SPF for sale $30,000

[DAVID GAGNARD]

Tom;

Having worked in a body shop 13 years and painted a few fiberglass boats/cars I can say I've seen the same thing your describing,but not often.....We had that problem once with a boat and the paint rep came out and looked it over and they helped out with another paint job.
The bubbles could have been the result of a couple of things,moisture in the air at the time they painted the car (I would think SPF would have a heated/humidity controlled booth to paint their cars though),moisture in the air from the air compressor,and/or a mix match of components used in painting the body.......Some paints (PPG comes to mind) use a different reducer/hardner for their primer,sealer,paint,and clear coat,this I do not like.....Too many different chemicals on one vehicle,but they are supposed to be compatible with each other,sometimes under the right conditions they are NOT......DP 40 has to be their worse product,they advertised it that you could prime/seal parts with it and come back up to seven days later,wipe the part down and paint it,yea,it doesn't work that way at all,while painting my own personal truck using DP40 as a sealer and following their directiosn to a T it screwed up my paint job.....The truck was two tone and I put the DP40 on on friday afternoon and saturday morning painted one color and sunday came back to paint the other,when I tried to put the second color on it "burnt" or as some say "crowfeet",rep said I must have done something wrong,would not warraty anything......The shop I worked at was PPG certfied,as were all the emoployes (two day school to learn how to use their products),we had all their air hoses,air filters,and their recommendations on paint guns and they would not warraty anything we did,always had an excuse,in fact we did some research on the matter and found out in five years they had only warrantied one paint job in the whole USA,some warranty........Speaking of PPG paint,in the last five years or so there as is less than five out of about fifty shops in the general area still using PPG,they have all had enough problems with it that they have switched.........

We switched to SIKKENS paint and it was great,they use one thinner and one reducer/hardner for all their products,primer/sealer/paint/clear coat,that way all products are compatible and we never had any trouble with paint jobs or bubbles in paint after that.....My 65 Mustang was painted 10 years ago with SIKKENS and not looking at paint chips or scratches you would think it was painted just last year and it has NEVER been buffed or waxed......

Another thing that causes the bubbles you describe in putting too many coats of paint too fast on a vehicle without letting the coats "flash" between applications,the reducer from the first coat does not have time to evaporate when another coat is applied,trapping it in the paint,later on with enough exposure to the sun as in your car will cause the reducer to evaporate coming thru the existing paint and clear causing bubbles as you describe.....Moisture and temperature determine the flash time of each coat and you have to know what you are doing to prevent this.............

Sorry about your car,but the only way to "fix" it is to strip it down to the fiberglass and start over gagin.........

David