[BarryK]

Yea Brian, we both have been through it and heard it all and sometimes there just are no reason for something that happened.

My favorite one:
About 3 or so years ago a shop from the Midwest called and up front, said He was a restro shop used PPG and would never use my product but would I help him with a problem and of course I did.

He had done a car and two weeks out the door, the LF epoxy is coming off in 3" to 1' sheets with just the slightest pressure. The factory PPG guy came and said either contamination on metal or solvent trap in the epoxy.
The shop owner just knew, it was a bad batch of epoxy.

So this guy starts the blow by blow and I slipped in trick questions on each product, just to verify he had no defective products.
Everything was just perfect, product wise and flash time as well as prep wise.
30 minutes later he was done and my answer was, sir you did everything perfect and overkill all the way throughout the job and a lot of the questions I asked you were questions for myself to see if, you did have any problem products and I can honestly say you do not as i have no reason to protect PPG.
So I'm telling you now, what you say happened, could not chemically happen with the info you gave me and it did not happen.

Then he said! OK what if I had use this product after the car was sandblasted?
I said we could have saved 30 minutes of conversation.

To this day, never talked to him again but I will put money on it talking to this guy after he beat the poor PPG rep half to death, he NEVER did call and let the poor guy know what caused the problem.
Oh the reason for this strange product on the metal was the owner brought a gallon in and insisted because he read how great this stuff worked and Like a, I told the owner of the shop, you better hope the customer signed something for using this product because, he is not going to want to pay to have you redo the job. Got real silent at that point!

[MARTINSR]

LOL, one of my favorites was talking to a customers customer, the guy that owned the boat trailer my customer had painted. I learned stuff from the customer to repute what the owner had told me, funny stuff. Another time I had a guy who use to screw with ratios all the time. He had a customers truck that bird crap had attacked the paint. He was telling me how the paint is junk and on and on. I went and got a lacquer thinner rag and rubbed it on a spot at the bottom of the fender and in two or three passes I went to primer! The paint had ZERO solvent resistance! With the shop owner in tow I walked into the shop and where there was a tailgate that I had painted the day before. I poured thinner on the rag soaking it and rubbed as hard as I could on the tail gate, NOTHING, it didn't so much as take any gloss off, you should have seen his face.

Like I said, I KNOW you Barry and this one has been in your head, you are that type of guy like myself who WANTS to know what happened.

Brian

[deadbodyman]

Something I've done on more than one occation when I'm rushing is add the wrong ingrediant to something I'm mixing if my bench gets clutterd and I grab a can of something thats in the wrong spot.
The FIRST thing I start thinking about if theres a problem is what did "I" do wrong because in all the years I've been at this I cant think of one time it was one of the products being at fault it was always me. after you've mixed thousands of gal you start doing it without thinking and thats where you run into trouble. A clutterd up paint bench is my biggest reason for trouble ,I have to keep everything up on the shelf and only what I need on the bench,so when basing theres the base and the reducer on the bench ,thats it ,when I start the clear everything goes back up on the shelf and only the clear ,hardener and reducer is on the bench. being a bit of an air head can be a problem but you can learn to get around it.
99% of the time it'll be human error thats the culprit,in my case anyways...

[BarryK]

Originally Posted by deadbodyman

Something I've done on more than one occation when I'm rushing is add the wrong ingrediant to something I'm mixing if my bench gets clutterd and I grab a can of something thats in the wrong spot.
The FIRST thing I start thinking about if theres a problem is what did "I" do wrong because in all the years I've been at this I cant think of one time it was one of the products being at fault it was always me. after you've mixed thousands of gal you start doing it without thinking and thats where you run into trouble. A clutterd up paint bench is my biggest reason for trouble ,I have to keep everything up on the shelf and only what I need on the bench,so when basing theres the base and the reducer on the bench ,thats it ,when I start the clear everything goes back up on the shelf and only the clear ,hardener and reducer is on the bench. being a bit of an air head can be a problem but you can learn to get around it.
99% of the time it'll be human error thats the culprit,in my case anyways...

