Even though we take pretty good care of Project IS-F, it is a daily driver and 10 years of daily driving had taken a toll on its looks. The Lexas has pretty good quality paint and we keep it clean and waxed but it still slowly and insidiously deteriorates, a lot of which isn’t super obvious to the naked eye. Our main beef with how the car was aging was that our clear bra was coming apart. We first noticed that it was starting to go about 3 years ago but you know we were busy and ignored it until it was really turning yellow, check cracking, peeling up around the edges, and holding dirt in the peeling edges. The dirt was starting to abrade the clear coat and the clear bra just made our whole car look like crap. We took our car to Wicked Auto Detailing in Santa Ana following the recommendations of a lot of our car friends for what we thought was just going to be a clear bra change. However, Sam Spier, the owner of Wicked Detailing recommended that we do a thorough paint correction and ceramic coating at this time. We figured why not, our paint was probably somewhat damaged under the rotting bra so we signed up for the whole package.
Upon arriving at Wicked Detailing, our car was given a though inspection, and any pre-existing damage was noted. Amazingly we have avoided all door dings on this car and only had a few rock chips. Not bad for 10 years.
Here is a peek at what our messed up clear bra was looking like, pretty ugly huh? I guess what do expect for 10 years of daily exposure to the elements.
The clear bra on the front of the hood was a mess, it was peeling up, check cracked, and shrinking. The edge attracted dirt and it was starting to abrade and dull the clear coat in this area.
The clear bra over the headlights was starting to buckle and crack. This really looked bad.
6 comments
Beautifully done! The IS-F has gained in value in the past few years, definitely worth preserving.
Wow! Huge transformation, I removed some clear bra sections off of my Scion FR-S and it was such a PITA. Here in Florida, like California we get year-round sunshine which really puts a beating on clear bras, paint, and pretty much anything it reaches. Mike, do you think Toyota/Lexus put in any extra work into the paint on this car being that it was a special edition? I know they recently have shown the paint process on limited colors (that fancy blue I can’t remember the name of) so I’m wondering if any technology similar to the Euro luxury brands was applied.
I think it’s a really good paint job, it still looks new after 10 years of daily use.
I thought you can’t clear bra over ceramic coat as it would peel much easier.
You sort of want it to be able to be peeled off!
Great thoughts were stated here, and they were not so difficult to understand. I wish people would be using these ways to solve their this issue. I am very hopeful.