Sealer softening base

I recently switched to SPI. We have been restoring a camaro for about 5 years now. Done some jobs between being tired and hitting walls. Anyway, we went to a new clear after the custom deep blue and rally stripes are on and the clear went on nice. Two days later it orange peeled up and is one of those clears it seems you have 3 days to buff and it gets too hard to work anymore. Sanded it all off, went back to our Custom Shop clear we used on a jeep we did a metal flake job on, but they sent us a gallon of clear, then a quart of clear labeled as hardener. So all of that had to come off with alcohol. Let the base set a few days, scuffed it back down, put the SPI sealer on and a few runs the base really got soft. It was like using bondo red spot putty ruining the job. Got that back down, need to use some more icing to straighten things up again, but really dont know if this is gonna keep happening or those few runs are telling me I am gonna have more issues.

Dont know which way to go now. Most of the car is ok other than the few run spots. Dont know if going with the filler primer first would be a better idea than just putting sealer back on. I figured sealer would stop whatever else is happening under it from effecting the basecoat.

Tired of this woulda coulda shoulda and another season of getting this car out on the road. We were dont and onto assembly until that clear orange peeled up, but looking to figure out the best way to handle this without getting back into too much of the filler.
 
First of all, the clear orange peeling 2-3 days later was not the clears problem and I will defend the clear even if it is a crap brand as this is a result of the base and only the base. it is called contracting.
Also all BS aside that is is this base and that base as stated, feedback i get over and over its valspar base.
 
I got the base from the coating store, dont know if they use Valspar. Just looking for an answer to get back to a starting point, but now I need to wonder whether or not to even repaint with more of the base I bought.

cant find anything on contracting, so I dont know if you mean its application, or time between putting the clear on after adding the rally stripes. Sounds like the base is still evaporating or trying to evaporate thru the clear.
 
OK sorry about that reading your post I thought it was from the tCP place or whatever its called on line, god knows what the stuff your using is as I was sent a post a while back the head honcho made a statement that no good base uses a polyol?????????????????????????????????
Then you can't activate any good base, as you have no OH/NCO period.

Sounds like lacquer to me but I would call them and see what they want you to do. Only other thing would be try to seal with epoxy but unstable base under it is a disaster waiting to happen.
I would be striping.

Contracting is where solvents are still in base and as they come out the base tightens (shrinks) and the clear magnify's the orange peel.
 
TCP was the place that has the custom shop clear. It went on really good and hardly needed buffing.

I am an industrial painter, anodizer and powdercoater. When we did the jeep, we actually used a outdoor polane (activated polyurethane) as the black base, (we use on military parts) we mixed metal flake in intercoat clear, then candy in intercoat clear, some graphics of diamond plate were sprayed with silver basecoat, taped and blue basecoat, then the whole thing was cleared with the custom shop paint.

This was after we got a two part midnite blue metallic that gave us all kinds of headaches.

After the mislabel from TCP and the issue that they always seem to be out of stock on this clear when we need it, I figured to try the coating stores clear. So it was their clear on top of their base that had this "contacting" deal.

We are just a couple days away from SPI and am trying to get supplies for a long weekend. If its getting their base to use I will get some of theirs, but it seems no matter what I use we are gonna have issues the state the car is in. So trying to seal everything that is on the car away from the next attempt was the direction I was trying to go. Its just guessing if the sealer is gonna be enough to separate the bad from what should be the good.
 
i think your going from bad to worse. with all the different stuff on there i dont think your going to have any luck. just sealing it will not help. there is still too much solvent in it. i would sand it down and let it set in the sun. personally i would strip all the junk off and start over.
 
At the very least, sand it and let it breathe in the sun for a good long while. I'm not sure which SPI product is best at isolating sensitive substrates, the epoxy I guess, but if the solvents from the epoxy dig into the substrate you are gonna be in trouble. Once upon a time we used water based primers in these situations because they did not have solvents that would "wake up" bad things in the substrate, but they have their own problems. Sometimes a good high solids clear can isolate pretty well, believe it or not, as long as it is well cured and not sanded through.
 
this car has not seen the light of day in years. went off the rotiseree in the booth onto jack stands. planning to take it to the lift on jacks, so getting it outside in the sun is not an option.

thanks for the idea about the waterborne epoxy, I remember hearing about that before.

got a message to the man at the coating store to get his imput.
 
waterborne was just a band-aid back in the 70's. not going to solve anything. sorry for your trouble but your piling a lot of worthless junk up on it and covering it up is not an option .
 
I didn't say anything about "waterborne epoxy," if there even is such a thing.

Sometimes it's best just to start over, everything else is just a band-aid at this point.

It sounds like you will not do that, though, and you can't even get it outside, so my recommendation then is to sand it and run it through some bake cycles, or get as much heat as you can on it somehow. Let it sit as long as possible before you do anything else to it.
 
Im confused.

Tell us what exactly is on the car now. From the very first product you put on, tell the last, including the original starting piont what ever that may be .

