General Paint thickness barchetta

[Yellofrankcar]

Hi,

I would like to know if anyone has ever carefully measured the paint thickness of their barchetta's original paint (at the different places of the body)?
I bought a decent coating thickness gauge and would like to know what others have measured...
A kind of cross check.
Mine (well polished) has approximately: 130/140 microns on the vertical side panels (doors, quarter panels etc.) and 150/160 microns on the horizontal panels (bonnet, boot etc.).

Frank

 

[Bluecat2021]

Frank just about to machine polish my recently bought barchetta. Having polished mostly German cars how does the thickness of 130-150 measure up with any other cars you have used your paint thickness gauge on?

 

[Yellofrankcar]

Hi, well a bit difficult to say since I have the gauge only a fortnight but I have checked my wife's Ford Fiesta and it has 120-130 microns and a Toyota which has similar paint thickness as the Ford ...

 

[bluebarchetta]

My readings are all over the place.

Horizonal surfaces around 145 to 160 micron. The passenger door is 275 microns but the panel behind it is just 135 microns. None of these panels have been repainted.

 

[s130]

It is my understanding that the "B" was custom hand built and painted. This means that paint finish depth will vary from vehicle to vehicle.

Our "B" has very distinct front panel join lines / irregularities but this is also part of the charm of a hand built Bertone vehicle.

 

[Yellofrankcar]

A panel which has 275 microns has definitely been repainted.
I've checked 2 Porsches and they have similar thickness: about 140-150 microns.

 

[bluebarchetta]

A panel which has 275 microns has definitely been repainted.
I've checked 2 Porsches and they have similar thickness: about 140-150 microns.

I've owned it since new (1996). If it was repainted, it was in the Maggiora factory before it was delivered.

 

[Yellofrankcar]

That's possible, once I had a red Alfa 33 (new) and after a year or so I came back from my office in the winter at eight (dark) and it was parked under a lantern with those sodium lamps. Then I saw that the driver's door was not red but purple, although you couldn't see it in daylight. It was therefore, probably at the importer's, repainted (transport damage) with a paint from another supplier .

In the meantime I have measured the paint thickness of about twenty cars at a friend of mine with a body shop : roughly speaking, they have a paint thickness of 120-130 microns horizontally and 110-120 microns vertically, with a number of cars from Japan and Korea as outliers which had around 80-100 microns (that's very little if you want to polish the paint a several times over the years ).
There were also some cars from the 80s and 90s and they generally had a slightly thicker paint of 120-145 microns (by the way, it says nothing about the quality of the paint or rust resistance itself).
All in all I am happy with the coating thickness gauge, it tells me where to be careful with polishing, where the car has been repainted and whether a filler has been used somewhere.
What I did notice with my Barchetta by the way, is that the paint thickness in the not or less visible places (e.g. the edge under the boot lid) is very thin (50-65 microns).
Not or not much clear coat there .

I plan to correct some stone chips here and there (front of the hood and just behind the front wheel) when the weather gets a bit better (that is, warmer and sunnier) because the water-based paint of the Barchetta was just about introduced at that time and not so great of quality in terms of adhesion compared to today's paint.