Hello everyone! First off I have been “garage painting” off and on since I was a teenager with my dad. I recently picked it up again and have been shooting bc/cc with some pretty good results. My gun is a finishline flg4. My question is this. My latest project is a 2008 impreza 27J pearl white. I’m going to be respraying the whole car and went to get paint. They are showing it as being a 2 stage process and having never painted with pearl I’m having dilemmas. Is it possible to shoot from the base with the pearl instead of laying down base with no pearl then a pear coat? Any thoughts on this? The car is originally this color and the front end is being replaced

Thank you in advance !

Corey

This 55 Chevy was done in Subaru Spruce Pearl.


It had been painted in pieces by someone else and they did a terrible job. The owner insisted on the same color so I had two local jobbers mix a sample of the paint code for me. Both sent me a straight base coat but neither matched the color and they didn't even match each other.

With the camera flash the original color reflected back a blue look, without the flash it was clearly green.
The mixes from the two jobbers only produced the green look and it was obvious they had no blue pearl in their mix at all.
Here's the step painted with the jobber's mix.


Finally, PainterDave ran the color code and informed me it was a two stage paint.
The way it came was the first layer of base contained the darker green color and tints. The second layer of base contained the pearls that give the color shifts that made the paint attractive to the eye.

These were not hard to lay down at all, just shooting more base and making sure to apply the proper number of coats, keep the same overlap and gun settings, etc.

Notice the step now matches the with the camera flash reflection:


In the sunlight:

That looks amazing! So there isn’t a mid coat with the pears per se. more or less two different base coats? Followed by clear? I’m still confused as two stage I thought would be base then clear but this is base, base, clear?

Yeah, you just aren't quite getting it (don't worry it is a common thing). You have your base coat color, a mid coat pearl, and then your clear coat. The mid coat pearl is CLEAR BASE with the pearl additive(s) in it. So a tri coat really is..... base, base, clear.....

Darrell. I think I am understanding now and thank you for taking the time to explain it further. Color base with no pearl. Then a mid coat (pearl/clear) and finally clear coat. If I were to go to a shop do they mix up the base and mid coat for me? The shop I’ve beem buying from wants to mix up the pearl in the base color and the price was astronomical in comparison. Am I supposed to mix up the pear I. The clear for midcoat? Thanks in advance again!
Additionally since it’s all new to me I will have to figure out how much of each pint m going to need. For respraying my sons I went with 1/2 gallon and it was just barely enough

Well, you can see what 68 ran into there with what I call the "integrated pearl" base/pearl coat. I ran into a similar problem with a paint code on a 2006 Vette I was working with. The paint jobber did give me a "choice" between doing the base/pearl or the separate base and pearl approach. It was indeed cheaper to go with the base/pearl single color approach however I had a devil of a time getting that color to lay down "right" so it had the same look as the rest of the car. I played around with both gun settings and ended up "tweeking" the color somewhat with some dry pearl additive that I had on the shelf. If I was doing it again I would have just sprung for the extra bucks for the separate steps approach. Maybe you should try calling around to some other jobbers and see if pricing varies much on it.....

That’s making more sense now. No way to match anything existing with a single base/pearl stage. What do you think about the whole car like that from a primer base? The whole car is in pretty bad shape. Do you think it would be ok if it wasn’t trying to get it to match?

Coreytownsend wrote: I’m going to be respraying the whole car and went to get paint. They are showing it as being a 2 stage process and having never painted with pearl I’m having dilemmas. Is it possible to shoot from the base with the pearl instead of laying down base with no pearl then a pear coat?

It is, but matching to existing paint is difficult.

When white pearls first came out Dupont Singapore put a lot of effort into making the 3 layers into 2. Success was moderate at best and the matches were a bit off. But they proved it was possible. Audi's white pearl is a single layer of base and Mitsubishi also had one in which they used metallic, rather than the usual xirallic pearl. If you were doing a ground up respray then one of those would make the task easier. I don't recall seeing a single layer alternative for the Subaru white pearls.

The problem with 3 layer pearls is that you need to first get the primer or sealer the right colour since that will affect the colour of the first (solid) coat. Then, and this is key, application of the second (pearl) base coat(s) needs to be very, very even to get consistency of effect.

Even with a 3 layer system, going edge to edge to match adjacent panels is really hard. I blend wherever possible to get a flow of colour.

Bear in mind that a 3 layer pearl needs 2 coats of each base coat layer, so 4 in all, or 6 if using a cheaper, economy line paint. This basically doubles the cost of base and if the xirallic pearl content is high then it won't be cheap.

NFT5 wrote:The problem with 3 layer pearls is that you need to first get the primer or sealer the right colour since that will affect the colour of the first (solid) coat. Then, and this is key, application of the second (pearl) base coat(s) needs to be very, very even to get consistency of effect.

Very good point on the primer choice that I should have addressed.