help me get my car back from shop

[Ronald B.]

Re: help me get my car back from shop

May not be your problem but many spray gelcoats contain parafin. My understanding is wax is added to these gelcoats to seal air from surface while the coating is drying. Spray gelcoats are usually catalyst hardened and not air-dry. If you ever hand-layed polyester glass resin you may have noticed the outer layer remains tacky and never sets up. This sticky layer must be cleaned off with acetone or similar solvent. The stuff bubbling through your paint may be this parafin.

[Jerry G.]

Re: help me get my car back from shop

Bill: A friend of mine had been going through the same problem with his car for years. Same area. Mostly on the top and side of the left front fender. Also on the cowl and just a few very small ones on the rear deck. It's a St. Louis body. The color is Nassau Blue, base coat clear coat and was painted in 1985. Fast forward about twelve to fifteen years when the bubbles started showing up. Just a few at first, but by the time we started stripping the paint, there were at least a hundred or more. We stripped it last year. I always had a theory of a contaminate in the paint and not the body. I still believe that. Before we used the liquid stripper, I sanded the area down to see how deep the bubbles were in the layers of paint. There were five layers. Top coat of paint, primer, primer sealer, another layer of Blue then primer over fiberglass. I sanded through the top coat and primer and the bubbles stopped when I hit the primer sealer, so the contaminate was between the sealer and the top primer. It was not coming up from something in the body. I can't explain why it seems to be prone in this area of the body of other cars. His new paint is less than a year old, but no bubbles yet.

[Dave S.]

Re: help me get my car back from shop

You may have further problems after you put your car in the sun or other warm environment, further blisters. I had the same problem, blistering from moisture left before spraying the paint. It will sit there until provoked out by heat, then you get the blisters. I would drive it for the summer, then start over if you see the blisters in other places.

[John C.]

Re: help me get my car back from shop

Bill
I have two friends of mind that had the same problem on top on the front left fender. My one friend had the top of the fender stripped and they put a rag with thinner soaked on top of the fender for days. Repainted it and it hasn't come back in eight years. We blamed the problem on fumes from the master cylinder. If you look a the bottom of the fender with a mirror it looks like raw fiber glass, not like the bottom of the car where it has like a coating on it. I think the fumes soaked Thur the bottom of the fender and cause the paint to blister.
John

[Bill S.]

Re: help me get my car back from shop

i think it is odd that so many have seen or heard of this issue. we can all understand the possibility of brake fluid on the fender but what really throws a wrench into this theory is the top of the cowl as well. this seems to go beyond coincidence. also it seems odd that 66 seems to be a common thread. i wonder if john hinckley may be able to shed some light on this?

[Christopher D.]

Re: help me get my car back from shop

My '66 has shown this problem for quite a few years now. It's a St Louis body painted Trophy Blue. It appears on the tops of both front fenders and no where else as an light oily substance that "sweats" through tiny cracks in the paint. Its an area that extends about 14 - 16 inches from the base of the windshield.
My experience has been a little different though. As far as I know the car has had no body damage in the area and still wears the original paint. I've had the car for 38 years.
I had assumed it was something in the old lacquer paint breaking down and leaching out but after reading this thread I think it may be coming from someplace deeper.
Fortunately, the amout of the substance leaching out seems to have decreased over the years so there may be a finite volume of the stuff.

[Kent S.]

Re: help me get my car back from shop

It looks like I have the same problem. Had my car painted just over a year ago. It had the pin head size bubbles in the paint when I got the car. They are on the cowl just below the window molding and on top of the left front fender about a foot in front of the door.

I noticed the bubbles coming back on the cowl about nine months after I got it back from the body shop. I decided to wait to see if anything else was going to happen before I had it fixed.

The car was stripped to bare glass and gelcoated.

This weekend they appeared on the fender again. Thankfully the body shop I used is real good about fixing anything that happens after the fact.

An added note is that when it was painted, the body shop told me that
the upper surround had been replaced at some time in the cars life.

My car is a Nassau blue A-O Smith car.