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<Misc> BMW Paint
What kind of crap are BMWs painted with these days???
Yesterday I briefly parked my '96 328is under a tree while attending a meeting,
and found upon my return that two pigeons had mistaken my hood for their
toilet! So I immediately ran to the car wash, and gave the car a nice
thorough washing. The bird crap could have been on the hood for a maximum of 1
and a half hours, assuming it happened right when I walked away from the car.
Well: imagine my surprise to notice that even though the clearcoat on the hood
was perfectly smooth to the touch, if you looked at it with the light shining
on it you could perfectly well see the blueprint of the two bird-craps!!! I
tried washing the things off with BMW car shampoo, since I refused to believe
that it could actually have corroded the clearcoat, but to no avail... So,
either the pigeons had eaten nuclear waste (which in Paris is not so
unlikely!), were glowing green, and then I could conceive that their crap would
have such disastrous results, but otherwise... damn! Bird crap is certainly
something BMW engineers should keep in mind when testing the resistance of
their paints, no?
I am saying this also because a while back I took my car on its first 1500 km
roadtrip, which consisted basically of freeway driving at speeds of around 160
km/h on average (to keep up with the flow of traffic :-). Well, upon my return
and a thorough cleaning of the cemetery which my front grill/fender had become,
I discovered several small to medium chips in the paint. None of my older cars
(which had all the defects in the world) ever had a paint this sensitive!
Did my car get a particularly poor paint batch, or are there others out there
with similar problems?
Thanks for the bandwith (oufff - I needed to let some of that steam out!!! ;-)
Cheers everyone, and a public thanks to Richard for his continued efforts to
keep the digest going!
Alberto.Schileo@domain.elided
Paris, France
'96 328is coupe (with indelible bird-crap marks on the hood)