Quote:
Originally Posted by Tcoat
In 2011 the governments around the world agreed to reduce the amount of VOCs (volatile organic compounds) in paint. Heavy restrictions were placed on what chemicals could be used by the automotive industry.
Unfortunately many of those chemicals were what made the paint strong yet resilient. The application processes in use were not suitable for the new chemistry and we ended up with hard, brittle, coatings that chip easily especially with small impact surface areas.
To visualize what happened just paint a pool ball and a tennis ball and drop each. The paint on the pool ball will chip since it can not flex. The tennis ball paint will remain fine. The same thing applies to the paint itself. If it can flex a bit it will resist chipping if it can not then there is a problem. Putting more or harder paint on will not eliminate the problem but actually makes it worse.
The good news is that the paint application technology has now caught up to the new chemistry and as the plants update their equipment we will see a big improvement in the durability of the finish. The Corvette assembly plant in Bowling Green is shutting down for a bit to change their whole paint system over to the new tech even though what they had was only from 2003. I suspect that the Subaru plant making the Twins may have been a bit behind the curve in the equipment updates.
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Neat, wasn't aware of the issues moving away from VOC paints caused. I know it caused issues with paint adhesion, like on all those white trucks that the paint came off in sheets. I do know that the paint on my car is both too soft and too hard, chipping from rocks and very easily scratching if it's so much as breathed on. BMW and Mercedes I know have some really tough paint scratch resistance wise, don't know about chipping though.