Poor quality paint job?

dirty_magic

I've recently had my car repaired after someone hit me. The paint job looks cloudy and mismatched, so I took it back and they admitted it was poor and said it's due to the paint moving in the heat. They said give it longer to cure and they'll polish it and it'll be fine. Does this sound like it's a reasonable explanation? Sounds a bit like an excuse to me!

colino

No it isn't good enough, take it back and get it fixed. You didn't sign the happy sheet, did you?

dirty_magic

I haven't signed anything. I had the work done direct through third party insurer.Think I'll let them attempt to put it right and if it still isn't right I'll ask the insurer if I can take it somewhere else to be corrected.

OnanTheBarbarian

Complain directly to the third party insurer that the repairs have not been to a commercially acceptable standard and that you are not willing to adopt a "wait & see" approach that the bodyshop are suggesting.

atrixblue.-MFR-.

In this heat painting a car during the day is pointless especially water born paints, the lacquer will set rock solid and look cloudy and dull, and the water born stuff will discolor if it dries within its curing period.


you can buff lacquer back and polish it up, but if the color underneath has cured too early it wont match properly.


humidity really does affect paint shops in the course of their work.


call the third party insurers make a complaint of poor workmanship.

deanos

atrixblue.-MFR-. wrote: »

In this heat painting a car during the day is pointless especially water born paints, the lacquer will set rock solid and look cloudy and dull, and the water born stuff will discolor if it dries within its curing period.


you can buff lacquer back and polish it up, but if the color underneath has cured too early it wont match properly.


humidity really does affect paint shops in the course of their work.


call the third party insurers make a complaint of poor workmanship.

i thought they had temperature controlled booths to stop this sort of thing ?

Daz2009

Just because paint is sprayed in a booth and baked doesn't necessarily mean it's completely cured.
It's not unheard of for fresh paint to drop back and lose it's gloss (to varying degress ) over a couple of weeks or even months.Usually it will buff back up no problem.
However if it's off colour that's a different matter entirely

deanos

each paint colour can have various shades in that colour, they probably went off the colour code instead of using the shade cards or spectrometer to get a good match

been through similar myself recently they came out with loads of bull why it looked different

atrixblue.-MFR-.

deanos wrote: »

i thought they had temperature controlled booths to stop this sort of thing ?

they don't regulate relative humidity. they regulate temp only and youll struggle when the booth temp is 25oc and you need to bake at a lower temp the booth simply wont turn on. this is why allot of west coast american body shops will body work in the day and have a night shift paint techs spray at night in the summer months. saves them falking out $40-60k on one booth to self regulate and have all manor of climate control and air con convertions.


in this country it doesn't make financial sense to have a £20-30k fully kitted out booth when 80% of the year humidity and temp is almost a negligent factor.

dirty_magic

Thanks everyone. I will report it to the insurer and tell them that I want it fixed elsewhere if the polish doesn't resolve it. I think I will have to give them a chance as it says on the insurers website to take it up with the bodyshop first.

If the lacquer will polish up I think it might look ok. It looks to me like the paint has too much silver metallic in it, but I asked the man if he was sure a polish would fix it and he said it'll look exactly the same as the driver door and it was just the intense sunlight highlighting the problem. Just have to wait and see!

deanos

when you check it, stand at a distance might look ok close up