Why your car paint may fade
Always make sure that you paint fully dries when you repaint your car. FILE PHOTO
What you need to know:
- Cold weather
- Extreme heat
- Failure for the paint to dry
After a while, it is disturbing to see some parts on your car, especially on the bonnet area fading.
This effect has no particular car brand it targets. It cuts across brands and mostly affects either the top part or above the driver’s and passenger seats or the outer part or just on top of the engine.
Usually, the colour tends to change, forming whitish spreads in different parts.
What causes car paint to fade
Eric Amadi, a mechanic in Ggaaba, says car paint fades due to a number of factors ranging from weather to mechanical effects.
When excessive heat produced by the car scuffs its way through the bonnet that has no heat insulator, it affects the outside part thus peeling away some layers of the paint.
The heat produced from the engine, Amadi says, has a much more great effect on the car’s paint compared to the one from the sun.
“When your bonnet fails to absorb the engine heat, it ends up melting the top most layer of your car paint, which in the end creates patches and fades away some parts,” he says.
Cold weather
For one reason or the other, many motorists park their cars for longer hours outside.
Some of the cars will spend long hours in the cold, which according to Amadi, draws the dew into forming water catchments that overtime will affect the paint.
“Because the water is not wiped off the car. It forms patches that if not taken care of are likely to affect the paint,” he says.
Extreme heat
The sun contains ultraviolet rays that are generally dangerous to a number of things.
Therefore, the rays present great damage to the paint, especially if the car is persistently parked in the sun for longer hours.
Failure for the paint to dry
According to Martin Mutebi, a car spray specialist at Crown Motor Garage in Kisaasi, when a car is repainted, it should be given ample time to dry.
“Park the car in a safe place and allow the paint to dry. Park it away from dusty and watery places,” says Mutebi, adding that the car should at lease be parked under a shade for approximately 24 hours after it has been repainted.
Additionally, he says, in the event that your car is scratched, it is proper that you repaint the whole of it instead of painting the scratched area.
Repainting the car, he insists, should always be done by a professional.
