Peeling clearcoat on a Saturn

[Monkeyleg]

I already had a thread going about whether or not to keep an old car. In this case, it's my 1991 Saturn.

One great thing about Saturns is the polymer body panels. No rust, no dents, and the paint seems to last forever.

Today a noticed two spots on the car where the clearcoat is peeling. Both areas are relatively small.

Can the peeling be stopped before it gets worse? Use another can of clearcoat to spray the areas? Sand the areas and then buff them out?

Thanks for any suggestions.

[Brad Johnson]

Sand the peeling spots to feather the edges to the still-adhered clear, scuff everything lighlty, then shoot another coat.

Unfortunately, the factory clear may still begin delaminating under the new clear.  The only way to resolve it entirely is to sand away the all factory clear and shoot a new coat.

Brad

[Monkeyleg]

Brad, how did you ever get to know so much about so many different subjects?

It's been over twenty years since I did paint jobs on cars. I hope I'm up to the task.

The last paint job I did was on my '69 Jag XKE. The guy I was competing with at the Jaguar concourse event had spent thousands of dollars on his paint job. When my car beat his, he had his completely repainted.

Let's hope I still have at least some minor painting skills left.

[Gewehr98]

Ok, that wasn't a sucker punch - much.

I doubt Brad knew beforehand that Dick was a Concours d'Elegance level painter.  I didn't even know that, it sounded from the original posting that Dick was a novice looking for help, and Brad simply offered assistance.

Was the response given really warranted? 

 

[Monkeyleg]

Gewehr98, the last time I did a paint job on a car was that E-Type back in 1986  or so.

I don't know anything about clearcoats, as I always shot lacquer. And I always put on a couple of extra coats, so that I could sand them smooth (my final sanding was with 1200 grit).

But I don't know anything about clearcoats, or how Saturn applies them to the polymer panels.

Gewehr98, I'm pretty much a simpleton, and often don't recognize sarcasm directed at me. If you meant to be sarcastic, please be more clear.

That showdown between my car and the other guy wasn't anything official.

The other guy was Ian Furness. Look his name up in the JCNA (Jaguar Clubs of North America) journal. He's a great guy, owns a string of podiatrist clinics, and now has a warehouse full of Jags. My hat goes off to him.

At that time, the WI chapter of the JCNA was changing. The First Guard was guys like me, who were doing their own welding, painting, engine rebuilding, etc on their own. We'd have our meetings at each others homes, and try to learn from what the other guys' were doing. We were the "greasy fingers" club.

The Second Guard came when the cars increased in value dramatically, and it was worth paying $10,000 or more for a paint job for those who could afford it.

It was the middle class meeting the upper middle class. And things went well. From what I understand, that's still the case.

But that still doesn't tell me how to fix the peeling clearcoat on this old Saturn. I don't understand the difference between paint coats and clearcoats on polymer panels versus steel. And I'd like to do this job the easy way, as I'm not going to enter the Saturn into any concourse events.

[Gewehr98]

My response had no sarcasm. 

You asked about touching up clearcoat, Brad responded with a potential fix, and it appeared that you laid a whammy on him with your Concours d'Elegance  E-Type Jag paint job story, which goes way beyond a simple clearcoat repair.  Further clarification after my own post finally revealed that your expertise was in lacquer paint only, but that wasn't out there front and center.

For all intents, it looked originally like you were hunting over bait.   

It would be akin to me asking for pointers on handloading wildcat cartridges.  Those in the know would wonder what in the Hell I was up to.  Those not in the know would also wonder what in the Hell I was up to, but only after I replied to an earnest response to my thread-starter with a complete dissertation on benchrest arbor presses, neck turning, case indexing, seating off the lands, and measuring bullet run-out with a dial indicator.  

[Brad Johnson]

Gewehr98,

I didn't note any sense of anything from ML's post.  I'm actually kinda flattered - he gave me a heck of a compliment right at the beginning.  But thanks, too, for jumping in on my behalf.  Makes me feel good to know that folks have my back.

Monkeyleg, to answer your question ... I am interested in everything, often to my detriment.  It's not unusual for me to get so caught up learning new things that I let more important stuff slide.  Give me any subject and I am likely to resaerch it to death, or at least until I think I have a pretty good grasp of the basics.  I am also blessed with a mind like a steel trap.  If I've ever seen it, done it, read it, heard it, or otherwise been exposed to it, it's stored away in there somewhere and I can dredge it up if needed.  Usually the memory is sparked by someone else's statement, question, or action.  As a result, I can usually strike up a casual conversation on just about any subject.  In my current profession that is a Godsend.

I am also blessed with the ability to, well..., to just figure out stuff.  Give me a few basics on anything and I can extrapolate from that, being able to infer and presume advanced conditions and operations with amazing accuracy.  Mechanical things and I get along well as a result.  Electronics not so much, but only because I haven't taken the time to learn much more than the basics (although I can, given time and a few resources, still figure out pretty much any issue).

