C class coupe micro blisters

[Craiglxviii]

Hi fellas, called the garage and they are happy to refund me my money and pay for the tyres! Happy days! Now the search is on to find another c class but not red

Great news! Even better that MB are evidently still recognizing the Fire Opal Red issue.

 

[A.J.]

So there is a problem with a colour and they decide to change it, who pays, Mb or the paint company. A reformulation is a very easy thing to do, any decent painter can reformulate a colour or shade. I do suppose you will also know why fire opal red is microblistering

A freind of mines brother has got an Opel Red 2012 C Class complete with microblistering. Apparently MB picked up the bill for the repaint. They had the car for a month, completely stripped the car to the bare shell and took it back to bare metal during which time they gave him the use of a brand new C Class. Now bearing in mind he is super fussy he was absolutely delilghted with the job that was done, I have seen the car myself and it looks beautiful. Even though the car was completely stripped to the shell it doesn't rattle or squeak as one would expect. Even though he lost the car for a month he is over the moon with it

 

[BClassChris]

Call the garage you bought it from that way you will be covered under consumer rights act as your giving them the opportunity to sort the issue

If not talking to MB might also help i.e. If it was a common issue

Best of luck


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[John Laidlaw]

Great news Harry! Palladium silver is probably the nicest and kindest MB colour I've encountered...

 

[John Laidlaw]

Call the garage you bought it from that way you will be covered under consumer rights act as your giving them the opportunity to sort the issue

If not talking to MB might also help i.e. If it was a common issue

Best of luck


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Seems the OP has resolution Chris...

 

[BClassChris]

Oh sorry hadn't noticed I kinda skimmed through this


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[Harry Whitehouse]

Called Mercedes about the paint warranty and they said at the branch I called had 30 cars with the same issue and colour so MB have stopped the warranty to reinvestigated the matter

 

[Craiglxviii]

So there is a problem with a colour and they decide to change it, who pays, Mb or the paint company. A reformulation is a very easy thing to do, any decent painter can reformulate a colour or shade. I do suppose you will also know why fire opal red is microblistering

Reformulation of paint is easy and any decent painter can change it. Is that so? Is it bollocks.

Q: Who specifies the paint, the carmaker or the paint manufacturer?

Do you think the carmaker rolls up to Akzo Nobel one day and asks, "Say, lemme see your swatch book?" No. That is not what happens. This is.

For a new paint... Firstly the in service quality team will feed back their reports of how existing paint has behaved in service. Any adhesion, chipping, blistering or coverage issues. Colour block density, depth of flake, shade variation from batch to batch and material to material- as the formulation for aluminium to steel to ABS to PMMA to PC are all different.

All that gets fed into the materials design division who speak to the engineering design guys. What are the shapes of parts that need painting? What materials are they made from? Which materials fit next to what other materials? Which parts will see typically oblique sunlight? And so on.

Then they speak to the paint line engineers at plant to discover what orientation those parts will be in during painting, to ensure that the coverage is symmetrically applied.

THEN they go to (e.g.) Akzo Nobel and give them a specification for the paint. Akzo Nobel replied with a series of trial batches for each colour/ material combination, of which one will be selected as the basis for a new formulation for that specific paint. Then the formulation is tweaked to provide the exact requirements of toughness, colour, flake, temperature resistance, shrinkage, adhesion, shelf life and the very many other issues that surround auto paints for volume manufacturers.

Each material/ colour combo gets its own line in the paintmaker's plant. Each combo costs around £150k to develop from the trial batch.

If there is a problem with the combo and that combo meets the carmaker's spectender, then the carmaker pays for it. Ask me how I know this?

Btw, I spoke to our paint guys here on the Fire Opal Red issue. There are some theories surrounding it, either iron particle or water contamination of the nozzles/ lines in the factory paint shop, through to poor adhesion of the colour coat. It's a tricky one and MB playing things very close to their chests.

 

[Frosty149]

Nice to hear a good/fair result for a change...

 

[rf065]

Btw, I spoke to our paint guys here on the Fire Opal Red issue. There are some theories surrounding it, either iron particle or water contamination of the nozzles/ lines in the factory paint shop, through to poor adhesion of the colour coat. It's a tricky one and MB playing things very close to their chests.

 

[Rotorhead500]

Nice to hear a good/fair result for a change...

Indeed, and seemingly without too much of a battle for the OP! Happy days! (Apart from getting back on the car hunt!)

 

[Xtractorfan]

Well a paint colour is known as a formulation, it is a measured amount of different bases which make up the final colour.
Every car manufacturer uses the same method to formulate their colours. The only difference is the paint company used to supply the car makers, Some use one company some use different companies to supply different factories,
You are suggesting that a paint is made from scratch for a new vehicle...paints are formulated using known and tested and tried base colours. The only expense is the amount of new mixes used to get the required colour.
It would be a lot different if they had to fly off and find new and exciting minerals to make this new colour, but they don't.
As for metal or water contamination of fire opal red it falls on stoney ground as well, apart from the fact they would have closed down the paint shop and repainted in another brand new forensically cleansed and decontaminated paint booth... I've had to do it one or twice myself and I certainly don't have the assets of MB or Akzo Nobel.
Metal contamination isnt in the mix..excuse the pun... as it wouldn't cause the lacquer to blister or pop.... water contamination will cause microblistering as the water cannot get out from the paint, and blisters the top lacquer clear coat to enable it to escape from under the lacquer. Taken on board that the paint used is waterbourne, then it will have water content, but the drying process will have eliminated all of the water before the lacquer is applied.
Solvent pop is another problem, but it generally happens when the paint is being baked, too much heat, or paint allowed to sit too long before baking, the paint outer skin dries, then is baked and dries even more, with the paint undernaeath still wet.. the trapped solvent or water then boils and breaks through the outer skin causing the skin to pop.
Taken all of this into consideration I can only surmise that Fire Opal Red has a rogue element, or two, which may be reacting with each other or which is susceptible to ultra violet rays and is causing the paint to overheat and blister the lacquer outer coating.
Oh and to add Funny you should mention Akzo Nobel, some years ago they had a lacquer under the Sikkens brand. which was a complete nightmare, once it had dried it just turned to plastic..which lacquer basically is, and would just peel off the newly painted panel, usually within about a week or so.
The Sikkens paint itself was actually quite good and generally a very good colour match.

