Hey guys,

The previous owner of my car put on a cheap clear bra (some eBay brand). It was on the car for about ~6 months. I took it off as it turned yellow and cracked, but it left a discoloration on my clear coat. I tried to hand buff it with some rubbing compound, but no effect. To the touch, there is no difference in texture between the light and dark parts of the paint.

Anyone ever had to deal with this? Looking for some advice from the community on how to fix this. My best guess is to try fine sand the surface of the clear coat?

Thanks!

Okay, so the cheap ebay clear bra wasn't so cheap after all....it looks like it had a rather good UV shield in it. Looks like the rest of your paint has faded compared to that area. You could confirm that by looking up your paint code and checking out some touch-up paint or just see if you can find another silver car like yours. The only other thing I could think of would be some type of migratory plasticizers between the stick'um stuff that held on the clear shield and your clearcoat. Really all of this is kind of superfluous to the issue as I think you would have to repaint at least the entire nose/fenders/hood. I'm sure other guys will jump in here...... No amount of cutting/buffing is probably going to be a fix for that.....

DarrelK wrote:Okay, so the cheap ebay clear bra wasn't so cheap after all....it looks like it had a rather good UV shield in it. Looks like the rest of your paint has faded compared to that area. You could confirm that by looking up your paint code and checking out some touch-up paint or just see if you can find another silver car like yours. The only other thing I could think of would be some type of migratory plasticizers between the stick'um stuff that held on the clear shield and your clearcoat. Really all of this is kind of superfluous to the issue as I think you would have to repaint at least the entire nose/fenders/hood. I'm sure other guys will jump in here...... No amount of cutting/buffing is probably going to be a fix for that.....

Thanks for the reply. However, one thing I failed to mention is that the bra was on the car for about... 6 months or so. Is that enough time to create such a drastic difference in color?

If only 6 months that kind of supports the reaction with the glue if you ask me.... Oh, and I just had another horrible thought, no.....no one would have been stupid enough to leave that clear bra on and paint the rest of the car......would they?

I did a little more research on this and just want to throw something out there.... some vinyl wrap and clear shield installers do use a vinyl primer (3M 94 is one) on edges or if they think they are going to have areas that won't grab well enough. I always learned that you used the stuff sparingly at edges but I talked to a friend of mine that sends his shop customers down the road to a vinyl installer that said that on a few of the clear shield nose wraps they do use an aerosol prep. primer for extra stick. It can leave the same look on paint as you've got there. He said you might want to try some Goo Gone on a small test spot but don't get your hopes up.

Sand a spot near the edge with some 800 and see what happens. This will tell you how deep it goes. If it's just on top you may be able to sand and buff.