Paint cracks, glass fibre car
Discussion
Hi chaps and chapesses.
A big crack (ooh err!) has just appeared in my TVR Taimar passenger door.It went from no crack at all to big crack when i looked a few days later while the car was stood at home.
It runs from the door handle area forwards for about 20cm in a slight arc and the paint has separated by 1mm. Now, the car has been resprayed before i bought it and I can see the older blue paint layer in the crack. There does not seem to be any damage to the fibreglass or gel coat and i have taken off the inner trim panel to see the back of the doorskin which is fine.The car has been parked in my yard in the sun and has not been knocked. Do you think it could be the paint has not coped with expansion/contraction of the fibreglass in the heat? There is a paint crack repair guide on tvr.m-fix.co.uk and I was wondering if this would be a good enough fix to follow or if you have experience of similar situations.
Now, one guy has told me the paint may have been applied too thick and I have noticed the only other paint cracks are on that side of the car just on the crease line of the rear wing where the hatchback closes down. Maybe they did that side too thick?
Thanks very much.
A big crack (ooh err!) has just appeared in my TVR Taimar passenger door.It went from no crack at all to big crack when i looked a few days later while the car was stood at home.
It runs from the door handle area forwards for about 20cm in a slight arc and the paint has separated by 1mm. Now, the car has been resprayed before i bought it and I can see the older blue paint layer in the crack. There does not seem to be any damage to the fibreglass or gel coat and i have taken off the inner trim panel to see the back of the doorskin which is fine.The car has been parked in my yard in the sun and has not been knocked. Do you think it could be the paint has not coped with expansion/contraction of the fibreglass in the heat? There is a paint crack repair guide on tvr.m-fix.co.uk and I was wondering if this would be a good enough fix to follow or if you have experience of similar situations.
Now, one guy has told me the paint may have been applied too thick and I have noticed the only other paint cracks are on that side of the car just on the crease line of the rear wing where the hatchback closes down. Maybe they did that side too thick?
Thanks very much.
I've just resprayed my 350i and can tell you that it is unlikely to be a paint crack. More than likely you are looking at a gel coat crack that hasn't been repaired correctly, painted over then re-appearing a while later. The only way to deal with it is to take the crack right out of the gel coat by grinding it out until you hit the matting before filling in the crack with resin, Once dried apply filler, sand, prime and respray affected area. Did loads of repairs on my car that had gel cracks all of which have not re-appeared.
What has basically happened here by the sounds of it is you have bought a car whick looked lovely, but the seller had a flash over respray to help it sell, difference being that a flash over literaly just puts a nice smooth coat of paint over existing probs.
If we were tackling this we would advise running the car for another couple of months to see if any more appear then bringing it in to us, we would grind down all the gel cracks and other damage, re resin and prep, rebuild any damaged areas and then apply a good quality paint finish.
Cost would vary between £1 and 3K depending what you wanted doing.
If we were tackling this we would advise running the car for another couple of months to see if any more appear then bringing it in to us, we would grind down all the gel cracks and other damage, re resin and prep, rebuild any damaged areas and then apply a good quality paint finish.
Cost would vary between £1 and 3K depending what you wanted doing.
wildoliver said:
What has basically happened here by the sounds of it is you have bought a car whick looked lovely, but the seller had a flash over respray to help it sell, difference being that a flash over literaly just puts a nice smooth coat of paint over existing probs.
If we were tackling this we would advise running the car for another couple of months to see if any more appear then bringing it in to us, we would grind down all the gel cracks and other damage, re resin and prep, rebuild any damaged areas and then apply a good quality paint finish.
Cost would vary between £1 and 3K depending what you wanted doing.
If we were tackling this we would advise running the car for another couple of months to see if any more appear then bringing it in to us, we would grind down all the gel cracks and other damage, re resin and prep, rebuild any damaged areas and then apply a good quality paint finish.
Cost would vary between £1 and 3K depending what you wanted doing.
I go along with running the car for a few months, I'm finding stress cracks hiden under primer and filler all over My Lotus as I'm working on it. at the current rate I'll have nearly replaced the whole gel coat with glass fibre tissue and resin!!
Mark
edited to add pics
Edited by ELAN+2 on Friday 10th November 18:04
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