Lotus Europa Community
Lotus Europa Forums => Garage => Topic started by: Gmg31 on Friday,September 11, 2015, 11:12:39 AM
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went to my body shop today and discovered my gel coat is bubbling and its widespread. Any ideas please? My paint guy really doesn't want to paint it.
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Those air pockets will have to be repaired before painting. If you don't do the work yourself, it's going to expensive for a shop to do the body repairs. I have no idea how many hours are required but my local body shop charges $120/hr for fiberglass work.
There's a ton of postings on the Yahoo Europa list on body work, search under gelcoat.
Also curious as to how the paint shop removed the old paint.
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Any pictures of the offending bubbles ? That might help identify what you're dealing with, if it's actual air pockets in the gel coat (which isn't common but does happen) or the results of a paint reaction.
Bubbles in the gel coat can occur with hand layup and if they are fractionally sub surface they can cause problems with temperature changes. We occasionally had this problem with fibreglass vessels on chemical duty at elevated temperatures, they'd look fine at the start and then after a period of service you'd see "holes" on the inside, the trick being to determine if this was fabrication or chemical attack. Normally on a car body it's not a big deal but whenever I've done a respray I've tended to press a screwdriver on any suspect areas and fill any that collapse. I think a similar procedure was followed by Lotus and certainly TVR in the 70s.
Another thing I've seen is reaction between paint layers, not whilst painting but several years later. When we moved here the outbuilding roof was leaking where I stored the Europa and I covered it with plastic sheeting - for several years as it turned out ::) Anyway when I finally dragged it out there were some bubbles in the paintwork. I stripped off the colour coat and then found the surface beneath was "speckled" with hundreds of white circles about 1-2mm. Very weird, but I guessed it was water vapour trapped between the paint coats and caused by my poor storage. It wasn't in the gel coat and stripping to bare fibreglass solved it.
Brian
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I have come across what Brian has described with the the small 1-2mm white bubble, I believe as Brian says is water vapour that has caused this. My car had this and even the TCS in Beulieau motor museum also has it. I had to strip back to the gel coat and in many many places back to the fibreglass (because of cracking) and tissued the body (glass tissue paper laid on with resin) and NEVER let any water get near the body while it's in this state.
Dave
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Ahh, that's interesting Dave, do you have any idea how this "blister" type thing happens ?
It really puzzled me because the paint was several years old and I'm certain when it went into the building it was fine. I could only put it down to the plastic sheet and some sort of condensation thing happening underneath because with the roof leaking the building certainly had ventilation !
It would be good to know the mechanism because I don't want it creeping up again any time soon. Still, if Beulieau has the same problem, at least I'm in good company......
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http://www.nationalmotormuseum.org.uk/?location_id=335&item=152&offset=0
Not a very detailed photo I am afraid, but the thought was there !
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I have spoken to several experts this week and the common cause for this is cars that have been stored in garages often under plastic sheets. The inside of the fibre glass is unsealed and water vapour seeps into the fibres. It's later when the car comes out into the sun that the moisture expands into the gell coat and blisters appear. One of the apparent fixes is to put the shell into a paint shop oven at 85deg for 7 days. But where can you find a body shop with no work for a week.
However there's also another less serious situation with almost identical symptoms when the moisture is only in the primer and paint layer and not in the gell coat. To identify the difference you have to carefully remove the paint without rubbing it down using heat or chemicals. Once removed if the blisters are still visible then, obviously, the damage is in the gell coat and its going to get depressing.
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And I thought fibreglass was waterproof.
I will have to cancel my £1m yacht order, in case it sinks.
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...to put the shell into a paint shop oven at 85deg for 7 days. But where can you find a body shop with no work for a week.
Using 3" thick, 4'x8' polyiso roofing insulation sheets (mine were salvaged from a school gym that was being re-roofed) and duct tape, I built a temporary 4'x8'x6' "oven" that I heated with a single 1000 watt electric baseboard heater and an electric fan (to circulated the heat similar to a convection oven). The single small heater easily raised the temperature to nearly 65C before I turned it off. Ambient air temp was probably roughly 30C.
My project was not car related but the concept could work for cooking a Europa shell.
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^^ ingenious. Now that's what I call lateral thinking, well done that man !
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Well my body shop guy and I have come to an agreement. The shell is going to a nearby media blasting centre to be soda blasted to remove all of the old paint. We will inspect the car together afterwards and if the bubbles have all vanished he will paint the car. If there are still bubbles in the gel coat then it comes back to my garage and I rethink the whole plan. Btw £800 to soda blast a shell.
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I think that's probably the very best way to go and given the problems you're having now with the gel coat, it may even be the cheapest. It sounds like you're on your way! Keep us up to date!