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Thank you v8, I was a little worried. Now anyone have any ideas on Chrysler's poor paint job?



I think each of the car manufacturers have had their share of bad runs over the years. Fords for example had particularly bad runs with their silver paint jobs in the late 70's. Heck some of those paint jobs committed harikari within their first year.

I seem to recall this problem really became epidemic during the North American transition from factory paint jobs using solvent based carrier over to the more enviromentally friendly water based carriers. As a side note : the Asian and Euro cars didn't suffer this problem because they continued painting their cars with solvent based carrieers.

I happened to have had a 78 T-Bird and an 81 Grand Marquis that both suffered from the poorly adhering paint. And yes it would come off in large flakes. So I know the problem you are speaking about.

IF I were to prepare that 78 T-Bird for painting using the roller method, I would take a sander to the original paint... probably using something in about the 120 grit and just do a few light passes over the original paint. Hopefully that would be sufficient to trigger the final separation of any flimsy paint from the subsurface.

I would then move the sanding up to 200 grit to try to lessen some of the deeper scratches caused by the 120 grit. This might also reveal any other flimsy paint that somehow escaped the 120 pass.

Now... the key thing at this point would be to lay down a layer of thicker primer. A light sprary primer isn't really going to do the job propeerly at this point. Because the spray primer can't fill in the scratches left by the 120 and 200 grit.

I would give the body a complete rub down with alcohol or spirit at this point. This will remove the sanding debris AND more importantly any enviromental crap, waxes or oils that may have penetrated the original exposed primer surface.

So this might be a perfect job for the Brightside primer. It goes on thick and will give you enough depth so that you can sand it down nicely with a 600 grit and get it pretty smooth - plus fill in any difference between patches where there is no longer any paint and the paint layer.

Once the Brightside primer layer is sanded down and as smooth as you can get it... you will then be able to start going to the actual painting of the body.

One other nice benefit of throwing the Brightside primer into this task is :
a) its thick enough to give you some surface to sand and smooth
b) it can fill in most scratches or gaps where it goes from paint to the original primer ( like where the original paint had flaked off and exposed the original primer ).
c ) structurally the Brightside primer can provide a solid adhesion to the subsurface AND bonds well to itself. The latter being important so that if there are any points on the subsurface that didn't adhere properly, the Brightside primer layer will hold its skin together and cut down on the chance for a potential adhesion failure.

Don't know if this helps... but it's how I imagine I would have tackled the old T-Bird..

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Last edited by Marq; 01/23/07 11:28 PM.