurring under the CC:
usually an indicator that the CC has been
seriously compromised.


IMO...
You'd be more able to accurately tell what's
going on with this vehicle's paint, if you had
one of these "tools":



Just Google: magnifying glass 30X handheld...
(Prices start @ ~$4.00.)


Bob

[sdjones121]

IMO...
You'd be more able to accurately tell what's
going on with this vehicle's paint, if you had
one of these "tools":

Worth a shot. I'll order one. Thanks.