# Warranty paint work



## -AndyH- (Oct 11, 2012)

Hi

Got a quick question regarding some BMW paint work that is going to be done their warranty - the lacquer has peeled around the front bumper logo down to the basecoat.

They said they will do a spot repair on the area the lacquer has gone (base coat + lacquer) and then spray the rest of the bumper with lacquer.

This seems a bit strange to me, re-lacquering the whole bumper (prep work would have to be immaculate).

I wanted and expected the whole bumper to be resprayed (base + lacquer) as I am not keen on their spot repairs.

Can someone give me some guidance if this is normal practice?

Thanks


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## craigeh123 (Dec 26, 2011)

Yeah pretty standard , say for instance you scuffed a bumper corner they would base it and blend out then lacquer and either fade out or lacquer the whole panel . If its under warranty a record should be made anyway incase of future issues


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## -AndyH- (Oct 11, 2012)

Cool - thanks for the response.

Out of interest - if you're re-lacquering the whole bumper, is it better to base the whole bumper? I am sure I read somewhere that lacquer adheres better to newly sprayed base paint. I don't want any more lacquer peel problems!

I'm not too keen on them lacquering the whole bumper as there are some stone chips already in other areas and it didn't look very good the last time they did it.


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## squiggs (Oct 19, 2009)

-AndyH- said:


> Cool - thanks for the response.
> 
> Out of interest - if you're re-lacquering the whole bumper, is it better to base the whole bumper? I am sure I read somewhere that lacquer adheres better to newly sprayed base paint. I don't want any more lacquer peel problems!
> 
> I'm not too keen on them lacquering the whole bumper as there are some stone chips already in other areas and* it didn't look very good the last time they did it.*


They've already repaired the bumper before?

Lacquer will adhere to a properly prepped (keyed) yet unpainted surface - maybe the last repair wasn't prepped properly?

Your stone chips won't look any different apart from getting a layer of lacquer over them.
Why not ask how much extra for them to sort out the chips?

Mind you if your current dealer can't prep warranty work properly you might be better off going to a different dealer to get it done


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## -AndyH- (Oct 11, 2012)

Sorry, it's never been resprayed before - the car is only 6 months old.

When I say stone chips, I am talking minor minor ones that you can't see unless you look really close up.

The problem with BMW is you have to get the warranty work done by their local approved body shops. I have a major issue with their local body shop to me and the other one also has a very poor reputation. So I am a bit stuck here.

I suppose I should just let them get on with it and then reject it when it does not come back in perfect condition.

_Edit: When I say last time, I mean the dealer damaged another of my cars and did a spot/SMART repair. The quality was atrocious (lacquer on the headlights, polish marks, bumpy surface and 0/10 for blending skills. This is why I am very apprehensive of any kind of spot repair they do_


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## powelly (Aug 9, 2007)

This is normal practice, they will feather out the area affected, prime, this will then be flatted back with 500 to feather it in to the surrounding paint, base coat the applied over the primer with enough overlap to hide the prime and fade in to the surrounding, prior to all this the whole bumper will be scotched to key it, whole bumper lacquered, perfectly acceptable practice and exactly what any body shop will do, to be honest, you stand a better chance of it matching this way than painting the whole bumper, we see some terrible edge to edge matches, the guys at work have ended up blending in to wings and quarters just to paint a bumper,


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## -AndyH- (Oct 11, 2012)

Hi

Thanks for the responses all.

I've just got the car back and as I expected, the paintwork done looks bad.

It's really hard to explain in words the issue - so I have taken some pics. It's like the paint looks 'rougher' where they have re-lacquered the bumper. The metallic colour looks totally different now (even in areas they have not resprayed with base).

Hopefully the pics are clear!

Could someone tell me what has happened?


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## -AndyH- (Oct 11, 2012)

A couple of larger, closer up pics:

Image One

Image Two


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## squiggs (Oct 19, 2009)

It's very difficult to see anything from the pics not really knowing which areas have been repainted, which have just been lacquered, what's original and what is just reflection or difference in shade due to contour changes.

Lacquer really shouldn't change the colour of the original - especially on approved warranty work where you would be expecting them to be using approved products rather than cheaper products whereby some lacquers can give a slightly yellow tinge.

Moving onto the paint (again maybe the pics don't do it justice) but although most painters will try their very best to lay it on as flat as possible a bloke with a gun in his hand is going to find it almost impossible to replicate what a very expensive robot in a multi million pound factory can do.
That said I can see where the paint looks to have been put on in what would in lacquer terms be called 'dry'. Lacquer can literally be put on 'not thick enough' causing it to look rough - paint is totally different.
It maybe that on the day the painter got a little too close or a little too far away with his gun, was spraying at a pressure slightly to high or slightly to low or that his final blending coat was just a little under applied.
I don't think anything has gone inherently wrong - it's just that on the day a man didn't quite match the finish of a robot.

I do jobs on silvers and light metallics where on the day I think it sticks out like a sore thumb. But I've learnt that this is only because I imagine I can see a slight change in the shade exactly where I painted. If I go back a day or two later when I've forgotten exactly where I painted everything looks fine.


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## -AndyH- (Oct 11, 2012)

Hi squiggs

Thanks for the response.

The pics aren't the best, it's tough to get any decent pics in the murky light outside. What I've posted are areas that shouldn't have been repainted.

