Folks Of Interest NAPA Martin Senior Paint Problem

Hi everyone,
You can see my 51 Mercury in my avatar. Well, it was painted last year with NAPA Martin Senior paint. This was, as everyone knows, an expensive paint job!! Now I am not going to knock them just yet.
But...here's what going on. The paint look really nice after completion and all of the while it was inside having the interior done. Then in the Spring at the first car show outside, a split in the paint appeared. I thought someone had keyed my car. Wrong! At the next car show, three more spots showed up. Now, the more time in the sun, more lines appear and then they grow larger and larger revealing the black first coat of paint. Some of you might have seen it at the Merc Happening July in Salina. Note..my car was painted by an expieranced painter with over 25 years of painting and has painted 100's of cars. In fact, he painted his own Hudson roadster with the same paint 3 months before painting mine. The only differance was he used the red tint for a deeper purple color and the blue tint on mine.


It took over 3 months to get a Martin Senior paint rep to look at my car.

He told my painter that he should have put catalyst in the paint color coat as well as the clear coat. My painter did put it in the clear coat, but not the color coat. Why? Because he had the instruction sheet for the paint procedures direct from Martin Senior and it does not say to do this. He followed the steps on my paint job exactly as he did his own car. His turned out just fine. My painter says that the Martin Senior catalyst was defective and is causing the problem. The paint rep says...mavbe..but the steps were not followed correctly due to not using catalyst in the color coat too. Then went on to say, that they had changed procedures and added that the catalyst needed to be used in the color coat also. My painter asked why the NAPA store he bought the paint from supplied him with instructions that were the same as the paint for his car? No direct answer to that question.

To date....Martin Senior is supplying the paint to repaint my car and no labor...yet. My painter must take a paint sample off the car and send it to them. Then depending on what they find...they might...might.. pay some labor. So, now, we have to strip all of the paint back down to bare metal and start all over again. It is very labor intensive and costly. Plus, I will have to pay to have my pinstriping redone too.

Has anyone else had this problem...it is the newest and lastest..efferdescent, pearl, metallic paint that Martin Senior just came out with last year.

I will post some pics (just a few of the many spots) and keep you updated. My painter has scheduled the car in for painting in December. The earliest opening he has.
Thanks for listening guys.
Little Skeet.

 

I'm not familiar with napa paints, but I've never seen a BC/CC that required a catalyst in the base.

 

Wow, that is trippy.

 

if the dark lines are the cracks then i would have to assume that martin senour is saying it needed catalyst in the base because of the thickness of the base applied. when i shoot flake or anything needing extra depth i use catalyst in the base because i need to apply more than the standard 3 even coats. sorry you are having these troubles, and hope ms makes it right. i'm sure your painter has plenty of experience, but the real problem is the tech sheets given with the paint. they (martin senour/sherwin williams) change this crap every two weeks or so and no working guy can get a job done and keep up on all the b/s. this is why i am leary of using any of the newer, greater, less filling crap they peddle. good luck and again very sorry this is happening, but thanks for the heads up.

 

I've dealt with 'reps' from all avenues of the car biz, and this sounds typically like a 'loophole'.
In my experience, if the paint sample is sent to the perpetrator for analysis, a matching sample should also be sent to an impartial analyst, just to cover your 'trunk area'...
Conflict of interest could sway even the most 'fair' paint factory chemist in these days of self preservation.
The rep's denial of clarity in the instructions raised a red flag. (that and the 'newness' of the formula.)

 

Which M/S line is having this problem? Crossfire? Tec base? I haven't used M/S paint in years, but will be soon. It looks like you have a lot of material on there...and it shrunk really bad. Never seen anything quite like that though. Good luck.......

 

Not to be a dick but, an expensive paint job with Napa paint? I think thats part of your issue right there.

 

this same thing happend to the metal flake job on the dash in my 54 chevy when i had it, that was also paint from NAPA. i thought i just fucked up since it was my first time using base/clear paint.....? Maybe it was the same problem?

 

The blue is craking, but not the black? What primers were used?

 

I had used their paint years ago, ITS JUNK!!!! I would rather go to Wally World and get paint.

 

Martin Senior/Sherwin Williams came out with the first BC/CC automotive system. It has always been a nightmare. Through
all of the "reformulations", nightmares always seem to arise ! ! !

Since after 25+ years these people can't get it right, everyone
should finally realize that there products are suitable for Silos,
Old Tractors, and Septic System parts ! ! !

 

I agree. I have no experience with NAPA/MS paint but that said, why would anyone use that paint when there are so many other tried and true paints available??? Good luck with getting this resolved...if it were my car I would run it through a soda blast and start over with HOK, PPG, or some other brand of paint.

 

im with you ive been spraying for 13yrs and have never shot it but ive never heard anything good about it either. i shoot ppg right now and its pretty good stuff.

 

Question was the blue a base coat color or a single stage color? The old man used to shoot the stuff and the hardeners are super sensitive. He had the problem with the base not sticking if it didn't have a hardener in it.

 

I have a few of the same questions that have been asked here already. First off, why on earth paint that beautiful car with substandard paint system?

But, let's get past that. From the pictures it looks like the car has a black base with a blue candy/pearl top coat, then the clear? Is that correct? How many coats of both of the base colors are there?

