Delta Integrale paint problem

Paint problem

This black Evo 1 was a rust free car, it seemed to be a partial repaint, we noticed a patch of paint had come off the top of one wing down to the primer. We removed the wings to repaint them, we peeled more paint with a blade while stripping the wing, it came off down to the primer all over, this meant faulty prep, or maybe a 2nd hand wing with faulty paint itself. Both wings, bumper, and the bonnet were removed.

With the wings off, we took the car & panels down to Pete our painter. Pete said it would all have to go back to bare metal, and be prepped properly, the bonnet too. Pete found filler on the bonnet, so the car had been bumped and repaired at some time.

While the wings were off, I welded a little plate behind the lower side repeater holes. These are for the side winker to be at the max width of the car, only for the Japanese market, an HF badge is stuck over the original hole. In the picture below the repeater is in the original Euro location.

Pete sanded the panels back to the metal, etch primed and undercoated them. This took a lot of careful work, the deep contours and sharp corners mustn't be damaged or have too thick a primer coat. The black finish coat was photo matched to the door panels, wafted on then clear coated. As always, Pete did a great job, he polished the final finish to match the original gloss, shiney, but not too glossy to look repaired..

This is a Japanese import Evo1, it's nice black metallic, but because it's from the Far East it's got no history, other than a recent service at Autointegrale. The car seemed straight and had no rust underneath or obvious damage, so we bought it. We noted a patch of paint had come off the top of the wing, this is how we fixed it.

Paint lifting Solid behind wing

Metal plate welded behind lower winker hole

Detective Pete said the car had been in a light accident, probably being caught by another car passing from the right. The bumper and 2 wings had been replaced, and the bonnet corner repaired, 1 wing was a genuine Lancia, 1 maybe a pattern part, no structural damage was caused. The whole job had originally been prepped with dry sand primer, then wet sanded, so water was trapped under the paint. This caused pin hole bubbles in the final finish, and poor sanding caused the bad paint adhesion.

This is a problem with imported cars, no records of damage. Luckily, this Delta wasn't seriously damaged, but prestige cars are imported that would be written off here in the UK, repaired then sold on at great profit. Integrales among them.

This Delta had a final edition mesh radiator grille from its Japanese years, I had a spare 16v grille with no red

strips so while at Tanc Barratt on other business,

I bought a pair of the red bits.

These were quite expensive!

However, all costs can be justified when buying for your Delta,

so I've already forgotten about it. The trim does make the car look good, and completes the new Euro look,

no trace of its Japanese residency!

We were probably quite lucky that this Delta wasn't badly damaged.

Here's a Ferrari on Ebay, advertised as coming from Japan with no insurance records. So this car can be imported, rebuilt, and sold here with a clean bill of health. This is quite a common practice as older car's values keep rising.

This is a very fast supercar, a less than perfect repair could make it very dangerous at high speed.

I found an old HF badge in the parts box, so fitted it to complete the grille. The car does look good now, Pete our painter showed me the spray-out cards he used testing to match the gold metallic flek in the black, there are at least 10 cards! It was very hard to match, the car had been painted several times, probably by several different body shops, the finished result is now excellent.

I've made a slightly smaller front no.plate and will fit that to the bumper centre. Japanese spec is the licence plate fitted to a metal strip, the strip is riveted to the lower raised section, under the lower grille. This left 2 holes in the bumper, filled and painted by Pete of course.