DarrelK wrote:So I've just been wondering about this for a few years.....Is there a general "trend" toward more "transparency" in the newer basecoats???? And if so, what's the thinking or tech. behind it?
Very much so.
When Toyota were building the Camry here they were using just 400ml of basecoat on each car. Now most painters would use that on a couple of panels but Toyota are very cost conscious and this saved them a lot of money. To get the colour they used a solid ground coat under that barely applied effect coat and that is the reason why nearly every Camry you see, that's had a bar resprayed, has the bar much darker/deeper than the adjoining body panels.
JCCLARK wrote:If your primer is making a difference to your final color,
then you're not putting enough color on it, period!
No, mate, the trick these days is to match the effect and you can only do this by using the correct shade of primer, or a ground coat, as above.
This was a discussion I had with ODG a number of times but he was resolute in his thinking. It was right 20 years ago, but not today.
DarrelK wrote:Exactly.... if this "trend" continues/expands I can see a lot of newbies to this biz/hobby shooting themselves in the foot quite a bit trying to figure out "where" in their paint package they went wrong. Okay, so this.....currently in a new, new, new, paint code is their a specific reference to a particular primer color/shade????
Not just newbies. A lot of painters too. When you look up a paint formula in most paint systems it will give you the Value Shade that is appropriate for that variant. Because they formulate the variants differently, the correct Value Shade can vary from one variant to the next, so that's yet another trap that we have to be wary of.
The science, and art, of painting has changed, particularly as we see the manufacturers chasing new and different effects. A good example is Mazda with their candy reds, but I've come across similar from other manufacturers as well, like the red in the Mustang and a similar colour on the Mondeo.
With colours like that you can't just slam it on. Each layer has to be exactly the right thickness or the colour won't match. New techniques, like blending tinted and untinted clear on the same coat with two guns are the kinds of things that have changed and allow us to match the factory colours.
The skill set in this trade continues to expand, each year. You might be able to apply every coat like it was glass but if you can't blend and match peel then there's not much place for you in the refinish industry. Obviously different for those just doing full resprays but even those customers are starting to look for different effects. Even an old style candy, if each coat isn't applied evenly, can look like crap or not be quite what the customer wanted.