I have to be careful, though.  In electronic fora I have the luxury of being able to parse and edit my post before submitting it, making sure it reads the way I think it does or should.  In person I can, without meaning to, sound like a pompous know-it-all simply because I like being able to pass along the information to other folks.  I forget that other people probably aren't as insanely curious about everything like I am, nor do some folks analyze things to death like I often do.

Brad

[Bogie]

Idea: we could wrap the area in vinyl? Turn it into part of a business name, something like that?
 
http://www.topwraps.com/vehicle-wraps.html
 
I can print the stuff for you if you wanna do the adhere bit on your end...
 

[Brad Johnson]

Idea: we could wrap the area in vinyl? Turn it into part of a business name, something like that?
 
http://www.topwraps.com/vehicle-wraps.html
 
I can print the stuff for you if you wanna do the adhere bit on your end...

I'm curious what resolution is normally used on the wraps?  I noticed that the ads on the local buses tend to be printed pretty coarse, but a lot of the car and truck wraps tend to be a little more fine.

Brad

[AJ Dual]

My second hand-me-down car was a '85 Chevy Celebrity "Eurosport".

It did the same thing with the clearcoat. Except it came off in sheets whenever you got up to highway speeds.

[RocketMan]

Idea: we could wrap the area in vinyl? Turn it into part of a business name, something like that?
 
http://www.topwraps.com/vehicle-wraps.html
 
I can print the stuff for you if you wanna do the adhere bit on your end...

Bogie, can you print something either on a magnetic layer, or on vinyl that can adhere to a magnetic backing?  Anything else of that sort?
I am in need of a removable magnetic sign to hang on the tail gate of my truck.

[RocketMan]

It is interesting how our experiences color our perceptions.  I saw the compliment to Brad in Monkeyleg's post.  GW98 saw something quite different. This would make and interesting subject for discussion sometime.
It looks like things are straightened out, now, and that's good.

[Gewehr98]

It's a problem common to internet forums sans face-to-face communications.  You can't always catch the nuances, vocal inflection, innuendo, hyperbole, or subtle cues that reveal the poster is saying something in jest, irony, sarcasm, satire, or straight out using blunt force trauma.

Hence my thinking (mistakenly) that Dick was hunting over bait.  Mea culpa, and I'll do better to prevent that from happening again, with my apologies to Dick.    

[Monkeyleg]

No apologies necessary, Gewehr98. As I said earlier, I have no experience with clearcoats.

And the reason I shot two or three extra color coats on the Jag was that I knew I'd have to do some sanding to get the finish I wanted.

My initial plan was to clearcoat the black on the Jag, but enough knowledgeable people talked me out of it. Black fades under a clearcoat and, at least at that time, the only way to fix faded black was to sand off the clearcoat and either shoot new paint or buff out the color coat.

But that was over twenty years ago.

Thanks for all the advice.

[Bogie]

Yeah, I can do magnet stuff, but haven't so far... Or I can do vinyl and stickie to the magnet, which may actually turn out better.

Magnets work like crap on saturns (grin). Or corvettes...

[RocketMan]

It's a problem common to internet forums sans face-to-face communications.  You can't always catch the nuances, vocal inflection, innuendo, hyperbole, or subtle cues that reveal the poster is saying something in jest, irony, sarcasm, satire, or straight out using blunt force trauma.

Very accurate observation, GW98.  It can be really tough at times trying to determine another person's meaning.  Once in awhile I am so unsure about the real intent of a post I just forego any reply to avoid the chance of a mistake.  I'm sure others do, too.

[Monkeyleg]

RocketMan, just put a winking smilie at the end of your post. Nobody will know your exact intent.

[Silver Bullet]

I had a car a few years ago with clearcoat separation.  Having no painting skills or any desire to learn them, I took the car to a paint shop.  The shop repainted the affected parts and it came out looking great.

I can't tell you how long the new paint job lasted because I sold the car a year later.  (Okay, I can tell you:  it lasted over a year  ).  I'm not sure whether it increased the resale value as much as the cost of the paint job.  At the time I had it painted I had no plans to sell.

I had kind of assumed it was the hot Arizona sun that was causing the problems, because at the time I saw a lot of cars in similar condition.  But, maybe it just took a certain number of years before the clearcoat cars developed problems.  It was a '95 car and peeling in 2003.

A nearly amusing anecdote from the experience was that the painter offered to buy the car from me.  He said he would make monthly payments to me.  When I replied that I was looking for the money up front, he accused me of not trusting him, and I think he was playing the race card.  It occurred to me later that the proper response would be to tell him, okay, I'll take payments, and I'll turn the car over to you when you have paid for it in full.  Then it would be his turn to not trust me.