Tacky paint after a week

[Bsmith]

Got a second hand towbar for a car, was a little scruffy so took it all apart cleaned and painted with Hammerite primer then Berger black gloss paint that's been in my shed for a year or 2 maybe more. It's still tacky after a week. Paint must have lost drying inhibitors or whatever they are called over the years. What do I do now? Will a coat of good paint over the tacky stuff dry it all or have I got to clean it all off again with paint thinners?

 

[brightspark]

cut your losses and clean it off . I had to do that last week on something I painted

 

[nickk]

i've had this twice ,luckily it wasn't time sensitive & it did eventually dry hard .

 

[gt6s]

Paint too old strip it off. I had this once on an outboard motor petrol tank it never dried.

 

[Endeleus]

Do you have any way of getting the part heated up to around 40 degrees for an hour or so? I've found using the space heater in my garage has got paint to cure which I thought was never going to.

 

[GW8IZR]

I painted a cast iron water pump with some old red gloss and that took forever (certainly two or three weeks) to harden, but it did eventually.

 

[cumbriasteve]

I am old enough and tight fisted enough to have had this problem a couple of times due to keeping paint too long.

Heat will cure it, or should I say it has done for me in the past, sometimes it takes no more than heating the item with a hair dryer to just kick the process into starting, other times it's took more heat and longer periods.

I am though not convinced the coating ever ends up as good as it should regarding hardness and durability.

 

[Mee]

Enamels take an age to dry and this is months and not hours, they often dry (cure) by using the UV spectrum, they skin over quite quickly and then cure over months.

 

[GW8IZR]

<snip>
I am though not convinced the coating ever ends up as good as it should regarding hardness and durability.

I'm sure that is correct, in the case of my old water pump it only needs to look nice but even now several months on and after being in the warm sunshine its still a bit soft.. although depending on the application it might not matter as long as its nice and shiny. The parts where the paint was applied thinly (properly) its gone off well.. the areas where I sloshed it on its still soft. It wouldn't be any good as a wearing surface but as a decorative finish its ok.


I bought some old stock tower paint and thats ok even though its well out of date but you need to mix the solids with a stirrer for an absolute age, last time I sprayed it it actually wore the nozzle of the gun :-)

To be honest a tow bar takes a lot of stick and road grit / salt so the paint technology that @Bsmith used isn't really much good but its what he had to hand and it might last longer than the rest of the car.

 

[slim_boy_fat]

I wonder if it could be anything to do with the use of Hammerite primer?

Hammerite is funny stuff sometimes.......

 

[Bsmith]

The Hammerite primer was touch dry within an hour and next day it appeared like a real good hard coating. Indeed it's funny stuff, it took a while to clean it out of the paint brush with standard thinners. I also have a space heater, I'll try a bit of heat as it will be a problem getting the paint off recessed areas. I could use a pair of gloves and fit it but it would be a mess in no time with everything sticking to it. As far as I'm concerned the black top coat is just for cosmetic appearance.

 

[Bsmith]

I wonder if it could be anything to do with the use of Hammerite primer?

Hammerite is funny stuff sometimes.......

Drips of gloss paint on the floor where there was no primer are also tacky.