Did Mopar have trouble painting neons?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Boz Mon
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Boz Mon

Boz Mon

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Every time I see a purple neon whether its a dodge chrysler plymouth or whatever, the paint is falling off. And its not usually a little bit its like all of one door or the roof. What is up with this? I dont see paint falling off of any other cars on the road. Any input would be appriciated.
 
An old, economy model on top of that. Built excessively cheap, but sold "competitively" priced.
 
They had trouble making headgaskets as well, but I won't get into company flaws, because every single company has atleast one flaw.
 
Well the paint was falling off of our plymoth van before we got it, and the dealer put regular spray can paint on it, yes just like the kind you buy from a store. so yes, they can't paint.

From,
Wall51
 
you can, just go into thread tools, select move/copy, and say move and leave link in old place, and tell it to go under auto.

From,
Wall51
 
We had a '97 Plymouth Neon, that we sold about 1 year ago, and the paint was perfect. Then again, it was an Expresso...:p
 
Boz Mon
Every time I see a purple neon the paint is falling off. And its not usually a little bit its like all of one door or the roof.
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Agreed; although many Neons had terrible paint, especially the couple of purple ones I've seen over the years. My black trim paint came off the Neon in about 14 months after owning the car (around the doors). Dodge wouldn't cover it after 12 months, incidently, so I left it a bare slate gray once it all peeled off.

neon-trim-wear.jpg

* Please excuse the terrible quality, this pic was taken in 1997 and downsized for 14.4K quality then.

Also bear in mind that the Neon was one of the cheapest cars out there at the time (and you could buy 1st-gens all day long for $500-3000 nowadays), so not many people bothered to wash, wax, and detail them.

However, with a little TLC, my Flame Red paint was quite durable, although far from perfect. It retained it's clear coat and luster for many years, although it started to have an orange cast in artificial lighting as the car became older.
 
Neons used a 100% water-based paint system. It was very sensitive to the conditions under which it was primed - the timing, temperature, and humidity had to be right when the finish coat was put over it. The failure actually had to do with the car's exposure to sun during its service life. Lots of time in direct sun would make the paint more likely to delaminate.

Lapis Blue is the worst offender - that's the chalky purplish blue color, actually one of my favorites - but Bright White was also a problem as well.

Both of our White '95s suffered delamination. My wife's Sport had it on the roof. This was stripped and repainted at half cost, even though the car was out of warranty. It later went bad on the trunk, but we ended up getting rid of the car before we had it repainted. My ACR had the roof repainted at my cost since it was even farther out of warranty. It needed to have the decklid and the back doors done when I sold it.
 
I had regular old black on my '96 SOHC coupe. It was pretty durable paint and i never had a problem with flaking paint anywhere on the car. But I have seen a lot of neons in other colors with paint problems. Specifically the earlier reds and whites.
 
Yep, I thought it was just me, but every other neon before 99 has a flat paint tone now, a black one down the street has a rusted hole in its hood:scared:
 
Boz Mon
Every time I see a purple neon whether its a dodge chrysler plymouth or whatever, the paint is falling off. And its not usually a little bit its like all of one door or the roof. What is up with this? I dont see paint falling off of any other cars on the road.
Click to expand...

Maybe you're seeing the same car, over and over again.
 
Uhh, BUT most people (including me) has seen the flaking paint and Duke has had to drive the Paint flaking fiends.
 
Duke
Neons used a 100% water-based paint system. It was very sensitive to the conditions under which it was primed - the timing, temperature, and humidity had to be right when the finish coat was put over it. The failure actually had to do with the car's exposure to sun during its service life. Lots of time in direct sun would make the paint more likely to delaminate.
Click to expand...

Is it just me or is the use of a water-based paint one of the worst ideas possible for something that is going to constantly outside, and will usually see lots and lots of rainy days? I mean, I know it's cheap to use, but dang...
 
Some Ford models have the same problem, particularly with blue and white models. While I do not have an offical explanation for the problem, it seemed to be a common occourance on older American cars from the early part of the 1990s. While many of the problems certainly come from a mix of hot/cold, dry/wet, sun/clouds etc that can happen in the American landscape, poor painting through either faulty equipment or just plain cost-cutting can usually be the problem.
 
The reason why they used water-based paint was because of efforts (Unsure if they were gov't regulated or of own initiative) towards the environment.
I had the use of a blue (Not lapis blue, the deeper one) Neon sedan (1995), and it didn't have any paint flaking off yet, although there were places where the clearcoat was coming off.
 
My dad's ACR had problems with the paint within a year of him buying it. He had it repainted a darker black and hasn't had a problem with it since. But the problems were exactly like the ones you descriped. Especially the hood. I think it only plagued the first gen cars though. And it must be a Neon only problem, because my mom's P-body suffers from none of the sort.
 
i've seen that "delamination" effect on a "AA" LeBAron, tons of crarvans, and I think on a couple of dakotas...and they were all blue. it mista been some of the ingredients in the mix for the darker colors
 

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