A buddy of mine painted my '71 Chevelle nearly 3 years ago now. I'm presently doing a frame off restoration of it now, but in "tearing it down", I'm seeing the paint doing something crazy. My buddy says his brother is having the same problem and has been for quite awhile. The first time he painted his brother's car was about 7 or 8 years ago and has since then painted it 2 more times.

He starts out stripping the original paint to bare metal with aircraft stripper, then clean and prepped with metal cleaner. Then sprayed with etching primer, then a primer surfacer. Then he paints with a basecoat and last with a clearcoat. All the products he uses is by DuPont and now that my car has been painted for around 3 years, it appears as though someone has taken a nail from the under side of the paint and started "poking" it up making it appear as though the paint has "measles" - small "bumps" on the surface of the paint. Not ALL of the panels are doing this. The hood I bought from Year One and was not "stripped", just primered and painted. It looks fine. The front fenders I bought from a guy that had already fix and primered them, but they are the worst of the entire car. The rest of the car is original, but yet it's doing the same thing. The only thing we can come up with is that there's something about the metal itself that's causing this. He's redone alot of cars, mostly Chevelle's and Mustangs, in this very manner, but yet the only ones he's having a problem with are mine and his brother's Chevelles'.

Anybody got ANY idea as to what the -- is going on? :confused: :(

I've seen a similar problem when using lacquer primer especially in areas around body filler. As near as I can figure, it's a combination of high humidity or poor water traps in the air line and the lacquer primer together. In the cases I've seen on metal cars, when the "bumps" are popped, there is a slight amount of flash rust on the metal.

I've also seen this condition on fiberglas(Corvettes).

I have seen that to. From what i can tell it looks like it happened over filler. I think in my case it is from wetblocking, breaking through to the filler,and not allowing the filler to thorouly dry before repriming. Also you say he used metal cleaner before self etch,do you mean cleaner or conditioner? Most self etches dont want any type of acid wash under it. Could cause problems

Thanks guys - I'll be sure to past this information along to my buddy, but I still find it baffling knowing that alot of the areas that are doing this - there is no filler. I'm guessing then it's the combination of the primer and moisture. graemlins/sad.gif