I mean, come on. I could expect fading after 15 years, but bubbling clearcoat? My gawd, the whole hood is peeling. Every day I look at it, another bubble has appeared. Rest of the truck is fine. I'm going to be sanding it down and just plasti-dipping the whole hood, including the grill in a month or so.





Anyone elses this bad?

 

Dark blues seem to be terrible no matter what brand. I have a buddy up in south Georgia with an '03 Ford, granted like my '04 Ram it stays outside 100% of the time. It looks WORSE than your '97 Ram, much worse!

My red truck has sat outside since day one and the paint and clear are still in great shape, although I'm **** about keeping up with it. Twice a year it gets a full clay bar, paint polish & wax and at least every other month it gets a wash and if not a full wax then at least one of the spray on/wipe off waxings...

 

Thats bad. Looks like some sanding and bedliner is in your near future

 

It's green...but I get your point..

Lowes had plastidip on sale for $4 a can. Picked up 4 cans , should be enough to do the hood and grill.

 

You know we'll want to see pictures

 

LOL, on my phone it looked blue... But yeah the dark greens seem to be just as bad too. See a lot in both and black as well look just as bad.

The theory is that acidic contaminants cause very tiny holes in the clear coat which allows moisture to collect under the clear. The dark colors attract the most sun/heat and causes the water to bubble up under the clear, thus destroying the clear coat. Without the protection of the clear, the paint is next to go.

 

Areas of paint on my girlfriends car look like that.
I can't say that I've seen many green or blue Rams around here with paint that bad. Usually they are 94-95 when the EPA regs were really tough.

 

My '97 Ram is that same metallic green color. My hood is worse than yours too. When my brother gave me the truck, the hood had gotten so bad that he sprayed primer on the large patches where the paint peeled and flaked off. It looked horrible so I bought a few rattle cans of Duplicolor factory match paint and sprayed it down.

Now it looks horrible but is a uniform green color that matches the factory paint pretty darn well.

 

My '01 is blue (Patriot Blue Pearl to be exact) and so far there isnt a single spot where the paint is peeling or flaking. I dont take care of it either. I'll hose it off every so often, but thats it. In the past 2 1/2 years and 43,000 miles I've had it, I've hosed it off maybe 3-4 times and actually washed it once. Never waxed or anything.

 

The EPA got envolved with air borne pollutates all mgf. started spraying with water based paints,there life span less than expected as you see with your paint.Maybe if it's possible think about a 3M body wrap.Cheaper than paint& last longer,just a thought...........