Paint Oxidizing

'96 XJ Classic Up Country

About a year ago, I noticed the paing was beginning to oxidize in a few spots on the roof, on the top of the rear hatch, and on the top of the driver's-side fender. I didn't worry about them, but they're getting a lot worse lately, I don't care so much about the appearance as I do about warding off potential rust. I guess I'm paying the price for not waxing it enough in the past. Is there anything I can do to stabilize the oxidation and prevent it from getting worse?

Two years ago, you could have gotten away with "wax on...wax off..." But since it has gotten pretty bad, it needs to be polished out with either a light compound or an oxidation remover.

I use a multitude of products, but it depends on what color the car is. And that depends entirely on the finish work.

If you don't care about the finish and just want it to stop the oxidation, then just knock the oxidation off with a polish and wax over it.

If it's clear coated, it's finished. Nothing can be done except a paint job. And yes if you had kept wax on it it would probably still be good. If it's not a clear coat color you can buff it out if there is enough paint on the car. 96 XJs can come either way. Metalics are clear coated, solid colors can be base/clear or single stage. If you have the white scaley crap that's pitted or peeling you have clearcoat. I was a bodyman/painter for many years & I worked on lots of new Cherokees in the mid 80s & 90s.

I had pretty good luck color sanding the clear coat (wet sanding with 600 or 400 grit) and rattle can Urethane. Not OEM quality but good enough for me. I sanded just enough to get the scale off, but stopped before sanding the color coat very much.
I did two flares and the nose, both have held up well for a couple of years now.
95% of the milky scale stuff disappeared with a coat of Urethane, but like I said, not perfect but good enough.

8Mud said:

I had pretty good luck color sanding the clear coat (wet sanding with 600 or 400 grit) and rattle can Urethane. Not OEM quality but good enough for me. I sanded just enough to get the scale off, but stopped before sanding the color coat very much.
I did two flares and the nose, both have held up well for a couple of years now.
95% of the milky scale stuff disappeared with a coat of Urethane, but like I said, not perfect but good enough.

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Do you mean clear urethane?

The color is black, by the way.

And again, I really don't care much about how it looks, I just want to stabilize it and stop it from getting worse.

My son in law did the sanding & rattle can thing on my daughters ford truck & 6 months later it looked worse than ever, but I'm picky. Unfortunately most black XJs are clear coated. If you're going to sand & spray just do it with black, forget the clear. This is because you don't need clear over black. If you had a metalic or hard to match color, maybe.

XJs are notorious for this. You're lucky you went 10-12 years before it started getting bad. I've heard some started getting bad within 5 years. I've also heard of people who DID religiously wash and wax and still had the problem. Seems like there was even a lawsuit settlement or something for some model years, although I don't think they did a full recall.

However, I wasn't aware that this was a potential rust problem. How is that? I don't see any metal showing, just that funky white showing everywhere. Are you saying the metal under the white parts is unprotected? How would I check for developing rust?

Mine is Forest Green with the clearcoat and has the problem real bad on the roof, but the rest of the body is still in fairly good shape.

seanof30306@yahoo. said:

Is there anything I can do to stabilize the oxidation and prevent it from getting worse?

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You can keep your XJ in a vaccuum so there is no oxygen to oxidize.


Kinda not so good for usefulness though.