De-badge gone wrong? Ryan!!!

[Jfridge92]

So a lot of the G guys debadge their trunk, which I did today because it's fairly busy with the logo, INFINITI letters, and G37 badge. I've debadged a few cars without issue before. In this case, I used fishing line to gently go behind each letter to break the adhesive off, and then I used goo-gone to clean up all the remaining adhesive. Before I was going to go over the area with polish/wax, I noticed that even though all of the adhesive was gone, it looked like there were still edges where the letters had been. Upon closer investigation, it looks like the clear coat is actually peeling around where each letter was, almost as if the badges were installed before the original clear coat cured.

When it comes to clear coat restoration, i'm not all too familiar with the process, but I can say that these marks DO catch my finger nail and feel lower than the surrounding paint. Any of the detail-wizards on here have any ideas or suggestions?

I really dont' want to have to re-spray the entire trunk lid, as that would be quite costly. Wetsanding would be a last resort, but before I touch anything I would love someone more experienced here to weigh in.

Here isthe best shot I could get of the area.

[96 SSEi]

I would first try to buff it, no wax. then heat to about 100f and buff again. you want to hit the defect at a right angle, so 90 degrees and with the length of crack - buffer spinning you lower it to defect - you want to weld the crack together - with wax and buff out - its hard to explain , but, with a good eye, lots of patience and time, you can get an admirable outcome - you cant make it perfect, you are shooting for - not being the focal point of the area.

[RJolly87]

Is it possible that there was another layer of clear coat applied after the badges went on, such as a respray?

[crash93ssei]

If the area where the badge was is lower then the surrounding paint and the clear coat around it is peeling, you have a respray, a cheap respray at that. They taped around the badge and painted up to it. You can try to wet sand it to feather it out and polish it back out but doing so will compromise the respray where feathered and will result in then a larger area of clear coat failure. The absolute only way to properly fix it is to have the whole trunk lid removed, completely debadged and then repainted.

[ddalder]

Yup, that's definitely non-factory clear on there. Very disappointing. Lousy, corner-cutting workmanship. I've always believed that there's nothing as good as factory paint but when you have to paint, it's got to be done right. So sorry to see that on your car.

[Jfridge92]

Yeah, it seems that unfortunately that's likely what happened, which is strange because the car is in such pristine condition otherwise that I don't really get why they resprayed the trunk. Oh well, that's beside the point. I'm going to try and feather it out with a very fine grit wet sandpaper, polish, then seal/wax. It's still really shiny in the center area where there is "original" clear coat, so maybe I'll get lucky and can make that last for a while and not have to get a respray immediately. I'm all for doing things the right way, especially with a car like this, I just can't immediately afford to shell out $3-400 for a trunk lid respray.

Upon researching on the G37 boards though, it seems like this is actually sort of common when debadging these cars. Everyone talks about how the paint on Infiniti's of this gen is garbage, so I wonder if that has something to do with it as well.

[96 SSEi]

I would inspect the trunk and rear - could have been in a non-reported collision or rust repair

if you want it to look sharp, you will have to paint the whole panel and match with existing paint. personally, I would hide it under the badges.

[96 SSEi]

I would inspect the trunk and rear - could have been in a non-reported collision or rust repair

if you want it to look sharp, you will have to prep and paint the whole panel and match with existing paint. personally, I would hide it under the badges if I cared.

[Jfridge92]

I wetsanded the area this morning with 2,000 grit. I figured I would start off higher to be careful. I was able to feather the edges of the letters flat, so that they no longer catch your nail when you wipe over the area. The ever so slight difference in the OEM clearcoat underneath and the top clearcoat that peeled is there when the panel is wet, but after buffing, sealing, and waxing, you really have to be about 3 inches away from the area to tel that the indentations are still there.

It's not perfect, but it will get by for the time being until I can call around to body shops about having the panel re-sprayed, and then save up for that.

I've been planning to get an OEM front lip for the car anyway, so it may make sense to pull the trunk lid off and bring that and the lip to the shop and have them both painted together. The issue will be $$$$ though. It's a lot harder to justify why I need to re-paint parts of my car to the wife lol, especially when I've barely had it 2 months.

Here's the same area of panel that's in the photo in the first post, and then an overall shot of the rear trunk lid now.
If you look VERY closely, you can see the ghosting where the letters were, but at least it isn't flaky now. Hopefully keeping up with sealing and waxing the area will get me by for a while.




I'm also in the process of wrapping all of the chrome trim in gloss black, and the OEM trunk finisher where the backup camera is was first on the list. It looks so much better than all the chrome.

Tail overlays will hopefully be on in the next few weeks.

[96 SSEi]

nice!!... good job