 

[Harry Whitehouse]

Nice to hear a good/fair result for a change...

Taking it back tonight hopefully the guy isn't going to split hairs with me! Kind of glad I still kept my old car now as it'll get me around places before finding another one (different colour)

 

[Frosty149]

Good luck this evening and with your onward search, stand your ground, your the innocent party here!

 

[Craiglxviii]

Well a paint colour is known as a formulation, it is a measured amount of different bases which make up the final colour.
Every car manufacturer uses the same method to formulate their colours. The only difference is the paint company used to supply the car makers, Some use one company some use different companies to supply different factories,
You are suggesting that a paint is made from scratch for a new vehicle...paints are formulated using known and tested and tried base colours. The only expense is the amount of new mixes used to get the required colour.
It would be a lot different if they had to fly off and find new and exciting minerals to make this new colour, but they don't.
As for metal or water contamination of fire opal red it falls on stoney ground as well, apart from the fact they would have closed down the paint shop and repainted in another brand new forensically cleansed and decontaminated paint booth... I've had to do it one or twice myself and I certainly don't have the assets of MB or Akzo Nobel.
Metal contamination isnt in the mix..excuse the pun... as it wouldn't cause the lacquer to blister or pop.... water contamination will cause microblistering as the water cannot get out from the paint, and blisters the top lacquer clear coat to enable it to escape from under the lacquer. Taken on board that the paint used is waterbourne, then it will have water content, but the drying process will have eliminated all of the water before the lacquer is applied.
Solvent pop is another problem, but it generally happens when the paint is being baked, too much heat, or paint allowed to sit too long before baking, the paint outer skin dries, then is baked and dries even more, with the paint undernaeath still wet.. the trapped solvent or water then boils and breaks through the outer skin causing the skin to pop.
Taken all of this into consideration I can only surmise that Fire Opal Red has a rogue element, or two, which may be reacting with each other or which is susceptible to ultra violet rays and is causing the paint to overheat and blister the lacquer outer coating.
Oh and to add Funny you should mention Akzo Nobel, some years ago they had a lacquer under the Sikkens brand. which was a complete nightmare, once it had dried it just turned to plastic..which lacquer basically is, and would just peel off the newly painted panel, usually within about a week or so.
The Sikkens paint itself was actually quite good and generally a very good colour match.

On paint formulations... a colour is known as a formulation, but so is the specific mix for that particular colour and material. One particular car project that falls under me has 17 different paint formulations for each colour it is offered in due to the different materials used in its A surfaces.

Changing the colour is done throughout production as batch-to-batch colour can drift in shade both inter and intra formulations, sometimes quite considerably. One current Jaguar model, for instance, no names no pack drill, which has aluminium, steel and three different types of plastic used in its A surface has a really bad problem with the paint looking totally different dependent on the incident angle of sunlight striking it. I think the colour is a vivid blue- might be wrong on that. Anyway. The fuel filler flap stood out like a shining light if one viewed the car straight on at the side... but walk upto it and look downwards and its the same colour. So, what happens is that there is a check station on the production line which checks paint colour against each body panel, measures it and sends that data back to the paint manufacturer who then tune the pigmentation density batch by batch to keep all the various body panels within pretty close tolerances.

As regards the specific issues on Fire Opal Red, my understanding of what our paint guy said was that the nozzles themselves could be contaminated (e.g. they were contaminating the paint) not the paint itself. Now, I'm not sure here whether or not MB use multi-nozzle spray lines or not, they may very well do as they're big into that sort of thing. I'm also unsure if this specific paint is water-based or not; some plants are, some aren't within the same OEM group so it's possible that the issue is down to cars with one or the other paint type only.

As to it being too much heat, that points directly to a process issue and they tend to be spotted right at the start- process issues tend to be highly repeatable whereas materials issues can be batch-dependent and thus spotty. And MB do have a really, really good process engineering team, they subcontract out into industry they're that hot.

 

[Harry Whitehouse]

Took the car back last night as expected the guy was trying to make out there's nothing wrong with the paint But was happy to refund me my money.. typical sales people hey!

 

[Rotorhead500]

Good work Harry. Take the money and run!

There will be plenty of nice examples out there for you.

 

[Frosty149]

Result!
Good luck searching....

 

[Srdl]

Took the car back last night as expected the guy was trying to make out there's nothing wrong with the paint But was happy to refund me my money.. typical sales people hey!

Well done, good result- presumably the car now gets sold on to another unsuspecting punter!

 

[Frontstep]

Metamerism or perceived matching of colours used to be a nuisance, thankfully don't bother with it.