So I got the car back from the body shop today. I was done after they had it for the last 9 months. The paint looked great but when I got it home and started polishing everything, I found 3 cracks in the paint. 1 under the left door handle about an inch long and 2 on the rear hatch area where the body seam for the quarter panel to the rear wall is righter the edge of where the weatherstripping meets the painted surface is on both sides. The guy at the body shop gave me a bullshit line telling me to superglue the cracks. WTF.... He said he would have to paint the whole car over again for those 3 small spots because we shot he car in Tafeta white(Acura TL) white with blue ice pearl. Any advise as to repairs without shooting the whole car agin? I can't even sleep I am so frustrated with this. Thanks in advance for any input.

 

If he has to paint the whole car again, then that's his problem. Have him fix it, it's his mistake.

 

Yeah, I know. That's why I hate doing business with friends and coworkers. I am a perfectionist and gave a blank check and as long as he needed. It is what it is.

 

If you just paid them thousands of dollars and you just received the car back and it has cracks in it that you didn't cause you need to take it back to them and have them respray it because that is totally unacceptable.

 

Even MAACO wouldn't pull that type of shenanigan.

 

Yeah, I know. I am polishing and examining every inch of the car and taking pictures so I can bring it to him in the morning. I am damn glad that I told him I would put everything back together again so I could find all of this. What a pain in the ***.

 

I had this problem with one of my cars, and I was told it was due to improper application of bondo/body filler. The fix was to sand the paint in the cracked area, possibly down to the bare metal, then prep and re-shoot it. If you have the same type of cracks I had, you should address that as soon as possible. Those cracks will get bigger and new cracks will start to pop up over time.

 

X10

I just went thru this same thing a week ago and I'm not done yet.
My firebird had a 3" crack across the sail panel/roof factory seem and continued down the upper edge of the groove the rear hatch glass sets in and down another inch then forked on the end where the crack was continuing to grow.

Started grinding down thru all the bondo and there was so much I thought the car had been wrecked at one time and fixed before till I got to the body seem and found no damage,cracks or pryor repair. Ground out 90 % of the factory bondo/filler and put duro glass filler back in it's place and not as heavy as the factory did. Don't know why there was so much factory filler, I guess my car was originally built on a Friday or someone tried to fix the crack sometime in the past by just bondoing over it.

Buggy Disaster's rite, the only way to fix it is grind down to bare metal and fix it correctly or it's just going to grow and get worse.

Here's mine currently waiting on primer, just got to get the t-top mess I discovered finished first then shoot both areas at the same time.



Sounds like your shop knows the work it's going to take to fix it and doesn't want to do it. They probably covered the crack in bondo when they originally painted your car and you either drove the car, the body flexed and the crack came back or the filler shrank and the crack opened back up.
Did the car have these cracks before it was painted? Any dents needing fixed on the door in the area of the cracks before it was painted or pryor work in the door handle area? Cheep filler will shrink even after being painted and that can cause all sorts of problems and cracks to appear.

 

You can get an idea of what I am dealing with.

 

Most of that looks like filler and/or paint lift where the materials they used didn't stick to the surface they were applied to and started to lift causing the cracks.
Kinda like when you see a car and the paint has come off in huge flakes leaving clean primer and sometimes bare metal underneath. Your 3rd pic shows it well, I bet if you were to get a finger nail under one of those cracks the paint would come off in large flakes. The other two pics look like the seem sealer or filler cracked at the seems.
The bad thing is that cars white and you can hide a lot under white paint.

 

Talked to the body shop. They agreed to take care of everything and also a few other paint blemishes. I told them in the beginning that I want a perfect finish and there was no spending limit or time frame, I just want it perfect. They are standing behind their work.

 

Awesome news man, glad there going to take care of it.