I did a beaut about two years ago, when I restore a car, I tend to get stupid, like the inside of the doors, even thought the factory just has over spray there I base cleat the whole inside.
So I have the vett doors laying on stands and its Sunday and I get a tech call as I'm mixing the clear, so talking on phone and activating clear, like an idiot and activated it with reducer, shot four coats on each door, after dinner went out and clear is still wet.
You would have thought I would have known better. LOL

[MARTINSR]

Originally Posted by deadbodyman

Something I've done on more than one occation when I'm rushing is add the wrong ingrediant to something I'm mixing if my bench gets clutterd and I grab a can of something thats in the wrong spot.
The FIRST thing I start thinking about if theres a problem is what did "I" do wrong because in all the years I've been at this I cant think of one time it was one of the products being at fault it was always me. after you've mixed thousands of gal you start doing it without thinking and thats where you run into trouble. A clutterd up paint bench is my biggest reason for trouble ,I have to keep everything up on the shelf and only what I need on the bench,so when basing theres the base and the reducer on the bench ,thats it ,when I start the clear everything goes back up on the shelf and only the clear ,hardener and reducer is on the bench. being a bit of an air head can be a problem but you can learn to get around it.
99% of the time it'll be human error thats the culprit,in my case anyways...

When you are making calls on shops all day long, shops all over the place, I use to cover a territory hundreds of miles from one end to the other, you see stuff everyday. In the five years that I was a rep I saw ONE out and out product "failure" and it wasn't even a failure per-se it was a black toner that had some metallic in it! But honestly, products don't "fail", they just don't. There is such a high degree of checks before they are put into production and there are such close safe guards to ensure they are produced correctly it just doesn't happen. All those failures I got calls on, there was always a user error. Now, that isn't to say that it wasn't a temperamental SOB that SHOULDN'T have gave the guy a hard time. Where as some other product would have worked fine even with the errors, but it was still the errors that caused the problem non the less.

The main thing is that we learn something. I tried to teach and to explain the problem to the painter or shop so as to help him understand how he can avoid it from happening again. I felt that it was my job to explain it so he could understand instead of thinking it was the product that failed and then he would know not to do the same thing again.

That isn't always easy but I think most of the guys I worked with understood it. I had a number of them with the big AHH HAH look on their face when it hit them. No one wants to be told they are wrong, but to LEARN something is the most important part and even the guys who were hard to accept it eventually did and went on to be better painters.

Brian

[John long]

It is probably better today but 25 years ago it was really hard to get the old timers to learn the technology that went along with the new catalyzed systems. Some of the concoctions people used were unbelievable or else they would say "that is the way I always did it". You couldn't hardly get someone to read a spec sheet. I painted my first Catalyzed paint in 1978 or so. It was S/W acrylic enamel with Polysol catalyst and that got me fascinated with the "new" technology. As a matter of fact I still am. By the way, I parked beside that same S/W paint job tonight at the Sonic.

John L.

[novafreek6872]

Originally Posted by John long

I painted my first Catalyzed paint in 1978 or so. It was S/W acrylic enamel with Polysol catalyst and that got me fascinated with the "new" technology. As a matter of fact I still am. By the way, I parked beside that same S/W paint job tonight at the Sonic.

John L.

So Awesome!

Andy

[MARTINSR]

Yeah John, there are still plenty out there that REALLY think they are smarter than the manufacturers tech dept! This one customer of mine, he was what we called a "Junior Chemist" and he TOLD the tech rep when I brought him in how the company was wrong and there was too much hardener! He would do the damnedest things. Like Barry was saying there are patterns, you can't believe how clear these patterns are. I walked into this Junior Chemists shop after being called about a problem. I walked in there, looked at the car and I told him EXACTLY what he did, how he sprayed it, the number of coats, the reducer he used I told him EXACTLY what he did like I had been watching him thru the window! His jaw dropped, he couldn't believe what he was hearing. LOLOL

