Years ago, I worked at a GM dealership in the pre-OBDII days. The original On-Board Diagnostics codes were two-digit numbers read by a Tech 1, or simply by jumpering terminals A and B in the ALDL and counting the flashes of the Check Engine light. Guys at the dealership used to refer to Code 99, which I couldn’t find in the factory service manual. When I asked, they said Code 99 meant a-- hole in the driver’s seat- i.e. a misdiagnosis by an uninformed (but usually know-it-all) car owner, or basically just a pain-in-the-ass customer.
<<Side note: I just looked Code 99 up, and it’s defined as Invalid PCM Program, which could mean the same thing!!>>
The reason for this lengthy intro will hopefully make sense in a minute. Study closely the picture of the roof- looks awful, doesn’t it?
My plan was to paint the car as cheaply as possible, and about the cheapest paint you can buy is Acrylic Enamel. And I had a gallon of some REALLY cheap stuff at the shop- think under $50 for a gallon! It didn’t come out too good, though. But, I’m not going to name the brand of paint because there’s a good chance I committed painter’s Code 99- in this case, a-- hole behind the paint gun!
It’s difficult to see in the picture, but what looks like millions of pinholes in the paint is caused by solvent popping. Acrylic Enamels are relatively thick paints that need to be thinned with a reducer prior to spraying, and Enamels dry by reacting with oxygen in the air. So, if you layer too many coats on too quickly, the solvents (reducer) get trapped by the subsequent layers of paint and burst through them as they dry like fizz in a glass of Coke.
This paint I was using was well over a year old, and may have gone bad in the can. It seemed especially thick, and I had to reduce it A TON to even get it to come out of the spray gun- way more than the (rather inadequate) mixing instructions called for. Plus I know for sure I didn’t wait long enough between coats of paint.
So, either the paint was bad because it was old. It was bad because it was cheap. Or the paint job was bad due to operator error. I’m inclined to think it was a combination of all three with emphasis on the third scenario. No big deal, though. I sanded it off and started over.
Next up- cool tinted primer.