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Are they orbital sanding marks in the rear glass? Eek! Yeah the paint looks way too bad to detail, it'll cause more issues. Treat the visible surface rust and wrap it. If you dig too deep the car will be pulled apart to the point where you either scrap it or spend £10 or £15k bringing it back to life.
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Nothing would surprise me with this one so I wouldn’t rule it out! The fuel filler is a state which I imagine was caused by a sander, that’s yet another thing on the list to look at. I have a vague idea of replacing all the silver bits (rear diffuser, fuel filler, mirrors, front grille) with carbon fibre or carbon fibre look, but that’s definitely something for down the road once I’ve sorted the big ticket items.
@Dammit yes I’ve sadly already had that experience with the rust dragon, prepping the underside for treatment with lanoguard we discovered a rather sizeable hole in the rear subframe so it’s going in for a new one of those and new spring pans, and whilst we’re at it the mag ride shocks are on the way out and the springs are corroded so we’re throwing some Bilstein B14s on it at the same time. I know the maths is going to show that once that lot’s done I could just have bought a Cayman to start with but where’s the fun in that? I’m not quite in the realms of a full engine redesign yet but give it a couple of years… ;)
ASTTer
Monster post warning, Tl:dr - the paint on my car is shit and I want to have a moan and ask for ideas...
The paint on my TTS is awful. I knew this when I bought it, and was hoping getting a detailer to machine polish it would bring it back to life, but I've had a guy with a great reputation come round to look at it and he's not comfortable taking the job on. It appears a previous owner has attempted a DIY respray (or used a complete cowboy company to do it), which has led to a lot of issues. For a starter compare how dull the finish is to the not exactly clean family Seat in front of it:
Next up we have the world's worst bonnet. The swirls that have caught the light are all over it, just not picked out by the camera. This is particularly irritating as I can see it whilst driving. I have no idea how they got it into this state and/or why they decided to leave it like that.
Lacquer flaking underneath the front light, which will become rust city if not dealt with:
Corrosion where water has sat around the base of the rear window, presumably due to the area not being properly painted and sealed:
Poor finishing around where the front bumper joins:
As these pictures show, the new paint appears to have reacted with something so it has bubbled. This is the main reason the detailer wasn't happy to take the car on, as he felt he'd cause more problems than he'd solve with a machine polish as these would all start to burst.
Now of course getting a perfect finish back would require a full respray, but that would come to more than I bought the car for. It's got 135,000 on the clock so I'm not fussed about getting a factory-new finish, but would like something a bit less awful.
I've spoken to a body shop and been quoted around £1900 to get it back to 'decent' condition. This would include removing the rear boot section and around the headlights and fully respraying, and then sanding back and doing the best job he can on the rest of it. I'm inclined to go ahead with that, but was just wondering if anyone had any other suggestions for getting it to a passable condition? I've thought about maybe trying to get hold of a boot and/or rear trunk panel from a car that's being broken, but I think there is then the question of how good the colour match to the original (Sprint Blue I believe) is given how poor the respray job was. The detailer I got out works with prestige cars and achieves a very high standard, so I also wonder whether an all over machine polish would get it 'good enough'.
I'm groping around in the dark here really as I have no expertise in paint, so any ideas I might not have thought of would be very much appreciated!