So the paint on my Chevelle was originally painted back in 1985 and maybe a few touch-ups in the mid 90's. The car is garage kept but not temperature controlled. It's DuPont’s base coat/clear coat with all DuPont prep paints underneath. Over the last two years the paint is starting to show signs of checking and now more evident, cracking. The cracking is mostly confined to the tops of the quarter panels where they are joined to the roof and my guess precipitated the cracking because of flexing and age.

So my question is: Without spending large amounts of money on a down to metal and up with newer Urethane paint chemistries, can I still get Acrylic Lacquer (1 or 2 quarts of original Cranberry Red) so I can repair this? Doesn’t seem possible in New Jersey…but I am fearful for the color match.

I am not ready to strip the entire car down and repaint the whole car...not yet. I do not want to spend 17 to $22K (Quoted in 2009 including straightening panel alignment) to have the car repainted by a specialty restoration shop...not yet.

I do want to repair the cracked and checked areas, prime, seal, spray the cranberry red, clear coat and wet sand. If I can't, then I will consider taking the car off the road for a long while and strip it.

Suggestions welcome, any ideas,
Thanks,
Sam

Sam,

You can't apply lacquer over bc/cc paints without scuffing and sealing the whole repair area. The lacquer will react with the current topcoats and cause a lifting condition. You can have that area repaired and blended into the rest of the car so you don't have to strip and repaint the whole car. It's really not that difficult of a job. The hardest part is matching the color. Red can be a tough one to match.

I'll keep that in mind if I get to do this Tom, Thanks! In fact I've used sealer whenever I've done a repair however it was the dark brown color. Lately it seems the last gallon of sealer I purchased was not available in brown anymore but grey! Needless to say it is a lighter undercoat so I had to build up the red when I did the color. I was using DuPont's Velvaseal...I believe the number is 1985 and it used to come in three(?) colors until they discontinued the brown.

Good old Velvaseal 1986S, I've used that before. The one I used was a slightly darker gray than other sealers I've used. Red is one of those pesky colors you have to apply at least 3 coats to get the coverage. When I painted the Charger, it took 2 coats just to get it to look orange. the first color coat looked brown.