Styling Novice needing advice.

[DemonPandaOwner]

Hello all!
I'm hoping some kind person can explain a few things to me.
I've got a 2004 1.2 Dynamic with peeling lacquer. Yes, it's bright red. Well, it was when new. Now one side is ok the rest is a strange orangey red. From closer inspection it appears to be the lacquer that's aged and begun to divorce the paint.
Now, I've been watching various YouTubers work on cars and they've mentioned products such as clay bars, snow foam, etc. In the 25 years I've been driving, and the many before that when helping Dad clean his car, I've only ever used shampoo and water, save one disastrous encounter with Tcut!
So my question is, would any of this stuff help me improve my paintwork? I know it'll never be concourse, but if I can get it to look a touch less unloved, I'll be happy.
And what exactly does a clay bar do? And snow foam?
I did speak to my insurers about putting vinyl on, but they said it'll push my premium up so that's out.
Any other ways I could improve the look of the paint instead? I'm on a budget but as the Demon turned 22 last week I decided to try and show it some love.
Thanks in advance
D and the Demon.

 

[PuntoHowTo]

Snow Foam = Fancy Soap
Claybar = literally what its called, a type of malleable clay. You rub it over the paintwork and it removes contaminates from the paint.

Honestly neither of these things will help your cause.

Even if you wrapped it chances are the edges of where the lacquer had peeled would show through the wrap.

The usual way to deal with that with a wrap would be to sand all the peeling lacquer smooth.

My advice which people will think insane, is to get a really powerful pressure washer and blast the lacquer off as much as possible.
It sounds like in your case as there is a colour difference it might be the car has had some paintwork done. If you started sanding the edges of the lacquer you could find more and more of it peels. and you just spend your life chasing it.

Just blast it off. Once you have gotten as much off as possible use a really high grit of sand paper to feather the edges of the lacquer into the paint.
Then polish the car with a machine polisher. (can be bought from places like lidl and Aldi for about £20-25)

It won't be perfect but it will look a damn sight better.

the other option is just to leave it but it will more likely than not get worse.

depending on how much you want to spend, given that wrapping isn't cheap you could take it to a couple of body shops and see what they would charge to fix the lacquer.

 

[DemonPandaOwner]

Snow Foam = Fancy Soap
Claybar = literally what its called, a type of malleable clay. You rub it over the paintwork and it removes contaminates from the paint.

Honestly neither of these things will help your cause.

Even if you wrapped it chances are the edges of where the lacquer had peeled would show through the wrap.

The usual way to deal with that with a wrap would be to sand all the peeling lacquer smooth.

My advice which people will think insane, is to get a really powerful pressure washer and blast the lacquer off as much as possible.
It sounds like in your case as there is a colour difference it might be the car has had some paintwork done. If you started sanding the edges of the lacquer you could find more and more of it peels. and you just spend your life chasing it.

Just blast it off. Once you have gotten as much off as possible use a really high grit of sand paper to feather the edges of the lacquer into the paint.
Then polish the car with a machine polisher. (can be bought from places like lidl and Aldi for about £20-25)

It won't be perfect but it will look a damn sight better.

the other option is just to leave it but it will more likely than not get worse.

depending on how much you want to spend, given that wrapping isn't cheap you could take it to a couple of body shops and see what they would charge to fix the lacquer.

There's a body shop next to the MOT garage. Their Google reviews are overwhelmingly positive, so I'll pop in when it goes for MOT.
Thanks for the tips though.
D

 

[koalar]

You cannot fix or stop the peel. The only permanent fix is a professional respray.

Unless you know what you are doing I would stay away from dry sanding or even wet sanding even
with 1500 rubbing on an edge will cut through the base layer in a few rub making it worse, unless

The lacquer is now porous and the paint has degraded underneath any panels with orange will continue to peel

At 22 I suspect it's best to clean then wax and embrace it's character

I believe @irc had a red 100hp in a similar condition,

 

[irc]

I've now got a red 100hp AND a red Active Eco, both with really severe lacquer peel and looking much more orange than when they left the factory.
Neither is worth the cost of painting, despite being really solid as far as the usual Panda rust traps go.
On the other hand, both are cheap to insure and run, and I've probably got enough used spares (suspension, engines, gearboxes, rear beams, etc) to keep them both on the road for many years yet, leaving the running costs mainly as consumables and fuel.

 

[jrkitching]

Some good advice from others here. I've got a red 500, 8 years newer than yours, with worse lacquer peel than that. There's no way I'd put any time or money into trying to improve the paintwork.

Once a Panda reaches this sort of age, I'd only do what is necessary to keep it serviced and roadworthy. Anything else is basically spending money and/or time that you don't need to spend on a car that is only worth a few hundred pounds.

What you have is very good value transportation for as long as you can keep it safely on the road. Spending money on it unnecessarily just diminishes that value.

Paintwork deterioration with age seems to be a problem with solid red colours of many marques; just take a look in any car park.

 

[Dan at Adrian Flux]

Hello all!
I'm hoping some kind person can explain a few things to me.
I've got a 2004 1.2 Dynamic with peeling lacquer. Yes, it's bright red. Well, it was when new. Now one side is ok the rest is a strange orangey red. From closer inspection it appears to be the lacquer that's aged and begun to divorce the paint.
Now, I've been watching various YouTubers work on cars and they've mentioned products such as clay bars, snow foam, etc. In the 25 years I've been driving, and the many before that when helping Dad clean his car, I've only ever used shampoo and water, save one disastrous encounter with Tcut!
So my question is, would any of this stuff help me improve my paintwork? I know it'll never be concourse, but if I can get it to look a touch less unloved, I'll be happy.
And what exactly does a clay bar do? And snow foam?
I did speak to my insurers about putting vinyl on, but they said it'll push my premium up so that's out.
Any other ways I could improve the look of the paint instead? I'm on a budget but as the Demon turned 22 last week I decided to try and show it some love.
Thanks in advance
D and the Demon.

Hi.
If you need any help with insurance at all then please feel free to drop me a line.
Regards,
Dan.

 

[The Panda Nut]

Some good advice from others here. I've got a red 500, 8 years newer than yours, with worse lacquer peel than that. There's no way I'd put any time or money into trying to improve the paintwork.

Once a Panda reaches this sort of age, I'd only do what is necessary to keep it serviced and roadworthy. Anything else is basically spending money and/or time that you don't need to spend on a car that is only worth a few hundred pounds.

What you have is very good value transportation for as long as you can keep it safely on the road. Spending money on it unnecessarily just diminishes that value.

Paintwork deterioration with age seems to be a problem with solid red colours of many marques; just take a look in any car park.We had a Red Micra and it used to need deep clean and polish 3 times a year just to look ok. No more red for me.