[N54Fiend]

I finally decided to pull the trigger on a project car recently and picked up a hooptie of an E92 335i. It's going to be more work that it's worth, but it'll keep me busy so that's that.

I ended up looking at 3 cars over the course of 2 months and all 3 had this same paint issue. Sun damage of some sort, but I've never really seen this before... They were all 2007-2009 E9x cars and I couldn't believe they all went bad the same way.



This is an image of the trunk of the car I purchased. It's everywhere basically though. And even funnier, I purchased a junkyard fender on ebay to replace my cracked up one... It had the same exact issue also!

I've seen fading, peeling, and bubbling but never this. Is this crazing?

I'm curious to know, who's seen this before? Also, the only option is repaint, right?

I guess an alternative would be to prep the car and wrap over the sanded body... Or plasti-dip. Thoughts?

[whyzee125]

Wtf? I've owned 4 e90s and have driven many more and I've never once seen this. Maybe when the paint fails this is how it looks but they go bad more quickly in Fl? I live in Tn and most e90s here still have nice paint with the occasional black one with fading/peeling cleacoat.

[jkrig]

Kinda looks like crows feet, on steroids.....crows feet is when the paint start to crack beneath the clear coat....could be from a bad repair/re-spray.....

[cwidds]

The paint on my hood is doing the exact same thing! I posted pictures a few weeks ago on here and some people said it looked like my clear coat was failing. I decided that wrapping my car would be the best option for me.

[bluewater328]

This looks more like too much time parked on the side of the road where the grass gets weed wacked.

Wrapping is the same cost and solution as painting. IMO, it'll be more work for a more fragile surface. The wrap is going to show these etches unless you completely sand it down/fill. If that's the case, you just prepped for paint. Paint seals in the surface prep under a hidden layer and allows you to clearcoat to your budget's desire.

[eku1s]

I had this on the bonnet (hood for you US folk) of my BMW E82. When I saw it I was totally confused as to how it had happened.. it looked like someone had emptied a skip full of rubble on top of it.

The day I sold it, the guy who took it in told me it was down to a poor re-spray. He didn't specifically say what was wrong, but it very quickly became clear that half the car had been 'repaired' at some point prior to my ownership, with no documentaiton to prove it.

Made sense why two of the alloys were mismatched paint shades...

[mehrlovin]

I have never seen and have had 2 clear coat failures. Mine failed with moisture getting underneath and then bubbling. Since this is not bubble-like at all, I think its UV damage of some sort. This is really extreme though and even if you wrap it, it might show. You're going to end up having to sand it down.

[ADEe92]

I'm with eku1s - looks like a poor quality respray that has crazed.