I know I will never get a factory finish again. But if you look at the paint from 1m away, it looks completely different now to the rest of the car. It's very hard to describe what the problem is, but everywhere there are almost horizontal lines which stand out. It looks like someone has abraded the surface too much maybe?

On the nearside of the bumper, I think they have under applied lacquer. It feels smooth and then very rough if you run your finger along it. This area shouldn't have been repainted.

I think Image One above is the best pic. The bonnet hasn't been touched and is a very smooth silver not with many metallics (glacier silver I think it's called) as previous BMW silvers. On the bumper, it looks completely different and very rough. You can see the lines I am talking about in the top of the bumper.

I want to take the car to dooka at some point before going back to the dealer to see what he thinks


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## squiggs (Oct 19, 2009)

The lines you talk about are probably where the panel has been keyed with scotch. 
It's the quickest way of keying an area but can sometimes be a bit too aggressive - there are other ways of keying that are better.
If they're not scratches but just lines these can be caused by not fully wiping off panel wipe or by using a new tack rag both of which can sometimes leave an invisible film that paint doesn't quite properly adhere to.

Back to the colour and as you probably know silvers are one of the hardest colours to match. 
Quite unusually Glacier silver in my paint system has only one variant (whereas Ford moondust has total of 37!). But even if a painter has picked the right variant (and assuming he's mixed it accurately) some manufacturers say that a silver has to be thinned slightly more - and they might suggest by an extra 4% to 7%. Thinning it a bit too much or a bit too little and the metallics won't lay correctly ( ... so should that be by an extra 4% or 7% then?) 
And then gun pressure, how heavy or how light the coats are put on, the distance of gun to panel and the angle of gun to panel all affect how the metallics lay - an exact science is certainly isn't! 
It really makes you wonder how painters ever match a silver .......


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## -AndyH- (Oct 11, 2012)

It's funny, I've never actually had problems before with the matching of silvers. The problems have been more overspray/lacquer or base run/dirt in clear coat etc. But I know what you're saying about silvers - I have tried myself and failed many a time with a can.

I am really at a loss as to what they've done the more I look at it.

It looks like they've repainted the whole bumper, because the small stone chips have gone. But the paint looks just the wrong colour. If I take a close up of another panel, you can't see this kind of roughness in the paint.

The keyed marks (if they are that) wouldn't make sense if they've resprayed the bumper because this shouldn't be necessary - correct?


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## squiggs (Oct 19, 2009)

You usually key up any area that's going to be lacquered - if the lacquer is going to be blended (ie only lacquering half a bumper) then you would key to just past the half way point. From the half way point to just past would be the area where blending lacquer would be applied and that area has to be thouroughly keyed.

Have the chips seen paint do you think ???? or were they just chipped lacquer that have been given a fresh coat of lacquer?

Back to the textured paint another possibilty is that they didn't flat back the primer enough? But if the texture extends past the area of damage then it shouldn't have been primed.


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## Andyb0127 (Jan 16, 2011)

Does the silver base look like a grainy/textured finish, if so it sounds very much like the base which should be bmw white label base, hasn't been applied correctly. Or as squiggs has said not been prepped correctly.


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## Sicskate (Oct 3, 2012)

In my opinion, it looks like they have 2k primed it, but not prepped the primer. 
This has caused the base colour to sit incorrectly. 

You need to remember that bumpers wouldn't have been painted on the car in the factory, it's likely they probably weren't even painted in the same country!

Also plastic panels/trims will always look a tad different to metal panels. 

As this is warranty, I'm sure if you kick up a stink they might even just replace the whole bumper with an already factory painted bumper.


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## -AndyH- (Oct 11, 2012)

Hi

Yeah, the base looks grainy/textured - almost as if it's been sprayed on a primer that was rough and not flattened.

The more I look at it, the more I see wrong. There's a lot of lines in the clear coat also (not swirl). They stick out like a sore thumb under a bright light.

@ Sicskate - You are right about the bumper. I had a quick look at a Youtube video of the production - 



 Bumper comes pre-painted!

@ squiggs - I am pretty sure some of the stone chips were down to the plastic of the bumper. The paint is pretty thin in that area when dooka did his depth readings.

Dealer rang me this morning and said he was shocked because he thought it was perfect/an exceptional job. I pointed out some basic mistakes (not even considering the base colour issue) such as failing to lacquer one area and two areas where bits of dirt were on the base coat before spraying the lacquer causing bumps. They aren't happy, but that's not my problem!


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## Sicskate (Oct 3, 2012)

Like I said, push for a brand new bumper. 
It's the easiest and best option.


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## -AndyH- (Oct 11, 2012)

Knowing BMW, I have 0% chance of them giving me a new bumper. I had a big dispute with them over some lacquer peel which they were blaming on a stone chip (despite the fact that the stone chip had sufficient paint/lacquer all around it). 

The dealer is clearly not happy with me - but at the end of the day I have high standards and expect them to be met. I am not asking for the impossible.

The issue I have is the BMW Approved Bodyshops are the only places you can go to get warranty work done (I believe if you even go to somewhere else for non-warranty work, you risk invalidating the 3 year paint warranty). 

I would never go to the local approved bodyshop near me after the shambles of a repair they made on my car the last time. The one that did this work (Elite Body in Northampton) has a poor reputation amongst detailers (one very well known detailer on here advised me to avoid them at all costs).


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