Problem.....WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS?

[DesireeM]

I was agreeing with the comment. I was not having a psychotic episode in which I thought this thread was made by me and now I was getting answers to my problem, which you must have thought by your comment.

hahaha anything's possible around here. My mistake.

 

[player]

I would vote bird droppings. The droppings are acidic and if they can damage the paint on a car, it wouldn't surprise me if it's dripping down and negatively affecting the bond between the vinyl and the adhesive.

Birds poop on the van, it drips down, catches the tops of the letters, some of the acid soaks between the vinyl and adhesive and the vinyl blows off when he's driving. And I'd guess the poop is drying before it ever hits the other letters and that's why they're not affected.

If poop ate the vinyl I would expect to see signs it had eaten the paint as well...

 

[MikePro]

many of my initial theories have already been stated. ..but i'm leaning-towards anything but install faillure.
a year later, everything else is pristine, and there's no way someone would mis-prep the exact spot that "S" falls on both sides of the vehicle. ....approx. 3' difference between the two sides.

shot of the entire side of the vehicle may shed some additional light where sheets of ice may fall from the roof of the car/etc., but I doubt it.
i'm leaning-towards vandals (bird peckers included, lol... maybe even a client trying to edge-out of the remainder of an invoice??? idk, seems like a stretch, but anything is possible)

...and/or a bad roll & the rest of the lettering hasn't started showing yet.
*noted, that, I too love Arlon as their HP vinyl has more colors available than 3M/Gerber. Rolls and rolls of misc. colors have been out in the weather for years without issue.

what happens when you intentionally picking-at/destroying any of the other letters? or at least the spots that are already failing?

 

[ChaseO]

It's natural that the tops of the letters are the first to break down. They get the most sunlight. As for the gray not being effected, its a lighter color and doesn't soak up near the sun as the dark blue. If it were me, I'd fix the one effected word free and tell the customer that you stand behind your product.

 

[Joe Diaz]

I think Jill might be on to something. Melting snow... freezing... forming ice on the side of the vehicle then slowly migrating down as it slowly melts again. That would cause failure. I've seen it happen before. Perhaps the blue was slightly bad. Not bad enough that it wouldn't normaly go the distance but bad enough that the ice that formed in that one area could damage it. And chase brings up a good point about light vs dark color. It's a bit of a stretch, but perhaps it was enough of a temperature change that one color would fail and the other didn't. But I think melting ice/snow dripping from the roof is what I would guess was the problem.

 

[TyrantDesigner]

I've seen this with arlon ... nothing that extreme but I've seen it ... ussually on big rigs that have it up around the upper windshield area (on the sides). I figured it was just road conditions (snow, rain, oils, chemicals, smoke, heat, cold, etc, etc) affecting the age as wind at 60-80 mph whipped off the windshield and blew down the side of the vehicle.

Can't really suggest anything other than to replace it and set expectations that it could be external conditions affecting it.

 

[Jillbeans]

Thank you, Joe. I know I'm right :Big Laugh

 

[ColoPrinthead]

Just a thought, but maybe it was hit by some heavy hail and only the top portion was affected because the top side portion of the vehicle has a curve and the unaffected vinyl was on a more vertical portion? This might allow water to gather over time. Just conjecture.

 

[jfiscus]

X2 on the request for a full vehicle photo!

 

[Tim Aucoin]

I'm with Jill & Joe on this one. Seen some of that happening around here this year... was a very cold harsh winter with freeze/melt/freeze/melt cycles a lot in the last two months.

 

[skyhigh]

I think Jill might be on to something. Melting snow... freezing... forming ice on the side of the vehicle then slowly migrating down as it slowly melts again. That would cause failure. I've seen it happen before.

Joe....or anyone that thinks this is an "ice" problem....have any pictures you could post for comparison?

I have never personally seen this happen.....at least not on a job a year old. Further more, I haven't seen or heard of a problem with any other van in the area this winter.

This guy has 3 vans, all lettered identical. All his vehicles sit outside, although this is his "Daily Driver" which he takes home every night. The other 2 sit outside at his shop, 4 miles away. The lettering on those are pristine (and years older.....2 and 4 years older). This further bolsters my suspicions that this problem is "location" (ie....bird problem at his home). I will mention, the other 2 were lettered with Oracal Cast. This one is Arlon Cast

If this was a migrating ice problem, I would expect to see a "section" of the edge lifted. This is a "speck" here, and a speck there......but maybe. Not totally disregarding your theory. (To Jill....I don't think vinyl vs paint is a good comparison...... but I thank you for posting!!!! Your advice and input is always appreciated.)

