The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Paint and Body Shop Revisiting OLD paint jobs

Ever had a paint job turn out beautiful and then see it about 10 years later and see some kind of wierd problem develop?

I have two examples - I bought a totaled low mile Toyota Tercel 4x4 wagon that was an ugly gold color. I liked the Honda Westshire green metallic back then (about '92). Sectioned the roof and door pillar, got a few junkyard doors and fenders - took the rest of the car completely apart and painted it. Base + clear coat using PPG products. Well, my father inlaw now has the car and it still looks great - nice shine and cant even tell where the welds were. BUT, the entire roof is faded and looks chalky! I don't think the car has ever been waxed in 10 years . . . is that the problem?

One other paint job that started looking bad after only a few months in one spot. It was Imron base + Imron clear. I used some glazing? filler (it was blue and in a tube) to do a very small area on the hood that had a slight depression. The spot was no bigger than a dollar bill and blended out to nothing on the edges. Anyway, after painting it looked great, a few months later it started to look splotchy and eventually there were some small blister looking spots on it. Looked awful and it was right in the middle of the hood for everyone to see.

Anybody know the cause of these problems? I am getting ready to get serious about painting an AD truck and want to make sure I don't repeat what I dont know!

Ken I am no expert about paint but I did play one on tv. Wait that was someone else. Any way when I sold auto parts we also sold DuPont automotive paint. In my novice opinion the faded and chalky roof almost sound like some of the thinner/reducer is "pulling". This is where the thinner/reducer is the wrong temp for the time when the car was painted. What happens is the thinners/reducers get traped in the paint when it doesn't have time to evaporate normally. Then what happen 6 month to a year later is that the thinners "Pull" to the serface and cloud up the paint job. I don't know if this is really the case because I am thinking you painted the car all at once and used the same thinner/reducer for the whole job. This is just what it sounds like to me.

We had customer that would use the wrong temp reducers on perpose because he could get the paint to "flow" better. Well his paint jobs looked great for the first month or two and then the looked like primer.

As for the imron job I don't know maybe someone else can shed some light on it.

Good luck on your future painting projects.

If you got ten years out of a paint job you done good. I had one go bad after one. Which is why I don't paint cars anymore!

Toyota Tercel 4x4 wagon
is most likely damaged caused my the sun its in the clear coat. My dads van has the same thing on the side that always sat in the sun.

The second paint job is most likely either the paint under the filler wasn't completely cured and the filler trapped some solvents in it or under until it finally blistered out or the filler its self didnt fully harden before you painted. Hoods are one of the worst things to put filler on because the constant change in temperature.

Ken, on the Tercel I bet it's just an oxidation issue and since it was never waxed or buffed it just got eaten by the sun. Paints from the mid '80's on had to be reformulated for environmental regulations and many of them have not had good UV resistance. They are just now getting things right. Japanese and US paints were the worst, for some reason the Germans got it right and 15 year old BMW's still have good paint for the most part. Red, black, and blue seem to be the worst for oxidation problems. I need to do my annual deep polish of my red Miata for the winter's sun damage. I keep it waxed but it is parked outside most of the time and it starts to oxidise. A good buffing and wax job cleans it up nicely.

On the blue filler that you used it was probably the filler's fault. That stuff has a lot of solvent in it and it was probably incompatible with the paint.