Yesterday I started to colour sand and polish my new paint job. It came out beautiful, so happy. Today I went to do some more work to the car and I noticed thousands of pimples coming up in the paint under the clear coat. It looks completely f%#$ed, so angry! I had the deck lid finished a few days ago and wrapped it in a blanket and stored it away. I had a look at the lid and its worse than the body I did yesterday.

I think its the rust converter primer I used. When I was shopping for products to use I was going to get the straight rust converter but I saw a rust converter primer from the same company. It's the kind that turns black when it dries. The two panels that I didn't use the converter primer on haven't pimpled at all. Its the only difference between them and the rest of the car. All the etch, primers ,colour and clear coat were the same through the whole job.

Well anyway, what a complete waste of time and money $600 worth of paint down the drain.

I am going to give tec. support of the company tomorrow and see what comes of it but I don't think it matters much now. So angry!

that sucks!!! all that effort.
i feel for you mate
matt

I don't think words could really express how you must be feeling, as I know how I feel when small things go wrong. Make sure you don't have a gun in your hand when you go see the tech support person, because at this very moment I bet you feel like using one.

Hope it all works out ok and they can help.

Kevin

You poor bugger.

Your explanation sounds possible, certainly doesn't make it any easier.

Our shop used to use Wurth brand of this stuff, ok for panel prep, and the Septone I recently bought says not, both do similar job.

Good luck with whatever you decide to do with it.

Damm

NOOOOOOOOOOOooooooo, ..

thats is i realy nice colour dude. give those tech staff a mouth full and get your cash back.

Yep, a $14 bottle of liquid hell cost me most of my sanity today.

The colour is a VW colour diamond blue. Its a classy colour hey?

After a bit of thought I can either spray it again,nooooooooooooo or just let the paint go septic and dig on the rat look and spray it again in 12 months. By the rate of bubbling maybe it will strip itself in a couple of months.
I keep looking at it and shaking my head.

Thanks for the sympathy peeps, in a way it helps to get over it.
I'll let you know what the tech. guy said.

Damn! It looks like you did a great job too!

I've been told that all rust converters are not to be used !

it just turns the rust Black and not much else.
the only way is to remove all rust before painting.

Looks good from 10' away.

Brad that really sucks, i feel for you mate,
was it your first paint job? like simon said you got a really nice finish on it

Damn i know this doesn't help you but it made me realise that this type of thing can and does happen. I will be watching out for this when i get round to my beetle.

My condolences.

Is the pimples in just the clear coat? or the colour coat too?

looks like humidity blisters

was the surface moist before you applied the colour ???

Do feel sorry for you. i made a similar mistake but as I was just touching up a fairly ordinary paint job, so was no biggie. I applied a two pac oven bake paint with a hairdryer over some work I had done in various areas. Blistered bad and took an age to dry. I dont know the rust stuff you used but was there any warnings? it may be worth actually writing to company and also seeing whether the fault is yours or there's?

yes you may want to find out if its humidity blisters(water in air line )or solvent boil

The pimples are under the colour. I can wet rub them out with 2000 grit but within 8 hours they start coming back. They are only on the panels that were coated in this converter primer. The body was sprayed on a dry sunny day and no water was in contact with the metal for over a week.

I use two water traps on my lines, one at the compressor and one 8' before the gun. The pimples look like if you got a heat gun and blistered the surface lightly. Weird thing is that they wet rub totally flat and 8 hours after polishing their back. I use very light pressure when I polish and don't let the panel heat at all.

Hope someone can tell me what going on. I appreciate all the feedback.

humidity the body work has to be kept dry when primer has been applied

I just talked to the company rep and they know about the problems with the product. I am not the first to have this problem with the converter primer. If the surface is not heavily rusted the product will have problems. The acid keeps reacting with the bare metal unless it has a heavy rust coat. It should be only used as a temporary coating for heavily rusted repair sections. Damn, I wish the bottle said that.

The best course of action is to strip it back and paint it again. Least I know now that its not an isolated case. I feel less stupid.

Has the rep offered some products to ease the pain? Nothing on the bottle and all.....

That is really unfortunate, it looked like a real nice paint job. But atleast this time when you strip it back, it should be a lot easier since the paint is still fresh.