Be Wary when 'Raptor' under body paint is used

[Sue Franklin]

Slightly cautionary tale.  Had Raptor colour matching protection applied to my Stag a year or two ago.  Now finding it is peeling off and showing what appears to be residual dirt between it and clean metal.  Was the underneath clean when it was applied - who knows! All very well looking good for a while but not impressed.  Of course any coating can camouflage I appreciate.  Seems this stuff dries hard and is therefore inflexible. 

[chrishawley]

Thanks for the pointer on this.

I had a comparable experience over the last couple of weeks: Underside of wings media blasted, then phosphated, then primed then stone protected. When dry some areas flaked off: The primer hadn't adhered to the metal due to, seemingly, excessive phosphate residue. Cleaned up, repainted and all fine.

Would I be right in thinking that Raptor is not a direct-to-metal coating but requires etch or epoxy primer as as base?

[68vitesse]

Had stone chip flake off hand painted red oxide primer on my Vitesse, red oxide coating is fine and I wondered if I should have given it a light sand to provide a key.

Regards

Paul.

[ahebron]

One tip I was given when I had a similar experience on my Vitesse when I noticed the paint flaking off underneath was after I a wire wheeled it back to bare metal give a good going over with handheld 80 grit. Theory being the wire wheel ends up polishing the metal and the hand held 80 grit roughs it up for the paint to adhere too.

Edited December 16, 2023 by ahebron