How To Repair Flaking Clear Coat & LACQUER PEEL ｜ 5 minute fixes ｜ Episode #10

Hi guys, welcome to the latest 5 minute fix video. Today I'll be showing you how I deal with small areas of flaking and damaged clear coat in hard to access areas. In the workshop today I have this Porsche Boxster which has got a few clear coat issues in the rear plate recess. On top of this there's lots of old plate adhesive that has been lacquered over which needs to be sorted at the same time. Over the course of the next 5 minutes I'll show you how I deal with these issues and make them a little more presentable. So, with the number plate removed the first job is to remove all of that old adhesive. Rather than use any chemicals or scraping tools I've decided to go back to basics and simply use my fingers to roll this gunk off. This approach does of course take some time but it allows me to ensure no further damage is caused, not so much to the clear coat as that's already wrecked, but to the base coat as this is going to be a clear only repair so I really don't want to harm that colour layer. And this is what I'm left with afterwards, not pretty. You can see where in a previous repair clear coat has been sprayed over the plate tape causing multiple layers and lots of flaking edges. My goal is to level these layers as much as possible in order to give a new glossy uniform finish. I should point out that there may be some very slight tonal differences in the paint here due to that previous repair but I'm not going to focus on that in this video, instead I'm just going to demonstrate how I repair the clear coat layer. So, with that being said the next stage is to wet sand the entire area. I start with an 800 grit wet and dry paper and work my way up to 1000 and then 1200 grit, being sure to keep the area and the paper wet. You'll notice that I don't just focus on the raised edges of the clear coat, I try to wet flat the entire recess as uniformly as possible. With a repair like this wet flatting will only solve so many issues. Naturally any high spots or raised edges will be removed but this will still leave some low spots, that will be addressed by the new layer of clear coat. Before I can spray the new clear I have to mask off the surrounding area. Working on a plate recess like this means that I can mask just inside the plate return. When the new clear is dry I'll be wet flatting once more so any slight edge that was created will be blended at that stage. As always when the masking up is done I give the area a final clean down with panel wipe ahead of applying the new clear. As with most of my videos I'm not spraying in a perfect environment and as such I use a heat gun to keep the panel warm during the application of the clear coat. This helps to prevent small runs and blooming within the new clear. As there are a few low spots on this repair I'm going to give it four coats starting with two light dust coats followed by two heavier wet coats waiting for each coat to semi-cure before applying the next. When the new clear coat has thoroughly cured and is hard enough I wet flat the whole area once more this time using just 1200 grit wet and dry. This process helps to further even out the surface of the new clear ahead of cutting and polishing. You may notice at this stage that I also flat the lower bumper section where I didn't directly apply a new clear coat. This is because I purposely left that area unmasked and allowed some light overspray to form there saving the risk of a masking line in such an obvious place. Wet flatting this area means it will become uniform with the plate recess and be polished to the same high gloss in the final stage. Once the area feels like it has a uniform finish I dry it off and check. This will show me if there are any remaining discrepancies and if I need to do some more flatting. In this case there are a few areas that need more attention so I continue to flat these areas until a uniform dull finish has been achieved. Once I've finished this final wet flatting stage and the new clear coat is uniformly dull throughout it's time to polish. To make things quicker I'll use the machine polisher to tackle any of the more open areas however as this is a plate recess some of it will require cutting by hand. I do this using a microfiber cloth and the same compound that I use with the machine polisher. It must be said that this does not give the same level of finish that the machine does however as this area is hidden by the number plate I'm not going to worry about that too much. So here is the final result. As predicted there are some tonal differences in the base coat due to that previous repair however the clear coat layer is now one smooth consistent glossy layer and that very visible area of peel in the top corner has been restored. If you like this video and want to see more like it consider subscribing to be kept up to date when new videos arrive. Thanks for watching and I'll see you on the next one.