A4 B8 Avant bumper clear coat peeling due to something splattering up off the road

So, 3 weeks after picking up my 2010 A4 which had 97k on the clock but was looking pretty good considering, just a few stone chips hear and there on the front bumper and leading edge of the bonnet, I noticed the clear coat on the bumper has some sort of splatter across the whole offside beyond the reg plate that has removed the clear coat completely in big patches and has lifted it all over the shop in little splatter marks. It's fairly obvious that some chemical (brake fluid, acid or something) has been floating on the road and has splashed up from the opposite side. Interestingly the paint coat is fine, no lifting or patching on that. Luckily it didn't get as far as the metal bodywork

Does anyone have any idea what can lift clear coat clean off but leave the paint layer intact? If I knew what it was that was on the road surface that caused this I'd buy some to do the job properly ;-)

Ideally I'd like to carefully remove the entire clear coat and either rub down the few stone chips and respray or just reapply the clear coat. I could just leave it but it looks pretty 'scabby'.

Looking for advice to do the job properly folks.

Thanks in advance,
Mark

Zafi said:

You might be right, but another possibility is the bumper was jetwashed and it peeled off the clear coat. This will not be obvious until the base coat gets grubby.

I doubt you will get a good result by keying it with scotchbrite and redoing the clear coat, you probably need to paint the whole bumper with both coats, may as well do the chipped bonnet front and blend it into the wings and bonnet.

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Thanks for the info Zafi. It was definitely intact for 3 weeks as I gave it a couple of hand washes after long trips and there was no sign of any damage whatsoever. I'm no forensic scientist but from the pattern it's obviously been some sort of chemical splashing from below. I'm pretty sure it happened between work and home one night. Roads were awash continuously back then. Just bad luck. Whatever it was did a great job of peeling off the clear coat without damaging the paint. If only I know what it was I could peel the whole bumper ;-)

Some sort of solvent probably. With all the flooding we had we could have had all sorts of stuff floating around on puddles. The Ariel Atom is rarely used these days since I had my new wig fitted