Vent: Found out my shop has been using the wrong primer for months

I was mixing up a batch of primer last Tuesday and decided to actually read the tech sheet for once. Turns out the stuff we’ve been using for the last six months is meant for bare metal only, not over existing paint. We’ve been getting these weird adhesion issues on repaints and I just thought it was humidity or something. Shop owner bought a pallet of it on sale from a supply house over in Trenton. Now I gotta redo three jobs from last week that are already showing spiderwebbing. Has anyone else had a boss cheap out on materials and then blame you for the bad work?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_rowan1mo ago

And that's exactly the problem isn't it... most bosses won't admit when they're wrong about materials because it means admitting they cost themselves way more money in the long run. The shop owner should have done what you said and tested that cheap clear on a scrap panel first, but buying on sale makes some people blind to common sense. You end up wasting twice the time and materials fixing something that never should have been an issue in the first place.

felix4141mo ago

Happened to me last year. Boss bought a whole skid of cheap clear coat from a guy he knew, said it was "just as good" as the name brand stuff. Three weeks later I'm sanding down a $4,000 pearl job because it turned into orange peel after two days. I told him it was the clear, he said I must've mixed it wrong. Took a third party rep from the name brand place to come in and prove it was garbage before he finally admitted it. Now I check every single can that comes into the shop.

hollywhite1mo ago

Hold up though, I gotta push back a little. Buying cheap clear coat from a random guy with no track record is one thing, but sometimes the budget stuff works fine if you know how to spray it. I've used house brand clears on client cars that were half the price of the name brand and they held up for years, no orange peel, no yellowing. The trick is testing a small batch on a scrap panel first, not just trusting some bottle of mystery liquid from a guy's cousin. Your boss was dumb for not testing it before putting it on a $4k job, but the cheap clear itself might've been okay with the right reducer or flash time. So yeah, checking cans is smart, but don't write off every budget option just because one shady deal went bad.