As a paint tech rep I see a bunch of paint failures. Sometimes it is the product, but mostly it is pilot error. Two years ago I got a call to go look at an Acura. 3 stage red repaint on the whole nose of the car. 3 coats of the ground coat red, 5 coats of the mid coat pearl followed by 3 coats of clear. All PPG, all applied correctly so they said. Looking at the job I saw many failures. The most interesting was the hood. At least a half an inch all around the hood had no clear on it, and if I touched the edge my finger came away with red paint on it. This was a month after painting it! What happened? The painter never put hardner in the base coats as recommended by PPG. 8 coats with no activator means it never fully dried. As the clear dries is creates surface tension, and pulled inward from the edges exposing the wet base coats. Other panels had cracks like your car where the tension pulled away and created craters.

The weak link in any paint job is the base coat. Everything else from the primer to the clears have hardner in them. If you do not put any in the base coat you are leaving a layer in the sandwhich with a weakness. Adding the activator also helps with adhesion and helps with chip resistance.

Sorry to hear about your problem.....good luck!

Glenn

 

I use House of Color which is Vaspar works great but next will try the new Dupont but really need old time laquer back The EPA can stay out of it

 

I agree with Hot Rod 47, I was a rep. for 30 years and what I found was mostly to much too quick and when you do that your solvent will get trapped and with no hardner in the base coat, that has to go some where. It can't go through the car so it melts it's way to the top. Solvent always wins.
Don

 

Martin Senior paint always has sucked.

 

my brother in-law works for napa & he won't sell no paint.
go figure.

 

If martin senior is like ppg, they don't have a p sheet on just the activator, it is a note on the base sheet.

Pretty much all tri coats need the base activated.

Sorry about your car.

 

I used crossfire napa paint on my car and it has so far held up GREAT. I know quite a few other guys that have used it with the same results.

it SOUNDS like to many layers of base without the correct amount of activator applied to fast. the thick base coat couldn't get the solvents out fast enough and the clear coat sealed them in....... now it's cracking......

I simply followed the instructions to the T and it worked great... BUT,, I can tell you from one of my friends experiences.. if you stray from the instructions, it's not good. But you can hardley blame MS paints for that.....

 

A merc has always been my fave car. Don't have one, never will, as one would cost more than my house. That said, I'd never do an experimental paint job on a merc.

 

G,damn it, it's Martin Senour, not Senior!!!!

 

Hahaha, Nads.

 

Martin's a lot older now maybe he had a kid ?

 

I painted my 40 with Martin Senour 8800 Black acrylic enamel with cataylist hardner in 1987 and it's still holding up with no problems.

 

Well, I feel your pain. I shot my '59 T'Bird with PPG candy several years ago, following the tech sheets for the then new formula. Black pearl, clear, colorsanded, then candy. The candy wrinkled the clear and the basecoat. I called the paint store, counter guy says, "...park it out in the sun..." Huh?

I called the PPG tech line, told the rep the story, the guy says, "...park it out in the sun for a day and reshoot it." What? This didn't sound right, so after pulling my hair for an hour or so, I called the tech line back and got a different rep.

"What catalyst did you use in the basecoat?", he asked.

"None", I replied, "The tech sheet didn't call for it, the label didn't list any catalyst, and the guy at the paint counter said this is a non catalyzed paint."

"Oh", he says, "That's wrong. This is all new formlula. The tech sheets were wrong for this, we have new ones coming out. You'll have to DA all the color off down to primer, reseal, and reshoot it."

No refunds, no apology, from PPG or the paint store. I DA'd about $800 worth of color, clear, and basecoat off the car, and reapplied according to the new, apparantly secret, tech sheets I got with the new paint. Took a week of my time and effort.

You're lucky you're getting ANYTHING back.

Brian

 

In my (admittedly limited) experience with BC/CC paint, I've never added hardener to the base coat, and never heard of a situation where you were told to.

So, all you paint rep guys, is this something I should do whether the directions say to or not, or only in special circumstances? And how much should I add? The standard 4:1:1 (or whatever)? Or some other secret formula?

I've never had a problem like the ones described above, so I'm asking these questions to preserve my good record.

 

Nobody else said it so I will. There's 2 types of base. 1 type is essentially like lacquer. It has just a reducing solvent and is intended to apply a moderate amount of color to the car and build durability and depth with the clear. The other type requires a "reactive reducer" (PPG) or a "basemaker" (DuPont). These base formulas are intended for colors that may require additional film build or if the task requires some additional durability. To my limited knowledge of DuPont products (I hate the shit) they only have the type needing basemaker. PPG has both. PPG lines are DBC needing just reducer and DBU (Ditzler Base Urethane) needing reactive reducer. The M/S line I have no knowledge of. Like most every HOK base no activator or "linking system" is needed to connect one coat with the other. Select types of catalyst can be added to help link the various coats together but you can't just willy nilly any type of hardener to do it. Any kustom finish that ends up with over 20-25mils of mat'l would be better suited to an activated base, or at a minimum, a black seal coat of epoxy sanded to aid adhesion. Like in a closed thread from earlier, you sometimes get less than you paid for and with the low-budget companies trying to jock on to the "HOT ROD TV SHOW" craze with experimental colors and flashy effects the problems are sure to multiply with little technical support.

I feel your pain, I really do. The only thing worse than top flight finish work is having to do it over. It was hard enough the 1st time. I'll be more than happy to advise you and your buddy (the painter) with any possible questions you might have to avoid this the next time around. PM if you'd like. There's other ways to avoid these issues without playing mad scientist. Let us know what they cough up for ya too. If you PM be patitent. I'm busy sometimes but I'm always having a HAMB sandwich for lunch