Details for Clear Coat Repair

Like everyone else so far,pay the money. I had the same problem with the same manufacturer. I started to repair my own. First problem I encountered was that the color paint under the clear was so thin that sanding the edge of the clear coat went right through and took off the color coat. I stopped there. I too had a cost of $3000 to repair. Found that manufacturer had a special cost to do the same for $1200. That was three years ago.I went to Indiana which was about 200 miles from my home town.

Nancy,

Here is why everyone, including me is saying pay the money.

First, using wet sandpaper you will carefully sand the offending area, being very careful not to go through the color coat. Easy, cost of the different grits of paper needed about 20 bucks.

Second, clean the area with a paint prep. Obtain at the professional auto paint store where you get your paint. 20 bucks

Now mask the entire coach, or you WILL get overspray on it. Figure on 20 bucks of tape and 40 bucks of plastic. Oh yeah, it will take you the better part of a day.

You are through with the cheap and easy part.

Obtain a spray gun. They range from 120 bucks to over a 1000. Oh yeah add a dessicant cannister to dry the air. You will need a medium sized air compressor. You can't use your coach air because you just wrapped the intake in plastic. Count on 500 for a compressor that will be big enough to power the spray gun.

Buy a respirator. 50 bucks. You don't want to paint the inside of your lungs.

Now you need the clear coat. Cheap stuff is 30 bucks a quart, and goes up to over a 100 a quart. You will need some catalyst (hardener) 30 bucks, and some reducer, 30 to 50 bucks.

Now you can paint.

After you paint, you will sand again to get the smooth finish on the clear coat. Now you need a buffer, 150 bucks, and an assortment of buffing pads and compounds, another 200 bucks.

I may be off a little on some of my estimates, but not grossly wrong. I am not a pro painter, but I own all of the stuff above, and have done amateur body painting. It looks amateur.

The prices quoted to paint an RV or repair an RV can seem outrageous to those not aware of what is involved. I took the time to detail the post so that you could see why they are asking what they are asking.

Do you also do your own dental work,all you need is some jb weld.

I don't say this lightly but I agree with the others - pay the money.
You are not going to be able to fix this with a little sand paper and a rattle can. This is not a DYI project and all you can do is make it look like junk.
The experts will remove the offending clear coat and put a better coating back on. Your rig will look better than ever and it will be over.
I had a similar situation with the cap on my TT. It was faded and looked awful. I could doctor it up some but it would never look right. I paid the money to have it painted and I'm glad it did because the end result was that it looked better than new.

If you're not picky about how your RV looks, do it yourself. If you want it to look professional, pay the $3K. I would venture to bet that I'm more handy than most and I tried repainting an area along the roof that couldn't be seen from the ground and later tried the two part clear coat everyone was using to repair an area that was just starting to have issues. After everything was said and done, it still went bad and got worse a couple of years later.

I finally paid to have my entire roofline repainted above the drip rail. Since it's typically dark colors that cause issues, I had them change the roofline to one of the coaches lighter colors (on the lower body) so that it looked like it was just another color change in the scheme.

Since this is an issue with a lot of coaches, many people buying used coaches are savvy enough to check for this problem and could hurt resale in the future.

Pay the money.