client supplied vinyl absolutely ruins her car..

[Clem]

just posting this as it was a prime example of worst case scenario for this poor girl.
She came to us with a roll of vinyl she'd bought through a 'friend' and upon inspection of the vinyl it was extremely close looking to the pink glitter in the Hexis range, but had no air release channels and extremely faded, with barely there avery logo stamping on the backing sheet.

despite a lot of other sign shops not touching client supplied vinyl/ ebay decals, we've always been of the mind that we can give it a look and see what we can do, but obvioulsy offer no warranty whatsoever.

So i liaised with our then graphics installer and despite no air channels he said he'd give it a go as the film did seem cast ( in it's thickness and responsiveness to heat), though fairly brittle as metallic films tend to be.

the job came up ok, here's some pics of the finished product from september 2013

It was originally the heritage green colour.


So, she came back a couple months ago with another roll of the film and wanted a removal and replacement of the film..
because this:

so the degradation of the film has discoloured the actual paint pigment underneath the clear coat, but the clear coat was 100% fine!
I've seen cases where the clear coat has been eaten through and the paint been ruined that way, but this was a first for sure!
anyone seen anything like this before?!

I walked her through (again) why it's not worth going with cheaper vinyls as she now will have to eventually deal with either paying for a re-spray if she keeps the car.
I talked her into going through us for materials and we ended up settling with the Avery pink matte and Hexis white/ magenta pearlescent metallic for the roof and stripes.

 

[Clem]

sorry, this was the final result.. computer wasn't handling

 

[Bretbyron]

Crazy! I've painted a lot of cars and have never seen something like that. It almost looks like mold growing. The clear was fine? Factory paints can be thin and crappy, but porous? That's just crazy. Did you try any buffing?

Thanks for posting.

 

[Clem]

Crazy! I've painted a lot of cars and have never seen something like that. It almost looks like mold growing. The clear was fine? Factory paints can be thin and crappy, but porous? That's just crazy. Did you try any buffing?

Thanks for posting.

not a worry, thought this would might've been a unique case study.

Well we were using isopropynol/ avery surface cleaner to remove the adhesive and none of the discolouration was moving then; but no, we didn't try buffing.
Just running your hands over the paint you could feel it was intact, totally smooth.

And it was only the glitter film that did it, the roof was in matte black and was fine, we redid all the matte black elements just to check them out and replaced with 3M 1080 matte black but all non glitter areas were fine.

Very strange

 

[reQ]

Looks WAY better after it was done with right product!

 

[Bly]

Yuh I just won't install vinyl supplied by others any more.
Nice save though.
And although you can't see up close it looks like your installer did a decent job of the cr@p with no air release.

 

[chartle]

And it was only the glitter film that did it, the roof was in matte black and was fine, we redid all the matte black elements just to check them out and replaced with 3M 1080 matte black but all non glitter areas were fine.

Very strange

Totally out there idea.

Could the glitter have acted like tiny lenses that only attacked the color coat. Notice how its only on the top of the surfaces. Is this in a super sunny climate like Arizona?

I once bought some clear suction cups and they made a big deal on the package that they didn't act like a lens and concentrate the light. So if you used it a store window it wouldn't possibly fade something hanging behind it.

Just wanted to add both application look great.

 

[lgroth]

Give the man a cigar, you hit the nail right on the head! Yes, it was caused by the metallic in the vinyl and the sun. I grew up in the family body shop and owned my own for years before the "digital era"... Look at old cars in the junk yard and most have turned black where the sun hits them hardest with metallic finishes. Most metallic is ground aluminum, it can expand enough when super heated that when it contracts it leaves microscopic air voids which allows the metallic to oxidize. It doesn't just happen under vinyl either, did a custom candy paint job once, heavy gold fleck base, red candy, then put a mix of fine and course fleck in the first few coats of clear... did the same thing by the end of the first summer just because of the few mils of paint between the metallic in base and the clear coat. This usually takes decades to happen in normal paints, sometimes very little depending on climate and vehicle care, but it can be accelerated. Just like older metallic paints (before the clear coat age) were affected by drops of rain (you old timers should remember this)

 

[worthy1]

Wow! what a mess, will be handy for people to save those photos and show to people that want to go cheap!

So I get where you guys are going with the metallic theory, but what makes the cheaper vinyl cause it when high quality vinyls also have metallic in their range? With that many metallic painted cars out there also I would have thought it would be more common. have seen cars 20 years plus with metallic paint with no signs of this.

 

[SightLine]

Its not the brand or quality of the vinyl.... in our own determinations on this type of degradation it is a combination of acids and other pollutants in morning dew, sun exposure, and will be very highly increased on vinyl with heavy heavy metallics like Avery Ultra Metallics. I've seen it a bunch of times here in ther deep south. We get brutal sun over the summer here and I have seen it a ton regular vinyls as well.. It generally only happens on the upper areas like that where it gets the worst of the sun exposure and where dew settles on it. Once it starts changing color you must remove it as soon as possible or it will permanently stain the clear and/or basecoats underneath. The clear coat on the roof of my very own truck is permanently ruined from this and looks exactly the same..... I left Oracal 970RA matte black on too long. My own fault though and I knew better. We have always warned customers that if the vinyl on the roof, hood, trunk, upper edges of the doors, etc starts to turn brown then they need to remove the vinyl immediately as it will not longer protect the paint but will instead quickly begin to cause permanent damage instead.

3M even warns about it in their documents on wrap films.

"Wrap films (just like paint) are degraded by prolonged exposure to sun and atmospheric pollutants, particularly on horizontal surfaces such as the hood, trunk lid and roof. Whenever possible, store the vehicle in a garage or at least in a shaded area during the day. At night, protect the car from dew or rain, which may contain acidic pollutants (a common problem in many large metropolitan areas). When a garage is not available, consider using a cloth car cover at night. If your wrap film starts to discolor or turn brown (which is caused by acidic pollution), immediately have a professional remove the wrap film from the vehicle to avoid staining the underlying paint."

 

[gabagoo]

I had the identical issue years ago with reflective vinyl. Only the parts of the striping that curved upwards to the sun had what appeared to be mold

 

[worthy1]

Very interesting, thanks for the info guys.

Of course warning a customer of this id imagine could make them change their mind. In warning them can I say it is rare or are we saying it is pretty common?

 

[SightLine]

Rare or common depends on multiple factors. If the car is garage kept then I'd say very rare. Around cities where there is a higher potential for acid and other pollutants that are in the morning dew and the vehicle is always outside will increase the chances. The amount of UV in the daily sun exposure for your area will affect it. Metallic content in vinyl will increase the degradation of UV breakdown and increase it even moreso if the morning dew get burned off by strong morning sun. I'd imaging the quality of the vinyl and also how much care the vehicle owner puts into the wrap and the age of the wrap will also affect it.

Here - we have pretty high UV with very strong sun and high temps all summer. We also have some contaminants in the dew. Those 2 factors combined with a fleet of local police cars we did with Avery Ultra Metallic silver (they specified it since the prior place that did their graphics used it and we had to match it) that are essentially outside year round and cared for very very little resulted in us re-doing the graphics on about a dozen cars. The cars are all also black which does not help matters either. I measured the surface temps of a black car in the sun here and it exceeded the rates service temperature of the vinyl by about 50 degrees....

 

[Craig Sjoquist]

Can not understand wrapping a car with just color compared to painting, just because it is the new thing to do, does not make it the best. Oh well what a loss.

Great save though