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What causes SEVERE paint damage?

Don Vito Corleone

Don Vito Corleone

Elite
Today on my way back from lunch I saw a mid-90s Dodge Intrepid with some of the worst paint I've ever seen. It was badly faded all over, but on the upward-facing panels (the hood, roof, and trunk) it looked like the clear coat had blistered and largely peeled off. Obviously you see cars like this from time to time, but this was the worst I've seen in a long time, and it wasn't a particularly old car.

Seeing this tortured car made me wonder: what causes this kind of very severe damage? I could understand how overheating might cause severe damage to the hood, but I don't recall seeing many cars where the whole thing was so awful.
 
Living near a beach can cause a perpetual sand blasting effect. IIRC it was very bad on new edge (99-2004) mustangs because of the soft plastic in the headlights. Any Stang over 2 years old near a beach needed regular polishing to keep light output up and make it look nice. It also affected clear coat in much the same way.
 
Some years back I looked into this problem a bit. Every time I saw a parked car with the clear coat peeling off I'd check it out. I did notice one thing all the cars I looked at had in common (probably 10 cars), they all had a Blue Polly sticker in the rear window.
 
Getting ash on the car (from forest fires or other burns) and not washing it off right away can damage the paint pretty bad.

It's not the dry ash that is the problem, its once it gets mixed with a bit of water (say leaving your car outside overnight and seeing the dew on it the next morning) does it really start to do damage.

http://meguiars.com/press/rele...er.cfm?selected_ID=172
 
I think the intrepid is just prone to this. My friend's intrepid looks like ass, same with every intrepid i see on the street
 
Some of the paints used in the '90s had some serious issues. Chevrolet had a white paint that was pretty much guaranteed to flake off within 10 years. Dodge's dark green and maroon seem to be problematic from that era.
 
There were several issues in the 80s and 90s, especially at dodge. The industry changed from a single high gloss paint to a base coat / clear coat system. The paint they switched to was quite often waterborne too. Several interactions that were not expected caused adhesion problems (deodorants, and hair products from someone walking near a paint booth would ruin whole batches of cars).
 
Originally posted by: lurk3r
There were several issues in the 80s and 90s, especially at dodge. The industry changed from a single high gloss paint to a base coat / clear coat system. The paint they switched to was quite often waterborne too. Several interactions that were not expected caused adhesion problems (deodorants, and hair products from someone walking near a paint booth would ruin whole batches of cars).
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GM had similar issues in the early 90's. My parents and grandparents had GM vehicles that were only a year or two old and the paint on the hoods was peeling off. It was part of a massive recall of bad paint due to some reformulation.
 
There was a problem that several manufacturers had with clear coat coming off. In the mid-to-late 80's, it was Ford and GM trucks you always saw. I remember the body shop at the Ford dealership I worked for back then had a 9-month backlog of appointments for the recall paint jobs.

Problem is not the manufacturers themselves, but the actual paint. This continued through at least the mid-90's. Haven't seen it since, though.
 
Originally posted by: vi edit
Originally posted by: lurk3r
There were several issues in the 80s and 90s, especially at dodge. The industry changed from a single high gloss paint to a base coat / clear coat system. The paint they switched to was quite often waterborne too. Several interactions that were not expected caused adhesion problems (deodorants, and hair products from someone walking near a paint booth would ruin whole batches of cars).
Click to expand...

GM had similar issues in the early 90's. My parents and grandparents had GM vehicles that were only a year or two old and the paint on the hoods was peeling off. It was part of a massive recall of bad paint due to some reformulation.
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That would be a car built in Van Nuyes California. Almost all the GM cars \trucks that have shitty paint from the late 80's early 90's are because of california laws that made GM stop using enamel based paints and start using water based paint.
 
Originally posted by: LTC8K6
The EPA.
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Ding ding ding ding.

In the quest to remove VOCs from paint crappy paint jobs were the result. Until of course the manufacturers figured out you can't paint low-VOC paints the same way as the old stuff.

VOC = Volatile Organic Compound
 
What causes SEVERE paint damage?
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The question should be what DOES NOT cause severe paint damage? Unless there is a latent manufacturer's defect ...

- The wind
- The rain
- Snow
- Dust

... pretty much anything in the environment. If the paint/clearcoat is mantained (and assuming no defects) it should last the lifetime of the vehicle.

The paint on the car you mentioned was probably not maintained at all ... from day 1.
 
Originally posted by: Greenman
Some years back I looked into this problem a bit. Every time I saw a parked car with the clear coat peeling off I'd check it out. I did notice one thing all the cars I looked at had in common (probably 10 cars), they all had a Blue Polly sticker in the rear window.
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doesnt clear coat differ east coast to west coast? different UV reqs i bet, i thought i read something on that back in the polyglycoat days. truth is, az sun will bake off most paint jobs in a few years if not treated correctly. i had a white 97 intrepid and had no fading/ spots at all in the paint, but there was a guy down the road with an older model, same color that the whole hood, roof and trunk were mostly down to metal with wear spots.
 
Originally posted by: postmortemIA
Originally posted by: iamanidiot
I think the intrepid is just prone to this. My friend's intrepid looks like ass, same with every intrepid i see on the street
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neons are the same way.
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come to think of it, so are the older caravans that were white. mebbe it was their paint lol
 
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