Sidewall cracking....Paint peeling

[Retiredfields]

Two new issues:

My sidewall paint has hundreds of tiny (1-3mm) cracks. The darker the paint color, the more cracks. The more sun received, the more cracks. It appears the gelcoat heats in the sun and forms small cracks. My previous Monaco coach had the same thing. I have looked at other Alpines, and they had the same problem. If you look at your sidewall, at the correct angle to the sun, the cracks are clearly visible.

I just had the paint on my sidewall refrigerator vent start to peel. The vent is plastic and WRV did nothing to prepare the plastic surface. No primer, no roughing up the surface, so the paint will not adhere very well. Another bad job by WRV.

Anyone else have their paint peel off the vent, and if so, what did you do about it?

Thanks

Ken

[Retiredfields]

Two new issues:

My sidewall paint has hundreds of tiny (1-3mm) cracks. The darker the paint color, the more cracks. The more sun received, the more cracks. It appears the gelcoat heats in the sun and forms small cracks. My previous Monaco coach had the same thing. I have looked at other Alpines, and they had the same problem. If you look at your sidewall, at the correct angle to the sun, the cracks are clearly visible.

I just had the paint on my sidewall refrigerator vent start to peel. The vent is plastic and WRV did nothing to prepare the plastic surface. No primer, no roughing up the surface, so the paint will not adhere very well. Another bad job by WRV.

Anyone else have their paint peel off the vent, and if so, what did you do about it?

Thanks

Ken

[G'ville]

Ken -

One small area of the refrig vent/grill peeled a little. It was touched up during paint touch-up for the first windshield replacement.

Our rig - '03 36'FDDS - also has the paint cracking. I had spoken to Alpine about it, but between some family medical problems and the last couple of times I talked to them just before the shutdown, I had the distinct feeling I was screwed - and I was. The cracking is predominately in the black and maroon, but also some in the gold and silver. One side is less than the other, the back isn't too bad and some of the doors have none.

Duncan Systems (Elkhart, Ind.) said they won't guarantee dark colors. One of the techs said he'd "heard" it was a bad batch of gel coat. Who knows?

Haven't decided what to do, but I can imagine the cost to repaint would be staggering.

/Fred