Td5 D2 bodywork - Wing Lacquer Peel

Thought I would re-cap the current situation with the wings. The intention is to respray both wings with base colour and lacquer.

The nearside wing lost its lacquer coat ages ago and for a few years has been in the same state of finish as the two offside door panels were. In addition to this it suffered a vandal dent to its upper surface that I have partially pulled out and it is now only 4mm deep. I will need to practice my bodywork skills on it before it is ready to paint.

Of course the easier option is to replace the wing, but I have already decided to do the repair myself. Up until a few weeks ago, the offside wing was looking ok. It still had its lacquer coat but was suffering with a milky looking finish around the repeater lamp plus a blistered area lower down. Here is a photo of it...

This image shows the lower o/s wing and front door joint. The door panel has no lacquer coat on it giving it that distinctive 'flat' tone and revealing the true tone of the red base coat (Alverston red 696). The lighter toned area on the trailing edge of the wing is the lacquer blister that needs addressing. Forward of that blister can be seen a milky patch that is the lacquer in a less blistered condition. The next photo expands on this!

This shows the 'blister' removed from the trailing edge as well as the adjoining milky area. As always with this type of work, once you start poking around, the hole just gets bigger and bigger..

At this point, I cleaned the area up and attempted to feather what I hoped was the edges of the sound remaining lacquer. As can be seen in the above photo, once the area had dried out, the very edges of the remaining lacquer coating began to lift and blister away from the base coat. This left me with just one option..

..total removal of all the remaining lacquer layer.  By the time these photos were taken, the adjacent drivers door had received its new base and lacquer coat and seeing the two panels together was a big motivation to progress the work on the wing.

I was shocked and surprised how easily most of the lacquer layer just peeled away from the wing surface. I used a handheld Stanley blade to knife the very edge of the lacquer and slice it away from the base coat. 

Large areas were peeled away and progress was swift till I encountered areas of the lacquer coat that were strongly attached. The differing levels of attachment of the lacquer layer led me to suspect the wing had been resprayed or re-lacquered at some point in the past.

I started paying close attention to the layers coming off and could soon detect two distinct layers of lacquer. The peeled sections of lacquer also displayed varying tones from clear to darker shades of red due to the paint layer lift..

The two photos above are of the upper wing area and attempt to show the multiple layers of lacquer encountered during removal. The removal work got progressively harder the nearer l got to the front of the wing. At one point I decided that the effort required to remove the remaining lacquer layer would result in damage to the wing surface. 

At this point I tried again to feather the remaining lacquer layer by careful use of 1200 grade wet and dry wrapped around a paper eraser. It worked well, giving me the option to hide the joint along the wing crease line.. hopefully.

Here is a collection of lacquer layer peels taken from the wing in various locations. In general the lighter tones are from the trailing edge of the wing and the darker piece from the leading edge.  The lighter piece is about 8 inches long, but the largest 'peel' removed in one piece was as long as my forearm.

Can't really explain why the differing tones. Lacquer is itself clear, so on removal it should be clear?  I can accept that a strong attachment to the base coat colour would mean some lifting of the base colour. All of the peels are translucent to differing degrees, yet the paint base coat now exposed on the wing is on the whole the same tone..

Lacquer removed from the wing and showing good comparison with the freshly painted door panel and the finish that the wing is about to receive.

Three photos above show the wing prepped for spraying of a new base coat. Have to admit that in that light I quite like the tone of dark claret!

Well, at this point in the proceedings, the wind got up and frustrated my efforts. I wrote earlier about that day, but I did persevere with it and laid down two light coats of base colour mainly to cover the remaining feathered joints just to see how masked they would look..

A final image taken that day after removing all the masking and still with the bonnet latched open and the side repeater removed. 

And that's it.. for now.