Like many have said......replace the affected area, and move on (the wife is at his shop, doing this project as we speak). Regardless of the cause (install, material, customer damage or birds), its a small enough job, she wouldn't bill him anyways. The concern was, any further calls if this were a material defect.

Gotta love a good mystery.

 

[Joe Diaz]

Joe....or anyone that thinks this is an "ice" problem....have any pictures you could post for comparison?

I have never personally seen this happen.....at least not on a job a year old. Further more, I haven't seen or heard of a problem with any other van in the area this winter.

And that's just it. It's totally a theory but it's the best guess I have right now.

Here is the top of my personal car.


The car is less than a year old and the racing stripes were installed late summer. Earlier this winter, after the first snow fall, I attempted to pull my car out of the garage figuring it could handle an inch of snow on the ground. I got stuck due to the fact that my rear wheel drive sports car has summer only tires :Big Laugh, and there was a nice little patch of ice under that snow built up on my gravel driveway. So, I went on with my with day, I had to be at work in a few minutes and meet a customer. I took the truck and planned on "unstucking" my car after work. Well that was the day we got the huge snowfall here in central Illinois and my car was berried and I got a little lazy and didn't want to go out their and dig it out. So it sat a week. I've had cars under snow for longer, no big deal right? Well I think what happen is the snow slowly started to melt off the roof of my car and it started attacking the edges of the racing stripes. It's not as extreme of a case as the damage in your example, but I'm almost positive it was snow related. Now it only happened on the roof, and not the hood, bumpers or rear end. I think that is because as the snow melted off the windows the sun shined through them warming up the inside and therefore warming up the roof differently than the rest of the car. Luckily I know a guy who can replace those graphics.

 

[Jillbeans]

The reason I suggested the snow/ice theory is not because of what happened to my paint.
(although the top surfaces were what chipped)
A few years ago on another sign forum, someone posted pix of a vinyl failure which looked quite similar to yours, which had been determined to have been caused by an unusual amount of snow and ice for them that winter (in the UK)

 

[nashvillesigns]

thoughts deep thoughts?

by JAck hanley

does this sound good?

1. its friggen FREEZING outside.
guy goes out and desides to wash truck. guy goes to carwash and pressure washes truck, or, hits local car wash.

2. the vinyl, so cold can't handle the temperature difference.

3. CRACK!!!!!


-mosher

 

[Gino]

Snow, ice, acid rain or expanding and contracting and splitting at the seams...... are you all serious ??

We're talking about a truck in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania..... not the Tundra or Canada where temperatures and snow fall are far greater than we got in a matter of weeks or months. How many of our neighbors to the North of us had these same conditions and have seen this kinda failure ?? This seems to be an isolated incident and while something strange has happened, I highly doubt you can make claim to the cold. If so, these companies couldn't sell their vinyl to a myriad of sign shops where the climate is like this quite a bit.

I'd rather believe the bird story.... and even that is far fetched to imagine birds hovering, again in this cold, and pecked the daylights out of some blue vinyl at the tops of letters and no where else on the truck, except the same identical word on the very other side. Nothing else was attacked or damaged. Amazing.

 

[GB2]

I can't be sure from the photos but is that gray vinyl under the blue or is that adhesive residue? If it's gray vinyl, I'm wondering why it's there in the first place since the gray shadow is completely separate from the blue lettering. If it's adhesive residue I'm not surprised that it all remained because I find that the adhesive on Arlon separates from the vinyl much, much easier than any other vinyl I've ever used and for that reason I choose not to use it, it always is the most difficult clean up with an Arlon removal. As far as your problem, I tend to go with the bird theory. I've noticed that the birds around here have seemed very desperate and have been pecking on anything that remotely resembles food or anything loose and colorful. The wreath on our front door is pecked apart every morning. It has been a long, snow covered, consistently cold winter for them. I think you need to put one of those animal hunting cameras on the van.

 

[Joe Diaz]

I always assumed Canadians covered their vehicles with beaver pelts before heavy snowfall to protect their vinyl graphics.