Guys, I need a value for the original paint thickness for a 1994 metallic 348. Has anyone ever had this measured? Or is there a paint shop out there who happens to have an original 348 and a measurement tool? Doesn't have to be hyper accurate, but a dispute is on the horizon with my paint shop who screwed up and may not want to sand back there screw up before overpainting. Thanks Drew
Drew, I did see that you had problems with the repaint on the other side!! I would suggest you would have between 50 - 60 Microns for the original Ferrari applied paint. If you need anymore details or help let me know!! Regards, Phil. Paint Technical Service Rep.
otherwise a s we call it solvent popping ... we measure in mils. base coat goes down at .75 to 1 mils per coat , topcoat /clearcoat goes at 1.5 mils to 2. mils. total 5- 7 mils finish wet film thickness.
Thinner paint is usually better Paint quality has nothing to do with thickness. Micro particles can come from many things. If your seeing little pinhead marks all over it could be from water in lines, or painting when its too humid. I have seen it when people water down the paint room first and then paint a car. Here in Florida we have to be careful about this because of our humidity. Solvent pop usually developes creaters in the paint which are much larger. This comes from putting on the clearcoat to thick, or painting when its too cold, using wrong temp catalist, not waiting long enough between coats. Take some photos so we can see it. Ben
No, solvent popping is different. Ben in his answer above is on the right lines as its normally water vapour trapped between the layers. Drew has put pics on the other site (CS). Regards, Phil.
Thanks for the replies guys. I was on a biztrip out of country and my company won't let me view Ferrari Chat! Difficult to take good pics due to the otherwise highly reflective finish. Paint shop is getting the Glasurit Techie in this week. Foreman is still tearing his hair out as he knows, whatever the reason is, the whole job has to be redone as the acne is appearing on every panel, very gradually, spreading over several months. So, even if they identify an unaffected panel, they can't be sure it won't go bad later. Also, the original idea of having a top to bottom repaint was to NOT have a patchwork of colours and finishes! Have been meaning to post the whole saga with techie info on the repaint on this forum for a while now. Some odd tips might help others. Must do it at weekend. I've only had experience of painting from my previous life as a pro modelmaker. (Someone told me if I wanted to make models, I should start of with a Revell kit and a tube of glue. 10 years later with ruined eyesight, lungs and skin, I noticed that I still hadn't got around to "making" Naomi Campbell. Next career was after looking at a few old episodes of Casey Jones which led me to believe that being an engineer would be exciting. $h1t!, they haven't even given me any stripey overalls yet!) Paintjob was done in aerospace certified facilities in the summer, so it's weird about the water/moisture story. If it turns out to be that, it sounds maybe like a clogged separator on the compressor. Paint is water-based: anything else is basically illegal in Germany now. Image Unavailable, Please Login
Sorry MD, my original post was a bit hurried and was misleading. It's NOT the thickness which is the reason for the potential dispute. However, when it comes to resale time, there are guys out there who come and measure paint thickness as this apparently will tell them the accident history of your car . If paint is really too thick, then I would, however, see a few disadvantages: a) thick paint is less flexible and more likely to chip off rather than flex. b) if there are chips, then it's hell to build up a thick touch-in on a very local area c) around panel edges, it tends to give a bigger radius (door edges etc.). They are less sharp which tends to detract from the overall appearance. Very noticeable on some teenie tuned ricers and some hot rods. You can really "see" the thick layers of filler and body putty! Drew
Are you getting more of those blisters as time go's on? by the way I have never seen water based car paint before are you sure? Anyhow is it a single stage paint or basecoat clearcoat? Either way looks like classic water in the paint, lifting the paint as it expands, if so you should be getting more as time gos on. I bet the filter was too close to the compressor, or the filter wasnt dry, or the air tank wasnt drained. This is by no means a standard but this is how I was taught years ago for painting show cars. First the compressor tank should of been drained and opened the night prior to painting to air out. Allow tank 1 hour cool time after charging system next day and bleed again. Filters not seperators should be used. never use them to close to the compressor and always use atleast 2 filters. I use three filters, at the tank, middle, and at the gun.
blisters look like base coat wasnt allowed time to flash, or some corrosion/ moisture trying to come up from below.. or primer was not fully cured and is delaminating.. a few extra mils isnt going to cause problems for paint cracking , there is no way to keep the same mils as a factory job, i know of no body shop that will completely strip off old paint to apply new , unless it is a full restoration where old technology paint needs to be taken off.. if it was moisture in the air line , you would see immediate contamination spots in the paint, not gradual, and it would not be able to be buffed out to a complete gloss finish. that is an underlying delamnation when shown to the heat extremes of the sun , it outgases, but the clear skin coat is fully cured so it doesnt want to let it go , so is gases and bubbles up.. ..
