How likely are today's paints going to survive long term?

[captaincog]

So, since I have one PT with a corner that has clearcoat failure, one custom painted PT, and my old Camaro that has a single stage paint I began wondering.....
Today, maybe because it is the poor economy, but many, many cars I see from the 90's have severe clear coat failure. I have been to several Thursday night events and some Saturday classes and we all talk about bringing back the paint. These cars are usually from the 60's or earlier and the paint is very different than the paints of today.
So....now there are the "cheap" painting places (edited for content by Mike P.) that do single stage paints that seem to be closer to the old car paints, but not up to the clear coat standards of today.
What are everyone's thoughts? Are the single stage cheap paints more likely to survive? Will any of today's clear coat paints survive 30, 40+ years?

[Markus Kleis]

Re: How likely are today's paints going to survive long term?

Moved to Detailing 101

[dope92cc]

Re: How likely are today's paints going to survive long term?

Blame Chrysler.

[CieraSL]

Re: How likely are today's paints going to survive long term?

I think a lot of it has to do with how the car is kept up and detailed. My parents have a 1990 Accord with paint still in mint condition, and my '95 Olds Cutlass is still in great shape. We're talking 15 and 20 year old paint, and they look better than some 2 and 3 year old cars I've seen. So, while the quality of the paint itself is probably a factor, I think that regular maintenance is the real determinant of how the car will look 15-20 years down the road.

1990 Honda Accord




'95 Olds Cutlass




Threads with pics of the 1990 Accord

http://meguiarsonline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=35305

http://meguiarsonline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=33306

Threads with pics of the Cutlass

http://meguiarsonline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=33321

http://meguiarsonline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=33995

Of course, I keep up on the cleaning. I never let that go for very long. But it has paid off. On the other hand, my sister has a '94 Accord that is in the first stages of clearcoat failure. The car has never been properly cared for, so I attribute the CC failure to that.

[Tim Lingor]

Re: How likely are today's paints going to survive long term?

Hey,

I agree, it has mostly to do with the care and diligence you have shown over the years in the maintenance of your paint. I think my 1999 Ford Super Duty looks pretty good considering that it is the original factory paint.

I took these pics a couple days ago after detailing the truck for a current backing plate review I am working on....






Tim

[dope92cc]

Re: How likely are today's paints going to survive long term?

my mostly original paint, 92 chevy caprice, doesn't have a hint of CC failure, TONS of scratches but no CC failure. It was definitely kept in a garage or under a car port. I'm sure it was never detailed, but all the paint is doing fine.

[Murr1525]

Re: How likely are today's paints going to survive long term?

I think there was also a span of a couple years there where a couple companies just got the paint wrong.

[Markus Kleis]

Re: How likely are today's paints going to survive long term?

Tim- from one Ford man to another- you done good! You make me proud

[J. A. Michaels]

Re: How likely are today's paints going to survive long term?

I agree that proper maintenance from the start is the key. Just like any item in your home. If you abuse it and fail to maintain it you shorten it's life expectancy. Also I remember when cc first came out there was a lot of mis- information about the care of clear coats. There was talk with this new paint system you never will have to wax again.

I think these people to this advice to heart. They failed to properly care for their paint. Hence a lot of clear coat failure from the 90's.

[Michael Stoops]

Re: How likely are today's paints going to survive long term?

Too many car dealers are telling people "this car has a clear coat on it, you don't need to wax it". We get calls all the time to our call center with people looking for a second opinion after hearing this.

Dealers are doing a lot of business selling "5 Year Paint Sealants" that, for the most part, require the customer to bring the car back yearly for follow up applications. How many of those people actually do that? How many just run their car through a tunnel wash and end up stripping that protection off in a few months?

Clear coat is just paint, there's nothing magical about it. Yes, in a base coat/clear coat paint system the clear coat is the component that provides gloss and UV protection, but it's still just paint. It still needs to be taken care of, which means proper soap, cleaning and waxing - and these are the things so many people neglect. We've talked to guys who've spent $100k or more on a car who thought nothing of dropping another $3000 on an exhaust, $4000 on tires/wheels and $5000 on a sound system. But try to get them to spend $400 on a D/A polisher and associated pads, towels, chemicals, waxes, etc and they look at us like we're out of our minds. Hey, it's got a clear coat!!

Name a brand of vehicle and we've seen one with clear coat failure. Yes, that includes Mercedes and Lexus. Park the car outside year round, don't wax it, don't clean off things that can etch deeply into the paint, and your clear simply won't last as long as the clear on a well kept car. Jeff, you may recall that 1987 Chrysler Fifth Avenue I had in my possession recently - original factory clear coat finish that was just starting to show signs of clear failure. After 20 years!! Yet looking at the overall condition of the vehicle when it came into my possession, it was not taken care of to the level that the typical MOL member takes care of their vehicle. Even so, 20 years!

But comparing modern clear coats to older single stage paints is almost an apples to oranges comparison. Or at least MacIntosh apples to Granny Smith apples. Park a red single stage car next to a red base/clear car in the SoCal sun for 5 years, never wax either one. Odds are the single stage car will look worse after those 5 years. A lot worse. But because of the nature of the paint, you can use an abrasive cleaner and remove the upper, dead layer and restore a deep gloss. At that point, after all that neglect, will it look as good as the clear coat car sitting next to it? Maybe. Don't forget though - you can polish that clear coat ride back to high gloss too. Perhaps both can even be brought back to a very nice finish. But before correction, odds are that the single stage paint is going to look far, far worse than the clear coat vehicle did.