Im interested to see how much material is on the car..
 
first coat was opti stick epoxy, then filler primer and silver metalic primer sealer, blue basecoat, white pearl basecoat for the rally stripes. Thats what was on when the first clear that crinkled up was put on, that clear was scuffed down, the non hardened clear went on top of that. That was wiped off, then ended up sanding back into the base so 99% of the original clear is off. Thats when we put the last coat of the SFI sealer on the car, most of the car is fine, where there were runs were the place the base softened up. We hit it with the DA where there were runs and the white base kinda rolls up into balls.

so now, the roof is good, fenders are good, wherever the white rally stripes were are coming down to a primer since its the most common place for the problems. The blue that is doing the same thing was mainly under the white. Nothing is noticeably soft unless you start sanding it.

this is a 67 camaro. hood, trunk lid, doors, fenders, quarter panel skins all new metal. roof is original, front valance panel, front header is new metal, cowl panel by windshield is the only bolt on part that is original. welded quarter skins with enough filler to straighten lines and fill weld.

- - - Updated - - -

crashtech;38798 said:
I didn't say anything about "waterborne epoxy," if there even is such a thing.

Sometimes it's best just to start over, everything else is just a band-aid at this point.

It sounds like you will not do that, though, and you can't even get it outside, so my recommendation then is to sand it and run it through some bake cycles, or get as much heat as you can on it somehow. Let it sit as long as possible before you do anything else to it.

Like I said, I am an industrial painter, so most of our government work with CARC coatings are called waterborne when they are water based. They call their one part polyurethanes moisture cure.
 
so your saying you used some industrial coating on a car ?

opti stick epoxy and silver metallic sealer tells us nothing. what brands are they .
 
I would like to see pictures.
I'm sure the alcohol you used to remove the clear coat, ruined the base.

How did you get clear off the car with alcohol? I know it was not activated but I can only imagine the mess. Did you is just soak rags in it.

Even without seeing any thing else I would remove everything
. And start over. Fu***** sucks that seems like the only way.

- - - Updated - - -

How long did you wait tell you put the stripes on after the hood was painted with the blue base?

Silver metallic primer sealer? This is all one product?

And the worst part of the clear problem was on the white pearl used for the stripes?
 
shine;38803 said:
so your saying you used some industrial coating on a car ?

opti stick epoxy and silver metallic sealer tells us nothing. what brands are they .

yeah, on the jeep. properties of corrosion protection are much higher with those. We put that down as the black base before mixing the metalflake in intercoat clear.

Opti stick is the coating store, 1:1 epoxy like everyone sells. metallic sealer is theirs too. They tint their primers to get closer to your finish, or metallics to enhance your base, its the 2K line..
 
if the coating store sells the same as everyone else why are you having problems ? you need to understand their are hundreds of different resins and not everyone uses the same . i dont think switching to an spi clear is going to help. putting a high grade resin on top of crap does not change it. we dont paint bridges or subway car here so i dont think you'll find your answers here. go back to coating store or mastercoat . they created this problem let them figure it out . sorry for your trouble but this is common with lower teir products.
 
underdog;38805 said:
I would like to see pictures.
I'm sure the alcohol you used to remove the clear coat, ruined the base.

How did you get clear off the car with alcohol? I know it was not activated but I can only imagine the mess. Did you is just soak rags in it.

Even without seeing any thing else I would remove everything
. And start over. Fu***** sucks that seems like the only way.

- - - Updated - - -

How long did you wait tell you put the stripes on after the hood was painted with the blue base?

Silver metallic primer sealer? This is all one product?

And the worst part of the clear problem was on the white pearl used for the stripes?

We tried everything to remove the clear. Urethane reducer wiped the clear off, but the blue base wrinkled up like it was stripper. We only tried that on the bottom of the valance panel. Xylol is a very slow enamel reducer, that kept the clear coat wet and did not make the base bubble, then wiped it with a clean rag of denatured alcohol. We had a car covered in grafitti that we washed off with denatured alcohol so tried that with the clear. started just rags, using a new rag every time you wipe, ended up with spray bottles to speed it up. denatured alcohol did not even make the base soft. The sealer made it soft.

Silver metallic helps metallics stand out on the cars. They sell either silver or gold. I guess the closest I can explain is the guys that mix a half and half blend of sealer and basecoat as the final sealer coat so your base is not going right over gray, usually saves a coat.

The white pearl was started to be sprayed about 16 hours after the base went on. Started taping about four hours after, got late so we decided to wait til the next morning. The white is not the worst part of the clear problem, it is the softest area of the problem. I mean it makes sense that you need more coats of white to cover the deepest blue metallic you have ever seen, so that is why all the white is sanded off.

A run that was on the stripe area on the spoiler ended up having a dark blue outline at the edge of the run. It almost looked like a crack, so the sealer melted the white down to the blue basecoat.
 
I feel bad for the situation you are in, but I really don't want to say any more than that because what you have there can blow up in a lot of different ways. If you are dead set on leaving existing coatings on that vehicle, heat and time are the only things that can help right now, followed by whatever coating will best isolate the soluble substrates from subsequent coatings. It's a risky proposition.
 
you have failed products on there and the only cure is to remove it all and start over. forget the opti stick and silver sealer and coating store base and clears . use a quality epoxy and better tier color and clear.
 
Back
Top