Cracked paint

I'm looking at a 1980 308 in Rosso Rubino that has lived his entire life in a cold climate. It is a low mile two owner car and according to the owner, it has never been painted. However the paint on the entire car is cracked, like a dry lake bed. Has anyone seen this before, or have any idea why this happened?

 

WOW

The only time that I have seen that is because the primer and or bondo wasn't properly applied.

Regards

 

It's very common with the old lacquer paints. I just went through this with my '79 in Canada. You have to take of the cracked lacquer, seal the old primers/fillers with epoxy sealer, and then do the usual prime/block prep and paint with modern pants. If you google "Ferrari lacquer cracked" you'll find lots of articles. You can also go back to bare metal (all body shops recommend this as they make more money that way.) Bare metal is never wrong, but it's also never a small investment

 

In 1980 they were still using Glidden Salchi paint. It was terrible and we had a lot of warranty claims when it was still new. Not surprised it looks like that now.

 

My 77 was a south west car and the paint was like that when I bought it. Very common with old lacquer.

 

I have a '78 and can confirm same with my car as others have said.

 

Thank you everyone. Great advice. Now I have to figure out what it will cost to fix and decide if I'm going to buy the car.

 

Cracked lacquer is a function of differential expansion between the very hard lacquer paint and the metal below. As the car goes through heat/cold cycles the paint breaks like the dry lake bed you talk about. This gets worse over time as the paint gets harder and more brittle with age. I have never seen a non cracked original car in one place or another and some crack much worse than others. Either way at minimum the paint layer has to come off as there is no way to seal the old paint reliably. Anyone who says they can does not know what they are talking about and does not understand the materials and processes involved.

 

Will need a bare metal strip. Don't try to shortcut it. Got to get all that old material off.
On the bright side, if it's all original paint, there shouldn't be a lot of surprises underneath. Just the usual surfacing to make it straight, then repaint it. Easy peasy for an amount of money.

 

OK. So I'll figure that I have to get stripped and repainted. I hate to mess with such an original car (only 4,000 miles), but seems I have no choice. Thank you everyone for the valuable information.

 

+1

Metal color paint even more.

Bare metal repaint and you will forget about paint for 30+years

Ciao

 

Once my cracked colour coat was removed, the primers and fillers underneath had not cracked after 37 years so I don't expect them to crack now. We only went to bare metal where there was some rust to repair (door bottoms and rear corners at and above the belt line.) Everything was sealed with epoxy and then the new products were used on top of the sealer. I picked up my car today and it looks great but the low VOC clear will take a while to fully harden (too cold right now!)

 

Cracked paint on the pre-81 cars is also often caused by the fact, that someone repainted the car and was not aware of the Glidden Salchi paint, which actually was TPA (thermoplastic acrylics).
BTW. A lot of your US classic car were painted with this stuff.
While some years it was mandatory to do a bare metal job when there was TPA on the body, today there are modern isolating primers, which can be used for painting modern material over TPA.
Of course the most proper job still is a bare metal job, but there's also a lot of rip-off in the game.
An honest painter will offer all options from the cheaper paint-over-TPA to the bare metal job. A dishonest one will insist on the bare metal job.
I also did the latter but my painter offered me both options.

Best Regards
Martin

 

I've noticed that people who insist that you have to go to bare metal are either in the business or people who have paid for a bare metal paint job. It's always better to go back to bare metal but in most cases it's not necessary. Some of those older, more toxic products may actually last better than the newer stuff.

 

If the car is all original, I'd leave it that way. IMHO.

 

I agree, if all original and low miles leave it alone. Sounds similar to my car, I had a paint correction done by a pro and not cheap and looks 10 times better. The cracking doesn't bother me at all and most people like it as well, it just looks so cool, like an old leather jacket.

 

The problem with the cracked paint (if it's anything like the cracked paint I had) is that moisture will get underneath and start damaging the metal. So unless you live in a country where it never rains, you will never want to drive the car.

The advantage of going back to bare metal, is that you know it is metal and not rust or filler.

 

My father bought his '81 GTSi in 1985.

The paint was crazed then, it got worse over time.

He finally got it painted Grigio Silverstone after taking it down to bare metal.

Yes, I liked the cracked, dry lakebed look. But it now looks outstanding.

We should have re-painted it earlier.

Any Ferrari made before (I think) September 1981 that doesn't have cracked paint has clearly been repainted. Hopefully well.

Matt

 

My first F-car was an 81 308 GTBi in Rosso Rubino, purchased around '03. It was a reasonably low-mileage car (20k) and in perfect condition, with the exception of the failing lacquer paint. There was no rust, but the paint really bothered me. Considering that I only paid $22k for the car, a 10k re-paint seemed like a bad investment. I traded it in on a 328 for about what I bought it for.

Biggest financial mistake of my life.