My 03' XKR I bought this fall is in excellent condition and was seasonally and fair weather babied and garaged for it's 52k life.

The only visible issues are on the hood, where the paint has numerous chips or cracks or 'checking'. The overall field of the hood looks great, and from a few feet away you don't even notice. But they appear in probably 10 seemingly random unrelated places, not corresponding to any particular interference or anything underneath (ie. not due to the SC pressing on the underside or the like).

They all follow a distinct pattern which I've never encountered. Look much like a crack or a scratch - I actually thought they were close ups of windshield chips in the sellers pictures at first (being a dark car). They seem to emanate from small existing chips in many or most cases. Not a single one has spidered or spread out - all very discrete lines.

Has anyone run into anything like this on our cars or any others? Advice? Expectations? I really don't even mind them as long as they don't progress and cause the paint to fail more substantially. The rest of the body is flawless.

 

Looks exactly like rocks impacts.

I have them on my car, it’s a daily driver in all 4 extreme seasons

Z

 

We have plenty of stone chips on our car, but no cracks at all, I wonder if the bonnet has been resprayed.

 

I'd agree - they do look like rock chips to start, but the crack lines I have never seen something like that. And it's in quite a few places all very similar. @zray Do your rock chips have those cracks?

It's possible it could be resprayed. Definitely not the whole car but maybe the hood? I do see it has that interference where the hood insulation rubs on the supercharger - maybe that was a problem at one point and required a respray? The cracks aren't in that area, and I verified with a endoscope through the vents that it's not in contact currently... but maybe was addressed and led to a flawed respray. My laymans inspection sure looks like it wasn't but that's about the easiest panel to redo and have look seamless.

 

no, not all of them, but say 10% or more do have those cracks. I have numerous other chipped areas that are just showing the typical type of impact.

i think it has to do with the shape of the rock more than anything else

 

I suspect a critter was getting on the hood. Raccoon or…

 

That does look like damage from the bottom up. Maybe someone closed the hood with tools laying under it? I don't think original paint would crack like that from rock chips. Unless it *was* re-sprayed at one time & they used cheap paint...

 

This was on my first XK8, which was in black. The bonnet was not resprayed, it is factory paint. This is the beginning of the clearcoat failing, accelerated by something like a rock chip. Hence why it's on your bonnet, and cracks all the way through to the paint. The only thing you can really do is to have the bonnet repainted, or you might be able to experiment with compounds / clearcoat fillers. I tried a bunch of things on my XK8 but didn't find a solution.

 

Good to hear (or maybe bad) - this seemed to make the most sense. Every one has a tiny chip at the center - like you say, accelerating it. And none line up with any under-hood pressure points - completely random locations, and all look pretty much the same. Luckily it's not affected anywhere else on the car, so worst case I can have the hood resprayed. Hopefully just doesn't get too much worse - I'm fine with it as it is now.

 

If you really want to prevent it from spreading, you can do a paint correction (compound and polish), then seal with ceramic coating. It wouldn't be very difficult and would insure the problem doesn't get any worse. I've painted entire front ends / bumpers with no experience and it isn't too difficult either, but paint correction and ceramic coating is much easier and more practical.