Now, this is a great way to save yourself about $150-200 depending on what some shops charge, to restore your clear coat on your carbon fiber hood...

First. what you wanna do is remove your hood.



Now, I put my hood up on (2) kick-stands, but you have put it on a table or anywhere you please, just make sure its outdoors, and now what you wanna do is wet your carbon fiber hood and slightly wash it, make sure theres no dirt or bird poop on it lol


Heres a close-up of how oxidized my hood was you can see the imprinted water damage it left


Now, what your gonna be using now is a spray bottle and really fine wet-sand paper


Here is the wetsand paper i used


Now, what your gonna do is start wetting and sanding on the oxidation of the hood,, you will see it start to come off, now be carful you dont go too deep in this process, and to make things easier do it by sections because your going to have to let it dry to make sure the oxidation is really gone, so also make sure its a really sunny day, so you keep repeating the process till its gone..your going to have to do MORE THAN ONE PASS to completely remove everything; just gotta ge patient and let it dry

in sections

Now, once your done, and if u went in a little too deep, your going to see alot of little scratches due to the wetsanding, and the oxidation will be gone but itll looked scratched,, dont worry we're going to remove that now, you will need this!, and if you dont have a buffer, its okay u can use a soft cloth but itll take a little bit longer, but you u just rub this all of the hood in a circular motion

once your about done, itll look like this:

now, your gonna rub some of this stuff on it, this compliments the rubbing compound:

Once your done it should look like new like this!





Now, at this point its up to you!, the reason i didnt do it is because it got late, but what you can do now is wash your hood and maybe clay-bar it. make sure theres no oils or prints on it, and go to your local auto-zone/Kragen and pick up a can of clear coat, and do it yourself, make sure you add about 3 coats of clear coat, letting every coat dry for atleast 30 minutes and let your final coat dry for 6 hours

 

wow great work. at that point i would take it to a body shop and have them shoot the hood with some anti UV clear.

 

thanks..or you can do that too..thats a good idea!

 

Looks good. Nice write-up. Makes you feel good when you get rid of the crappy glaze and can see the CF again.

An "in-between" on the clear might be something like I bought last year. I had bought a Seibon lip and after knowing how badly their stuff yellows, I bought some clear at a local paint store. I put about five coats on the lip and it was hard as a rock.
The clear is Spray Max 1K Acrylic Clear Coat. Part # 3 680 058. I couldn't find much online for this part, but a good paint shop might have it or something comparable.
You definitely want to use a respirator with this stuff. I didn't and gassed myself VERY badly.
I think I paid 9 or 10 bucks a can for it.

 

oh yea, clear coat is really strong! and it does feel good to fix it and knowing you saved yourself alot of money doing it yourself..

 

I'd be interested to see how this looks in the sun.

 

ill wash my car tomorrow and take a pic of it so u can see..i still havent done the clear coat though

 

Nice write up!!!

 

Good stuff, but what you're ultimately doing is thinning the clear coat layers no? That means if you ever get oxidation again and you repeat this process, you risk damaging the carbon fiber as the clear coat will all be rubbed off.

 

well technically yea thats what it is..but at the end of the write-up i say go buy a bottle of clear coat and give it a good 3 coats..that way..itll be a good while before you see oxidation again. or you can take to a shope like Nexx said and get a UV protection clear coat.. well i mean all and all you save yourself about 100 dollars or more doing this yourself..ofcourse you dont get the guarantee or warranty as you might do with a shop, but thats what you get for DIY..but yea..your right..which is why i would recommend to clear coat it after this process

 

im wanting to do this on my current car...

clearcoat is fading with black base coat underneath, dont have money to take it to the paint shop so....

if I sand off the clear and ONLY use the rubbing and polishing compound then waxs it'll give it a clearcoat like affect (shiny)

how long will this last if I dont clear it? will it eventually come off with a few washes?

 

very nice!

 

I would take it to someone who color sands and buffs cars profesionaly, otherwise you risk sanding thru, or burning the paint. And especially on black you will be left with swirls and sand scratches out the @$$, if you don't know how do it properly. Even the way the op did it there are swirls left behind. 1000 grit paper is way to course to be able to be buffed and polished out. I would use as fine a paper as you can get ahold of, I believe autozone etc sells up to 2000 grit. And you can't just polish the scratches out. You have to use Compound then polish. But please, this is not for the inexperienced, you can seriously *** up your paint if you don't know what your doing.

 

oh yea definately be careful IF you do attempt to try it..i mean with carbon fiber you can kinda take a better risk..since its somewhat hard to notice because of the weaves in the carbon fiber ..but i know your really anxious to get rid of and understand you wouldnt want to waste money on something like that..trust me i felt the sameway, so like i said IF you do go for it, i recommend to just try it on a little piece or a little corner somwhere where if you mess up, it would be so noticable that way you can see if your gonna be able to do it..another thing i recommend is just try it out with rubbing compound instead of the water sanding first..i really dont think rubbing compound will do damage (if you were to mess up) like the sand paper would, especially if the color is black!...you should check on youtube i think i had seen people do DIY's on removing oxidation from regular paint on cars..

 

Thanks for the DIY write up. I really wasn't sure at all how I was going to get rid of that stuff. This is what mine looks like afterward. Now I just wish there wasn't any cracks in my hood.

 

Looks good.

 

wow looks good! and same hood too!..did u do it exactly how i did mine? and used the same stuff or did u do it different?

 

Can you get some close up shots of the hood in the sun. I'm not convinced that little orbital polisher is powerful enough to remove 1000 grit wetsand marks.

 

^ It isn't

 

I went and got the same exact stuff. Found it all at the Napa Auto parts down the street. I grabbed a buffer from my friends garage the day after I read your original post. Took me a good 4 hours but it was worth it.