Originally Posted by
unworthy1
back to the topic, then: "blooming" from moisture, in my experience, results in a "haze" getting trapped in the transparent varnish, not on the surface. I'm sure I haven't seen every kind of "bloom" there is, but this doesn't look like it to me. It was never something that could be scraped off, but had to be worked out, either with careful heat or (hazardous) chemicals. Often it would just work itself out over time (as the moisture eventually evaporated), but the customer usually didn't want to wait and "suffer".
Looks to me more like acid rain at work on what automotive wax or polish may be left on the surface.
I'd also suggest gentle cleaners, like the clay bar or cleaner wax, go to polishing compound if it's really stubborn.
This was a milkiness
in a layer on top of nice, shiny paint which was revealed by scraping that top layer off with a thumb nail. It seems the top layer absorbed the water and that made it both highly visible and easy to scrape off. Now that it's dried out you can't see the blotches but you can still see there is
something there and you can see where I scraped it off with my nail. Scratching it with a nail has no effect now that it's dry.
Here is the 1st photo I posted - you can see where I've scraped it off on the far left of the lug:
[IMG]
Untitled by
Dawes-man, on Flickr[/IMG]
And this is what it looks like, dried out and taken from the left rather than the right. Where I scraped the gunge off is just visible in the centre of the lug.
[IMG]
Untitled by
Dawes-man, on Flickr[/IMG]
The scrape is more visible in this shot, as well as a smaller area further down the lug where the top layer has been scratched off:
[IMG]
Untitled by
Dawes-man, on Flickr[/IMG]
I'm about to go at it with polishing compound so stay tuned - it 5:30am so I have to be quiet. I would leave this window open but by the time I'm back it won't load.