please help with some paint questions(my 1st post)

[cherokeechief79]

a few yrs back i had my 86 cl painted by a well known painter in my area who does excellent high end work on many projects around here.i didnt want anything great and we agreed he would do an enamel job for 800.this was just enamel and no clearcoat.this paint faded soon after and became very chalky and was coming off with every wash to the point where it was down to the bare metal in many spots.he told me silver is the worse paint because it fades fast but this was way beyond fading!word got around that he did the job and soon had to tell others what went wrong.(althgough i still really dont know why)he has since told me he would redo it perfectly with basecoat clearcoat for a price of 1500 and he said quote"i will take care of all the extras"which i assumed was the rust coming thru the paint that he did.i took him up on this because other places wanted 800 or so just to strip off what was already on there.this time i pulled all of the chrome which revealed some nasty rust holes in the lower doors.he asked how we wanted to handle it and he said he would weld in a pc of metal on the ends (beause the moulding clips go there)and the rest he would fill with fiberglass to keep my cost down.
i have since picked up the car and have more in the next post.

 

[cherokeechief79]

well he called me fri and said he was just washing it and that it was done.it was blinding sunny that day and the car was still wet.it looked amazingly good to me and when he pulled it outside it didnt even look like the same car!he told me it is not perfect and that "experts" would pic it apart in some areas.i am no paint whiz and thought that it was very good for what i was expecting.he asked what we originally settled on and i said 1500(which he knew)he sais 1600 would do it and i gave him 1650.
the part that is eating me up now is the fact that he now tells me that he did not "strip off"what was already on there.he said that this would have taken way too much time and been way more expensive.keep in mind that what he told me he was going to strip off was the 1st paintjob that he did that cracked badly and wore off in spots right down to the metal.
as i was putting all of the trim back on that evening and the sun was going down i could still see all of the cracks still under the worse spots that were on the car.my wife saw the car for the 1st time that night and saw them right away.
although i did not see them in the blinding light when i picked it up he did say that anyhing now under the clearcoat would not get worse or come thru.
my friend who is in the bodywork trade all of his life told me that he would be positive that even the new paint would start cracking within 6 mos to a yr because he did not strip what he originally put on.it looks like he started because the hood and trunk look very nice and i cant see any of the cracks.
right now i am poed as heck and did not even sleep last night.the reason i went back to him was because everyone else wanted 800 or so to strip off what he put on!i figured if he was going to do it at least he could see that it was his mistake!
remember when i dropped it off over 3 weeks ago he told me it was all going to have to be stripped off.
i dont want to loose my cool by going right over there so ill try to simmer down a bit but how would any of you handle this?
is there a chance that what is under the clear will stay exactly the way it is now?
if it stays the way it is now i would not feel as if i had been ripped off again.

 

[cbrf4bill]

if you have adhesion failure with the first paint job and paint over the paint that wouldn't adhere you will have failure again. the basic paint job: do the body work with a good poly filler, sand surface with 220, wipe surface with wax and grease remover, shoot a 2k primer, guide coat, block surface, fill any low spots with filler,wipe surface with wax and grease remover, re-coat with 2k primer, wet sand with 500 grit, wash surface and dry very dry (no water dripping from anywhere), wipe surface down with a good wax and grease remover, tack surface with a good tack clothe, shoot your base tacking between coats 2 to 3 coats of base,let dry 1 to 3 hrs no more than 24 hrs, tack, shoot your clear 2 to 3 coats, let dry for 2 to 3 days, wet sand with 2000, buff out with compound (3m x-cut compound and white 3m pad), wipe down surface to remove excess compound ,buff surface with swirl mark remover (3m and 3m black pad), remove excess material, buff with a good polish or glaze with black pad and you have a show car paint job. i would get my money back or dish out a good *ss whippen!!!!!!!!! check out the forum at autobodystore.com

 

[TBRtat2]

When you say the old paint was washing off, do you mean it was coming off in flakes, or more like you were wearing thru it?

If it was coming off in flakes, then it is an adhesion issue, and you will most likely have problems.

If it was "wearing" off, that most likley means he either used a cheap paint, (if so that means he probobly used the same paint again and you may have the same problem eventually)
or he used a paint that is suposed to have a clear coat on it. (if that was the case, you may not have a problem this time sience you have a clear coat now)

Some enamel paints are made to be used with a clear coat, and some are made for use without clear coat, and some that can do both.

Also, just because some can do good work does not mean they always do good work,
also if you do good work but use garbage for your supplies, your work will eventually look like garbage.

Have you ever seen cars he painted a few years after he did them?

 

[406monte]

I have to totally agree with everything that cbrf4bill said. I am a bodyman by trade and he is right on the steps to conduct a nice paint job.

The guy is scamming you out of money everytime. I had run into a guy that did this same kind of thing to a buddy of mine. The oaint job looked great and then one day about a month later he took it to the car wash and when he startedto wash it all the paint started to fly off in great big pieces. I t left all the white primer under neath his black paint exposed and it wasn't long tll it rusted out. They guy said it wasn't his problem.

I can tell you that he didn't prep it right if it started to as you say wash away when you took it to the car wash. He used some carppy material and used evern worse techniques when applying it. The new paint will most likely fail you to. Being it is base coat clear coat it may last longer but will eventually fail and flake off sorry to say. 🙁

I stripped and fixed some rust on my dads Buick Regal and in the same day i put up some plastic walls in his outside car port and used a box fan for ventilation. I primed and painted his car with single stage enamel. When it was done we pulled it out and untaped it the next day and it was so shiney it would blind you in the sun light. That was in 1999 and till this day it still is perfect and still will blind you outside in the sun. I did all this using the right steps and performing the simple techniques that your body man should have used.

 

[Ribbedroof]

A) It's going to continue coming off in chunks, new paint and all

B) 1500, when everybody else wanted 800 just to strip it.....what did you really expect to get? Time is money, and nobody (reputable) that I know of in my area would even for a minute consider a paint complete for 1500, let alone stripping the underlying mess. Hope you got some sort of written agreement as to what was to be done/warranty. The idea that filling rot with fiberglass is "fixing" it should have been a pretty clear warning.

Sorry