A paint reaction on a vintage Mustang almost cost me a week

I was spraying a base coat on a 1968 Mustang fender in my shop in Boise. The sealer looked fine, but after the third coat of base, a weird wrinkling pattern showed up across the whole panel. I had to stop everything, sand it all back down to bare metal, and re-do the whole sealer and base process. It set me back about 16 hours of work. I think the issue was a chemical mismatch between the old sealer batch and the new base, even though they were the same brand. Has anyone else run into this with modern paints over older sealers?

4 comments

4 Comments

patel.christopher1mo ago

Ever check the humidity in your shop before spraying? That wrinkling can happen if the air's too damp, even with perfect paint matches. It's a sneaky thing that'll ruin a job fast.

sean_barnes243d ago

Honestly @patel.christopher is totally right about it being sneaky. Tbh I had the same thing wreck a hood a few months back. The gauge was just over 60% and I figured it was close enough, but nope. Woke up to a finish that looked like alligator skin. Now I keep a little dehumidifier running in the corner before any big job, no exceptions. It's just not worth the heartache of doing all that work over.

knight.uma1mo ago

Ugh, tell me about it. I lost a whole fender to that last summer. The paint looked fine going on, then it just crinkled up like an old newspaper in the sun overnight. My gauge read 70% and I just went for it like an idiot. Now I won't touch a gun if it's over 55, no matter how behind schedule I am. That's a lesson you only need to learn once.

roberth661mo ago

Yeah, I've seen that happen even with the same brand lines. Makes me wonder if the reformulated stuff just doesn't play nice with any leftover old stock on the shelf.