A bird sh1t on my saddlebag lid while at work and when I wiped it off with a Armorall windshield wipe a few hours later it left a blemish in the clearcoat...it actually ate into the clearcoat!
I thought the bird may have eaten some nuclear waste but reading all your posts it seems the MoCo's contractor for CVO painting has other issues besides ZERO quality assurance.
I disagree with other posts who say we should quit bitchin and just ride. I could put my CVO SERG next to ANY stock/base model on the showroom floor and the quality on the non-CVO bike would blow-away the CVO paint job[/b]. WTFO 
I remember making that same comment several years ago, and as far as I can tell it's still true. Standard Harley's get painted in a modern and highly automated facility, and the resulting finish is considered by many to be the best in the industry. Unfortunately, the CVO folks aren't satisfied with just simple stuff that could be painted in the regular system, they design multiple color and graphics laden designs that the system can't handle. Therefore, they contract the paint out (probably to the low bidder, based on what I've seen) and then don't inspect the stuff and hold the vendor's feet to the fire when the parts are shipped to the assembly plant. The '06 models were probably the pinnacle of the crappy paint jobs, and for those who weren't around back then the H-D response was similar to the crap they pulled on all you 110 engine folks. "Problem, what problem, we don't see no stinkin' problem." Lots of folks went through lots of grief to get their bikes halfway right, and some never did get full satisfaction. And among the issues at that time was soft clear coat due to excessive film thickness (too many coats of clear, too many repairs adding extra layers of semi-cured paint, etc.)
My previous post wasn't made to make light of the paint issues folks are having. It was just my feeble attempt to lighten the mood a little, since I've been there and know first hand how easy it is to lose sleep over this kind of stuff if you let it get to you. I had finger prints in my paint from the doofus vendor folks handling parts with their bare hands, contamination marks probably from the same source, cracked paint, off color spits, etc. Eventually most of the parts got replaced, and I learned to live with some minor things that only I noticed. When you consider that a big part of the justification for that ridiculous price tag on a CVO is the "custom paint", it does tend to piss one off when the standard bikes have better quality. All I can say is, people who intend to continue to buy CVO's from Harley will probably need to either learn to accept the poor quality facts of life, or do like me and just say no to buying another one. I don't see anything that would lead me to believe the MoCo is going to change it's ways anytime soon.
Jerry
Author
Topic: Paint swirls scuffs easily, clearcoat seems too soft on SERG (Read 4466 times)