Sunburn? Really!
Dave sees red over his Freelander’s fading paint
Iknow it was a sunny summer last year, if you can remember back that far. And as the words of the song go, …if I could only offer one tip for the future its “wear sunscreen”. Sound advice for everyone, but I never though it applied to a Land Rover Freelander. Well that was almost the advice Paul Richards at Thirsk Bodyshop gave me when I took the Freelander in for him to look at the large patch of paint that was blistering on the handle on the tailgate. To be honest his advice wasn’t so much “wear sunscreen” it was more “don’t buy a red car” especially one with plastic body parts. Now someone tells me – I have three red Land Rovers!
Paul went into great technical detail explaining the problems with red paint, drying times on different surfaces and the amount of solvent, evaporation times etc. And yes red cars often look terrible the red seems to fade especially on certain makes worse than any other colour. I’m sure we have all seen examples of badly-faded older Vauxhalls on the road where every panel has faded to some degree or other, but not all to the same degree.
It hadn’t faded as such on the Freelander, but still there it was a patch that was growing in size as water got under the lacquer and more red paint was peeling off from the tailgate handle almost by the day, I wasn’t impressed. Paul assured me I wouldn’t see the repaint and it wouldn’t peel again once he’d repainted the handle. It needed to be done it looked terrible and the price wasn’t as much as I feared it might have been. Thirsk Bodyshop have a great reputation, now the only problem was fitting the Freelander in as they were so busy, but a wait of a few weeks I could live with;i’d have to. Anyone that saw the back of the Freelander passed comment on the blister on the handle, I told them that it was all down to ‘red paint’ strong UV and it was sunburn. I became a red-paint bore.
Then I saw a picture that Tina Mccarthy had posted on a Land Rover club’s Facebook page of her red Freelander 2 with the paint blistering in exactly the same place as mine. Which made me think was it all down to sunburn after all, or was it a fault in the spray shop at Halewood when the Freelander 2’s were sprayed? Had a spot of dirt been missed being cleaned on the handle before spraying. I did wonder about complaining to Land Rover, but guessed that wouldn’t be any good as it was seven years old. Just seemed so odd that two Freelanders of the same age and the same colour both had the same paint fault in the same place.
Well the tailgate handle has been repainted; it was taken off the car, stripped back and repainted with several coats of a quality paint and then lacquer.
The result is a perfect match to the Freelander’s original red paint and Paul was right – you cannot tell the handle had ever been off the car and repainted. Hopefully no more bits of red bodywork are going to suffer from sunburn in the next few years.
I still wonder if it was down to the sun and UV rays or was it down to poor quality control at Land Rover. But in future I will never buy another red car.