Now, add in changes in technology - sometimes mandated by the EPA, sometimes not - and you've got all kinds of issues that can arise. Our '92 Camaro suffered from a case of the color coat not bonding to the primer. So did our neighbor's '94 Explorer. But the problems didn't show up on these cars for several years. In both cases the clear was beautiful on both cars, but the color coat was literally flaking away from the primer (and taking the clear with it, obviously) in fairly large chunks. There was no chalky looking, rough feeling sections at all. In fact, the paint looked gorgeous everywhere that it did stick. The body shop we both went to told us that during that period the OEMs were forced to move toward some new paint technologies that caused them to struggle a bit. Talking with guys on the thirdgen forums (3rd generation Camaro/Firebird) this was common enough that GM was offering warranty repaints if the problem arose early enough.

During this same period of time (early '90s) I was working in the inks and coatings industry which suffered the same mandated changes, with huge fines for lack of compliance. And oh the struggles we had to gain the same level of adhesion on non-porous substrates, maintain color density, gloss, etc. Industrial inks and coatings are really not that different from paint, although the application process is very different. Still, these problems spanned several industries, not just the auto business.

Some modern paints are even being electrostatically applied these days, not terribly dissimilar to powder coating. Watch an episode of Overhaulin' when the guys are in the spray booth, using traditional paint methods, and the process looks pretty much as you'd expect. But watch an episode of Ultimate Factories on Discovery (particularly the Ferrari factory and the BMW plant in South Carolina come to mind) and when they show the electrostatic painting, it just looks like a big ol' cloud of color being sprayed in the general vicinity of the body panels. But the bonding that takes place is done through a very different mechanism that in the Overhaulin' spray booth. Supposedly it's a better bond, and the process is better for the environment since the particles that don't bond simply fall into a reclamation system. There are no (or very little) solvents that blow off to atmosphere or need to be scrubbed out of a venting system. Are there more things that can go wrong in this process? Sure, there is always the possibility that something can go wrong and compromise the bonding of any process.

But at the end of the day, you simply need to take care of your investment. Proper washing and drying, cleaning and waxing are crucial. If modern paint systems don't appear to be holding up as well as we think they should, a good part has to be the general population being lulled into a false sense of security.

Hey, it has a clear coat! I don't need to wax it.

Um, yes you do.

[Michael Stoops]

Re: How likely are today's paints going to survive long term?

I think my 1999 Ford Super Duty looks pretty good considering that it is the original factory paint.

Tim, you are being very, very modest here. Someone who isn't familiar with this particular model of vehicle would be very hard pressed to think it's more than a few months old, and extremely well taken care of at that!

But your truck not only looks absolutely incredible, it also proves that you can indeed keep paint looking this good for a very long time, and that you can machine polish several times over the life of a vehicle. How many write ups on new products have you done that showed off this truck? How many times have you put a machine on this paint during the past 10 years (10 years!!) without "going through the clear coat"? That is a huge concern of so many people - "how often can I use an abrasive cleaner on my paint before I remove all the clear coat?" - "can I safely use this paint cleaner two or three times a year without using up all my clear coat?"

Consider also that this truck is actually used (ie, it's NOT a garage queen show truck), that you don't live in SoCal where it rarely rains (we've seen snow in the background of some pictures you've posted!), and the long term result is all the more impressive.

The bottom line, though, is that you took care of the truck for all those years.

[Mike Pennington]

Re: How likely are today's paints going to survive long term?

tim- from one ford man to another- you done good! You make me proud

[JoeDirt]

Re: How likely are today's paints going to survive long term?

I think like anything else, it depends (aside from application contamination) just about entirely on the care and upkeep of the owner, and the conditions under which the car lives.

This was a cool vid from Ford about the paint on the new Taurus vs. Lexus:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_HLgGLxylY

[Tim Lingor]

Re: How likely are today's paints going to survive long term?

Tim, you are being very, very modest here. Someone who isn't familiar with this particular model of vehicle would be very hard pressed to think it's more than a few months old, and extremely well taken care of at that!

But your truck not only looks absolutely incredible, it also proves that you can indeed keep paint looking this good for a very long time, and that you can machine polish several times over the life of a vehicle. How many write ups on new products have you done that showed off this truck? How many times have you put a machine on this paint during the past 10 years (10 years!!) without "going through the clear coat"? That is a huge concern of so many people - "how often can I use an abrasive cleaner on my paint before I remove all the clear coat?" - "can I safely use this paint cleaner two or three times a year without using up all my clear coat?"

Consider also that this truck is actually used (ie, it's NOT a garage queen show truck), that you don't live in SoCal where it rarely rains (we've seen snow in the background of some pictures you've posted!), and the long term result is all the more impressive.

The bottom line, though, is that you took care of the truck for all those years.

Tim- from one Ford man to another- you done good! You make me proud

Thanks guys, I appreciate the kind words!

To me, if I buy a vehicle, I want to use it. BUT that does not mean abuse it! If a person uses quality products like Meguiar's on a regular basis, you can have your cake and eat it too!

My truck has been through snow storms, ice storms, dust, dirt/muddy roads, extreme heat, towing our travel trailer, pulling out trees in the yard and even ash from forest fires. And throughout it all, I have completed countless tests and reviews on it for Meguiar's products.


Here are a few "other" pics!















Now some after detailing and product testing...and no there are no swirls of any kind.















Tim

[new2detailing]

Re: How likely are today's paints going to survive long term?

@Michael Stoops: excellent response.


At the end of the day, paint is paint. It will still be under constant assault from UV rays,extreme heat, road salts and other contamination, bug guts and bird droppings, etc. All of these conspire to oxidize and weaken the paint. However, several manufacturers have had problems in the past with newer paint technologies (lower VOC). In the 90's Chrysler had problems with their water based primer, GM had adhesion problems with certain colors (as alluded to in earlier posts), Honda had premature CC failures in many colors. So, the integrity of the paint can vary by manufacturer, year, and yes upkeep.