hey guys i have a question i had bought my brother a carbon fiber hood scoop for his mustang last year. now it looks horrible. he has tried using a polishing compound and scratch x2.0 on it and nothing has worked. is there any way to fix this or should he repaint it?

ill attach pictures when i get home cause i have a work censor.

 

Hmm.. Clear coat coming off? I don't think any amount of wax is going to help that. Might be time to sand polish and re-seal.

 

Once you have gone through the resin and into the the fiber, no amount of polishing is going to shine it up. You will need to prep it and get a good quality clear coat on it. Then it should look good again and can be polished if needed.

It is possible the resin has been damaged by the sun. Sanding it with fine sandpaper should help there but you will still need top coat with a good clear coat to bring back the shine.

 

Most carbon fiber hoods suffer from oxidation of the resin itself and it's a pretty easy fix using M80 Speed Glaze with a DA Polisher.

You can also do this by hand but it's a lot more work and if you want to do it by hand then you probably ought to get the M105 for your oxidation remover and then use a polish like #7 followed by wax.

You can also restore your carbon fiber hood by hand with paint cleaners like ScratchX or Deep Crystal Paint Cleaner using a piece of terry cloth and some elbow-grease.

The idea is to,

1) Remove the oxidation - Pick one: ScratchX, Deep Crystal Paint Cleaner, M80 Speed Glaze or M105 Ultra Cut Compound

They all have the ability to remove oxidation, M105 will do it the fastest, followed by M80, followed by ScratchX followed by DCPC


2) After you remove the oxidation, apply a pure polish like #7 to really gorge the polyester resin with polishing oils. Apply this, work it in and wipe it off. The exception would be if you used M80 Speed Glaze because it already has a lot of polishing oils in it so if you use M80 then afterwards you can go straight to wax.

NOTE: ONLY WAXES NEED TO DRY

Every other paint care product is an apply, work the product and then wipe it off.


3) After you apply the #7 and wipe it off, now apply a wax. Let the wax fully dry and then wipe it off and Ta-Da! A brand new looking Carbon Fiber hood. Now maintain this with regular polishing and waxing or it will oxidize again.

Im a HUGE meguiars fan btw lol. It all depends on the condition and if the fibers are exposed..

 

pictures are up. sorry it took so long.

 

It's common. It needs to be sanded and recleared with a proper automotive grade clearcoat. The resin that they have on the parts is often not strong enough to live with the UV rays for long. It's fixable though as long as you don't have bubbles, blisters or giant resin potato chips coming off of the part yet.

 

THANKS YA THATS WHAT I WAS TOLD