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if a vehicle has the clear coat peeling off on a large section of vehicle can it be re sprayed with clear coat or does it require total paint removal and redone

thanks

trouble with the once it's failed thing is the base coat is no longer protected so "what's happened to it in the mean time?" has already begun... will it fail under the fresh CC ????

It's as easy to take off both as it is just the CC.
A razor blade and a heat gun will take most of it off about as quick as anything and it's cheap and relatively dust free and.... quiet. (I don't suggest this for old original type paint but I find the BC/CC is easier)

Strip it down & re do it. This is usually caused by the sun, due to not enough mils in the clear, which means the clear coat is too thin.
Common causes are not enough coats, or too much material was removed from sanding & buffing.
It's always good practice to put on an extra coat, if you are planning on doing excessive buffing.

Someone told me that you do a minimum of 7 coats of clear because 3 or 4 or them will be sanded off during the wet sanding process. When you understand mil thickness, that makes sense. Then not to mention all the buffing and waxing you will do over the years.

Clear coat eventually fails regardless of thickness. If you catch it early enough and the base coat is a solid color, you theoretically can sand off just the clear and reshoot it over the existing base coat. But, it is hard to do without sanding through the base coat. If the base coat is metallic, you have to reapply both base and clear as sanding metallic base coat ruins it (you sand partially into the metal flakes which changes the look).

If the clear has just failed in a localized area, and the base is a solid color, you can spot repair the clear by sanding/feathering the failed area and applying clear to nearest panel break. If base color is metallic, you will need to blend the base/clear repair.

Since the OP doesn't mention the vehicle in question I'll add that CC from many car makers during the 80's was prone to failure anyway. Not enough UV protection I believe. Modern CC is a different animal (good one's not cheap ones...)

97 Thunder bird

I did a quick search for 90's era Tbird paint failures and it isn't pretty...
I agree with the advice I found that say's strip it down to factory primer
do your prep then
Sealer coat
color coat
CC