So, to finish this story, I had a detailer come in today to detail the Superbee for a show next weekend. I showed him the shiny sections on the front fender and hood and explained what I thought it was, brake fluid eating away the clearcoat. Asked him if buffing it with rubbing compound might at least help blend the shiny section in so they weren't quite so obvious.
He spent about 10 minutes examining the areas in bright sunlight where they were most obvious. He then stated that the shiny sections were actually the correct paint and clearcoat, it was the rest of the car that was a problem. Turns out the entire car was covered with a fine mist of over spray. When he had me run my hand over the shiny sections, then the areas around it, the shiny sections were very smooth. The rest of the car was slightly rougher. He showed me the mist of overspray on the striping and superbee graphics on the hood, then took a razor blade to the windows and scraped overspray off. I thought the windows were just dirty or old. It was like the car had been driven through a light fog of paint.
He and his partner then spent the next 5 hours on the car using an air-buffer and rubbing compound and removed all of the overspray from the entire car. They scraped all the windows and did some magic on the graphics and pinstriping, chrome and rims.
The car looks like it just came off the showroom floor and the paint is at least 25-years old!
I told him the history of the car, stored in a warehouse in Atlanta for unknown years. He figures it must have been parked near a paint booth at some point and the booth wasn't sealed correctly.
Needless to say, the paint looks brand new so I won't have to spend $10,000+ on a new paint job because of brake fluid on the paint. In fact, had the brake fluid not been spilled on the car I might have never figured out the overspray issue. (Don't try this at home!)
I paid them twice what they were asking for.
