Packard Forum Index » Pre-War (1899-1942)

I was working on one of my cars that has been asleep since last fall. The paint job was excellent but the past couple years I notice cracks showing up. Is there anything i can do to slow or stop the cracking process. its been painted about 20 years. I tried covering it and not covering it over the winter. Nothing seems to help will a special wax help? its very frustrating to see this. Thanks for any help or suggestions.

Assuming it is a lacquer paint job, I believe some cracking is pretty much inevitable and not much can be done to prevent it.

Old cars have welded body panel joints that were lead-filled at the factory.

It's very common to see some cracking of older paint jobs along these joint lines.

Old leaded body repair may also show the same issues.

The Packard Body Manual shows where a number of these joints and seams are located on the pre-war cars.

Factory lead filled body joints were common up through the 1950s across all makes.

General areas of paint cracking and crazing can have a number of causes.

My '34 Eight still has quite a bit of original paint and what cracking did occur in that old paint was over leaded joints. Another common cause of age cracking with lacquer paints can be excessive paint thickness.

In the ‘70s i had an acrylic enamel paint job that started getting little chicken feet which soread all over. Now if theres a scratch or scrape or pock mark, i just take it off the car and to the paint job for a perfect match. The glory of PPG Envirobase paint.

in the 80s i painted 1 car with lacquer and a few years later i painted 1 with acrylic enamel. I still have both of those cars The enamel job is holding up the best but none seem to last forever at least for me. But forever isn't as long as it use to be. I won a free ceramic coating at a car show but never used it. Its suppose to be the latest and greatest thing and better than wax. Anyone know anything about that?

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I just tried it on my new truck. I bought the Mckee's 37 kit after looking at a few options. I have always used wax and was skeptical. There are multiple steps, and it took 2-3 Sundays of spare time to do it right. I didn't let the truck see rain until it was complete. It's a spare vehicle so that allowed me to take my time and do it correctly. You have to get over the psychological aspect of a very thin coating taking the place of a thick coating of wax. This week it saw its first rain event and the beading was as good or better than any wax job I've done. Very slick to the touch too. It is supposed to last three years.. time will tell, so far happy with it.