Paint issues

[david_wood]

Of the RV's we've owned over the past 20 years, the 2008 Lexington we recently purchased is the first one with "full body paint". I'm not the original owner.

The last RV we owned was a 26ft Cameo TT that was primarily covered in decals. Those decals eventually disintegrated no matter how much wax I used to keep them from falling apart - that was about 10 years ago.

This particular Lexington came with the optional "Onyx" paint and trim package. I understand that FR used a subcontract paint shop to apply these custom paint schemes. After cleaning and polishing the coach this last weekend, I'm bewildered as to what point these coaches are sent to the paint shop. Much of the external trim and hardware looks to have been painted "in place".

More of a concern is what looks to be "cracking" in the finish and what, if anything, I can do to forestall what looks to be a failure of the paint finish on both sides of the coach. See the attached images. The black "stripes" are actually a black/gold metal flake finish. I don't know if a "clear coat" was used on top of the color coats. The black areas of the finish have a raised edge that you can feel with your finger If a clear coat was sprayed after the color coats, there wasn't much applied.

What I can't tell is if these "cracks" are paint issues or something contained within the fiberglass sidewall. They are most evident in the black areas of the paint but can be seen across the entire surface on both sides of the coach.

Other than a constant waxing and a bit of praying, is there anything that can be done to persevere the finish? The finish is not oxidizing - it's quite glossy and none of the paint was evident on the polishing pads I used to apply the wax.

Thanks for any advise