Brian

[painted jester]

Originally Posted by BarryK

I did a beaut about two years ago, when I restore a car, I tend to get stupid, like the inside of the doors, even thought the factory just has over spray there I base cleat the whole inside.
So I have the vett doors laying on stands and its Sunday and I get a tech call as I'm mixing the clear, so talking on phone and activating clear, like an idiot and activated it with reducer, shot four coats on each door, after dinner went out and clear is still wet.
You would have thought I would have known better. LOL

Been there done that LOL

Jester

[monster76]

I am wanting to know what went wrong so bad becuase i had a buddies mustang that i was stripping to repaint that i literally removed the paint with a spatula i never figured out why but i removed the paint and sanded to bare metal just in case...

[DanielC]

I took some autobody classes, and basic paint classes from a local community college in the 1970's. This was when Dupont Centari was used a lot, and Imron had just came out.

One of the "new" primer-surfacers we used was Dupont 100S, I think. I tried mixing and thinning a batch of it for a project, and thought I could get away with some non Dupont thinner, and it just made a lumpy jelly.

I still think the main problem was the SPI activator in the Global basecoat.

[tech69]

Originally Posted by John long

It is probably better today but 25 years ago it was really hard to get the old timers to learn the technology that went along with the new catalyzed systems. Some of the concoctions people used were unbelievable or else they would say "that is the way I always did it". You couldn't hardly get someone to read a spec sheet. I painted my first Catalyzed paint in 1978 or so. It was S/W acrylic enamel with Polysol catalyst and that got me fascinated with the "new" technology. As a matter of fact I still am. By the way, I parked beside that same S/W paint job tonight at the Sonic.

John L.

I notice a lot of old schoolers don't really like using flexible poly glazes and are kind of stubborn about the materials you use for flexible substrates.
"Just kitty hair it!"

[BarryK]

Originally Posted by DanielC

I took some autobody classes, and basic paint classes from a local community college in the 1970's. This was when Dupont Centari was used a lot, and Imron had just came out.

One of the "new" primer-surfacers we used was Dupont 100S, I think. I tried mixing and thinning a batch of it for a project, and thought I could get away with some non Dupont thinner, and it just made a lumpy jelly.

I still think the main problem was the SPI activator in the Global basecoat.

Ok, no matter what company activator he used, as long as it was a "single stage or clear coat activator" will always make the base better and there is ONLY one thing an activator can cause to go wrong and its not this, so why did the activator cause the problem?

[DanielC]

You are way more of an expert than I am with paint and paint products. In your experience, you probably have come across some odd combinations of products that work.

But for me, it is best if I stick pretty close to that the data sheet on the paint product recommends. I do not think it is wise to use a PPG activator in a Dupont paint, or primer, for example. I do not think SPI would recommend using some other companies activator, or hardener either, in one of their epoxies or paints.

[Brad4321]

Thanks for all of the replies and discussion everyone. I have sanded down the doors. At approximently 1 foot past the door handle the basecoat starts to feather and stick properly. I can't find any loose paint outside of the door handle area (for both front doors). However, for a two square foot area around the handle, the paint has peeled off in sheets.

I use lint free disposable towels for wax and grease remover. They are not cloth and do not get washed and are in a "sealed" box until use. I do not use any fish eye eliminator and have never used any, or ever had the need too.

I have activated TCP's paint with SPI activator on three vehicles now with no issue, so I do not think that is the cause. Something getting under the paint seems like the logical cause to me as well. Maybe the temps and humidity was just right to not let the waterborne completely dry. I will be reshooting the doors this weekend and I am going to allow for additional dry time just in case.

I keep all of the chemicals in their original bottles. I mix up a quart at a time, so if I did mix in the wrong products it would have affected the entire doghouse.

I will re-read this thread a bit later when I have more time to try to understand all of the discussion. I will post an update on how it turns out and any other details I can think of. I appreciate everyone's effort to figure this out and Barry's offer. I still have plenty of supplies to finish this.