If you want to get rid of that reddish cast add a drop of pthalo green, or a green tint that doesn't have too much yellow in it.

 

LOL, thanks.... I didn't know that.

Guess someone taught you how to use a color wheel...

 

Actually NO, but it is the basis of how colors are acheived. I was taught from some of the best painters I had the luck to work with. Eventually they started coming to me for custom matches.

 

Finger Paint

 

So, what paint brands do you prefer to color match with?

 

There are tricks for making colors more vivid, clean or just to bring out or lessen the metallic.

For instance.... on some metallic basecoats, if you want the metallic to "stand up" more, add some flattening agent to the basecoat. It will make the metalflakes in the silver base standup and give the correct effect. Many painters try to add more silver (or whichever base they're using to get more of a metallicy effect)

Or another example and I'll use the yellow single stage I was mixing last week.

I could get the color pretty damn good but it was never vivid enough. I added some white pearl to the yellow and it gave the "vividness" I was looking for.



I can't speak for mini mudeatr but all aftermarket paint manufacturers suck. Over half of our work is Acura. We used to use PPG because the Honda uses PPG.

They got worse and worse with their color matching. It got to the point that we were tinting everything.

Very rarely can you panel shoot anything so you either blend the adjacent panel or play the tinting game. The problem is the manufacturers are just stupid.

Here's an example. When you see a black Yukon or Tahoe, the code is WA8555.

Simple enough, right? But if you pull up that code, there is a standard color and 14 variances... Are you freakin' kidding me? Why the hell do I have to have 14 variances for black?

Too red, too blue, too milky, blah, blah, blah... It's black for God's sake. Pick a toner and use it.

Every year, the automobile manufacturers try to come up with more alluring colors and every year it gets more and more difficult to match.

3 stage paints, tinted clearcoats, hell, even some clear on certain companies are more yellow than clear and God forbid you blend an adjacent panel with silver or gold, the clearcoat will make it darker on that next panel. (another reason why we dumped PPG)

I've tried every paint company over the last 25 years and each one has it's great points... ICI use to make really clear clearcoats, etc, etc., some companies have express clears that dry in 20 minutes.

Right now we're using BASF and it's pretty good but ask any painter and you'll get a different answer.

It would be great if they would merge and we'd have a better ability of duplicating the car manufacturers colors and textures but for now, we do what we do.

 

That's some pretty interesting stuff. I had no idea that clear coats actually varied.

 

I was in the resins and coatings industry for over 20 years, and worked with residential, automotive, and industrial products. I have been out of the loop on the industry for the past 8 years so I'm sure there have been many advances in the product lines.

Some of the Mfg's I sold for this topic were PPG, Carboline, Sikkens, DuPont and maybe more I can't remember. For my automotive customers I sold PPG-Ditzler, DuPont-Imron, DuPont-Chroma Color, other DuPont product lines that are probably no longer in existance.

As a supplier I preferred DuPont to do most of my color matching. They seemed to have the most color choices at the time with the Imron Line and it was very easy to match colors. If my automotive customers preferred another brand I usually knew a dealer that would allow me to tint their colors for them.

 

One of the things i've heard about PPG's basecoat is that it doesnt dry dull enough,Its too shiny and causes problems.One shop i know well switched to Diamont because of it.

 

Oh yeah, absolutely. You can pour clear into a clear container from two different brands and one may be clear'ish and the other looks like clean oil. (slight exaggeration but you get my point)

The problem is, put that yellow'ish clear on silver or gold and it'll darken up the rest of the panel regardless if you have basecoat on that area.



Though I personally don't like DuPont, I am in complete agreeance with you. DuPont DEFINITELY has a better color selection for variances.

Also, I like the variance deck... the color chips with the little holes and each sprayed out variance for each individual color.

I haven't sprayed DuPont in at least 12 years so I'm not qualified to discuss how they are in the paint world today but I'm sure they're no better or no worse than any other brand.

 

Yeah, I hear you Orangecrush. I started responding to this thread and remembered... hey I haven't been involved with this line of work for about 8 years so I really couldn't say who's king of the paints anymore.

 

I have often wondered; if you had an old auto that still had a solid coat of paint that had just lost its 'gloss' or was faded or sunburned (meaning no peal, crack or corrosion), why not just wet-sand and spray it with clearcoat?

Of course, my wondering has more to do with aircraft finishing; where standard is to always strip or blast all existing coating and start again from bare metal.

I have often found hidden (or seen not-so-hidden) damage caused by the blast or chemical strip and a great deal of cost now is disposal of strip chemicals.

 

If you were to go through that much trouble to get car ready to spray clear,why wouldnt you also add a color coat?

 

Basically because when you sand the car, at some point, you will burn through on some of the edges so you will have to add color.

The other reason is simple. Once prepped, it's just as easy to add a fresh coat of color since you have to go through all the same motions anyway. (ie. sanding, prepping, masking, etc, etc)

Same amount of work, may as well do it right from start to finish.

Mark

 

OC,
I had a typo in my sentence.It was suppose to say why wouldnt you.

 

That's okay because I thought you said why wouldn't you add basecoat if you were adding clearcoat.

 

Thank you for your expert and logical answer

Should have known that if it were truly an 'easy-fix', that you would see it being done.

 

Wow... and here I thought our cars were painted using crayola pip squeak markers!

Seriously though, why is California requiring shops to go to waterborne paint? What's so neat about it? Does it do less harm to the environment or something? (It must otherwise California wouldn't be requiring it by law... )

 

Yes, it's suppose to be less harmful to the environment .Cali has been using products with lower voc requirements then the rest of the states for years.I dont know the new voc rules are,but they were on a 2.1 voc restriction while everyone else was on 3.5 voc.

 

So there's no other reason why they're going with it then? It's not superior to the other forms of paint or methods used in any way?

Somehow, that doesn't surprise me.

 

Here is some quick info
http://www.goodspeedmotoring.com/?page=modern_paint

 

No, CA always has to be the hang-up. Doesn't matter if we're talking about paint or JCW kit for the automatics.... CA just has to be difficult.


Me neither.....

Mark

 

Thanks for the info, it was really interesting to read about how the environmentally friendly paint is great at everything except actually being a paint.

Reading that made me feel that I should vote Republican...

 

I bet there are a *lot* of environmentally-friendli(er) products that either aren't as effective/efficient or are significantly harder to work with than the "bad" products they replaced.

The first one that comes to mind is the new R-134a refrigerant that's largely replaced R-12. It requires much higher operating pressures, and to get the same amount of cooling, you have to use a condenser that's about 30% larger than you would with R-12.

Likewise, I believe tetraethyl lead is still the most effective product for boosting a fuel's octane rating. Too bad about that whole toxicity/pollution thing, though.

 

Dont forget that thenew r134 freon itself is more harmful to the ozone then they first thought.