What to do about peeling lacquer on a bumper

[Steve McF]

Well I was trying to do a couple of bits on my son's SORNed 57 reg Ford Focus estate that's in our garage at the moment.

The headlights are a bit cloudy so I had a go at one of them wuth T Cut headlight restorer. It got rid of the greeny hue, but the surface looks and feels a bit rough and opaque. So next plan is to use the fine grade wet and dry on them, and lacquer them.

But, talking of lacquer, the front bumper seems to have very bad lacquer peel on one side. It seems to lift in places like clingfilm!!!

The paint colour still seems fine. So I was wondering, whether the car needs to go to a body shop to  do it properly, or if it is something I could tackle with some aerosol lacquer?

My worry would be damaging the exposed paint surface.

Should I try to peel off any loose bits of lacquer, and would anything need rubbing down before applying the lacquer?

[carrera]

On the headlights I use 800 or 1000 grade wet n dry paper, then 2000, T-cut & then autoglym polish.

As for the peeling lacquer, you'll need to rub down to eliminate the lip, then apply basecoat & lacquer. But apply lacqueer before the basecoal so that it goes on wet & blends in better. That's the theory anyway, I have a bit of that to do on the 9000 and a Polo that needs the whole roof doing, not tried it yet, but building on what i have done/learnt

[sgould]

The problem I had with peeling lacquer on the old Merlot 9-3 wing mirrors was trying to get a key for the clearcoat.  I tried and it didn't work. I gave up and found used covers in the correct colour.

If you just peel off the loose lacquer and spray more on, it's unlikely to bond.  If you rub down the paint under the lacquer, the metallic/mica will be exposed, and the colour will change.  I think that you will need to prepare and respray the whole bumper in body colour and then lacquer.

When I painted the new rear spoiler on the 9-5 estate, I left too long between the top coat of colour and the lacquering, and it's all peeling off.