Some good factual replies there guys! Yes, the bubbles get more as time goes on. When a first patch appeared, the paintshop buffed them out and repolished the surface. A month later they were back, and more of them too. Then other small patches started to show up. Paint and filler system was Glasurit. Filler 285-55, Hardener 929-51, Lacquer 923-43 and Hardener 929-33. The clear lacquer is a new development with ceramic "dust" in the paint which makes it extremely hard and very chip resistant. I can confirm this after having driven over 5000km with the car since the repaint in all road conditions and not having got a single stone chip. There were some minor and very local imperfections in the lacquer after the paint job which seemed to be because there were some traces of silicone on the surface (or other sort of grease.) These manifested themselves as small "puddles" and were sorted by putting on more clear lacquer and buffing back to a smooth surface. Car was not taken back to metal for the paint job except where it might have appeared during the sanding off. Then followed the 2-pack filler which should have really sealed in any traces of the old paint. Thereafter a surface check coat of black to sand off and see any imperfections. I hope I won't have any hassle with the shop ( should be ok.) They are just waiting at the moment on the Tech Rep to decide whose fault it was! I can't imagine Glasurit will suddenly discover on my car a fatal flaw in the chemical and procedural aspects of their paint system, so I reckon the paint shop is onto a loser there! Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
Latest update: The Glasurit Tech. Rep. has looked at the car and called in the "application specialist". By chance, he actually witnessed all stages of the car preparation and was the consultant on the type of build up used. (I guess a Ferrari in the workshop was a bit of a magnet!) They are both dumbfounded! They have 95% ruled out trapped moisture as a cause. They say it is similar, but the bubbling form would look a bit different. They've now taken off the fuel filler cap and sent it to the BASF materials laboratories for further investigation. At any rate, I'm happy to say that the paintshop seem to be treating the matter quickly and seriously.
Things are on the move again! After the Xmas hols and some weeks with samples in the BASF Labs in Germany, the cause seems to have been determined. The filler coat is apparently porous. This means it has been able to retain moisture. During heating cycles, this moisture is escaping and causing the bubbles, on cooling, they subside a bit, but reappear (and more of them) during next heating cycle. This means that all has to be sanded back to remove all traces of the filler-primer. I will have no costs. Paint shop is battling with Glasurit whether it was a faulty batch or what. They will also do the entire stripdown and rebuild (although I won't let this happen totally unsupervised, of course) In actual fact, they've handed the car over to the car workshop who recessed the wings for the badges. The guy there has become a friend and he does Porsches and historic cars so knows a bit about being careful with "valuable" cars. All should be back on the road by February. Yahoo!!!
Drew, Glad to see that they finally worked it out. I hope the next repaint is up to standard. I`m free to kick a few backsides at the moment (LOL)!! Regards, Phil.
Well, we're off again..... Strip down worked out ok and all the "hidden" screws and clips were found successfully by the workshop. Finally, there may be an added bonus: As the paint shop is hyper sensitive about the affair, BASF (Glasurit) technicians will accompany each step, will probably sign off each one too, and the painting itself will be under observation by them and may even be done by their technicians. So, for the resale, I should have some pretty good evidence of a top job! They're aiming for a finish in about two weeks. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
Well, as promised, work is going on nicely. As you can see, they have taken the car more-or-less back to bare metal - at least they have removed all traces of the new coats. Following the advice of BASF-Glasurit, they have decided to use the same procedure as for a vintage car restoration: - 2 coats of Epoxy Undercoat - primer-filler - sand flat - primer-fill the break through areas - metallic paint - 'nano' clear lacquer After the first pic, the Glasurit tech rep and Application specialists called round and released the car for the Epoxy paint. Paint shop ordered new tins of epoxy from Glasurit and, as you can see in second pics, the first coat of Epoxy is now on. As the car was back to metal, I asked them to see if they could find traces of any accident repair, as the LH door opening is a few millimeters shorter than the RH. They did actually find an area where the car had had a "ding" sometime (as there was some additional body filler). No evidence of any major body work though. So it seems the door opening dimension difference is a manufacturing sloppiness. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
