Heres the deal, the drivers door on my 54 chrysler started to form two small (3/8") bubbles under the paint after sitting in direct sunlight (70 degrees) for about five hours. After poking at it with my knife I found that a previous owner had filled a dent with body filler maybe 3/16" thick of filler. What would cause the filler to bubble like that? air pockets? Any ideas?
Is this fresh body/paint. Or a long stored car that was recently bought to the light of day? Rust is one of the blister makers. A chemical reaction to the sunlight/heat could be another reason.
unclean metal, moisture, metal not being ruff enough for the filler to get "bite", rust, pick one. if the filler is not bonded to a clean, rust free surface preped right, it's just a matter of time of when it will fail. your's took a hot day to speed it up. if the car was allways in your garage and never got wet, it would last pretty long. the sun heated up the car, made everything swell up a bit and exposed a quick fix or a bad repair. unless it was fixed 30 years ago, then it's safe to say you got your moneys worth out of that repair!
The paint job is older (im guessing atleast ten years old) and i have driven/parked it in the hot sun many times prior to this. When i pierced the bubble i was almost able to pull some of the filler off in a strip, thats where i got the air pocket thought. Either way it will soon be properly repaired. Thanks guys!
Dark colored car? It is very possible that the filler was under catalyzed and therefore is not fully hardened so it will move with fluctuations of heat. Dark colored cars tend to cause this to occur more readily because they get hotter in the sun but it can happen to any filler that was not properly catalyzed.
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