Hi All:

Have a 245 with metallic grey paint that is heavily oxidized. I saw a thread on here recently (which I can't find tonight) where a guy buffed and waxed his red 245 and was able to restore the paint. It was quite impressive.

I think that my situation might not be so easy to fix - at least not without respraying the car. I have white splotches on the hood and roof that are getting bigger - I assume (but do not know for sure) that this is the clearcoat peeling off, and the white is the primer underneath.

Is there anything that I can do to clean this mess up short of repainting the car?

Thanks
-JM

Both Scorron and Onkel Udo bring up good points.

Onkel Udo is right in that this is the fault of the 'new' environmentally-friendly switch that was made in clearcoat in the late 80's and early 90's. Dodge experienced a particularly high failure rate; high enough that the shop I worked at in high school and college could count on seeing one or two a month.

Scorron is correct in mentioning that you'll need to get rid of the clear, although I might disagree on having to get rid of the paint as well. IMHO and IIRC, the paint didn't suffer from the same issues, only the clear. Not sure if that was what Scorron was implying though, perhaps only that the easiest way to tell if you've gotten rid of all the clear is to get rid of the paint as well. That'll be more tricky for you as the Metallic Gray paint that you have will look awfully similar to your grey primer. It'd be easy on my white paint to tell when I hit grey primer, but you'll have a more difficult time knowing when to stop. And, as Scorron pointed out, you do want to stop before you get to bare metal; especially with that Alabama humidity.

If you do sand it, I would use a random-orbital (or air tool version) with a 220 or 280 grit. 180 would be okay by hand, but with a RO sander using a finer grit will buy you a little extra time before you hit that metal. Also, make sure that the pads you're using have some sort of foam backer to accommodate for the contours of the roof and hood. Otherwise, you'll get hotspots.

The other option that worked well on the hood of my dad's Dodge Dakota was to remove the bulk of the oxidation with a red scotchbrite pad or 400 grit sand paper. You have to be pretty delicate to not remove paint, so don't get too rowdy. Then wax heavily and buff by hand. You'll have to do every 6-9 months depending on the amount of sun, but it'll keep it from looking gross until it either becomes a parts car or you paint it.

Hope that helps!

Brian, I had some patches of clear that had been gone for ages, and the paint was very oxidized where there was no clear. You are right, in that there is nothing wrong with the color coat, except for where its chalky and oxidized. When I prepped for my paint job, I just removed 90% of the color for thoroughness, to make sure no loose, chalky paint remained.

You are also right in that 180 is a bit much for a random orbital. Tried that, and went back to hand sanding. I have always preferred the control of hand sanding.

Sean

My dealer had a beautiful '88 244 - I asked them how much they wanted for it - considering the car's condition, the price was fair. The only thing that separated it from new was poor paint on top.

I went back to buy it and it was gone. The dealership owner had decided to add it to his collection.

The next time I visited, the car was in the showroom looking beautiful.

They had painted it down to the side trim.

You might consider that route.

BTW - I was going to opine that the only way to save the metallic paint was to apply paint remover, scrape it off and put it in a clean sealable container!

As another post mentioned careful sanding and polishing. My red '96 855R had clear coat on the hood, bumper, front fenders, left rear quarter and tailgate, the rest was original paint???

After driving it for 11 years, I polished it with Dupont New Car Polish (it is a very mild polish used on new cars) and waxed it - you could not tell the difference between the parts.

You can now buy some VERY fine sand paper, or for aggressive polishing, use paper and polish instead of rags.

If you are very good, very careful, and at least a little bit lucky, you could scrub off the white patches of delaminted and oxidized clearcoat, polish the rest, and make it look . . . well, still not very good, but anything is better than that clear coat cancer.

I had those same patches of failed clear on a recently acquired wagon, and I had only the hood and roof repainted. The local paint shop was able to match the paint on the rest of the car perfectly. I did all the prep (which included some body work, in my case) and they shot the primer, paint and clear for $700. Between the hood and roof on a 245, that's about half the car.

As long as you are only doing prep for the repaint, you can do it yourself pretty easily. Using sandpaper (I think I used 180 grit) you just hand sand until the clear is all gone, and ideally, the color coat as well. I seem to recall two primer layers under that metallic paint, so even though the sandpaper goes through quickly, you can stop before hitting metal. Despite what some people tell you, you do NOT want to sand back to clean metal. This is not a 1970s Ford; starting in the mid-eighties, Volvo used a remarkable rust-proofing on their panels (galvanizing, I assume) which will keep the rust cancer away for a looong time should you develop chips in the paint. If you sand back to metal, you will destroy that rust-proofing. Primer that has adhered for 20+ years is a better substrate for new primer/paint to cling to than bare metal, and any modern paint shop can use a primer without fear that the original will react with it poorly.

This is assuming you find a competent paint shop that will let you do your own prep work. A lot of them do not like to do that. Maaco will, but they will also paint over bird crap, if you ask them to.

I will look for the photos I took of the process; that might help you decide if you want to do this.

Yes! Embrace the environmentally friendly paint process that brought on the peeling clearcoat era of late 80's to early 90's.

I you cannot embrace it you do have to do a full repaint and the prep is very tedious.