Tri Coat Repairs?

[vettnut]

I pursued my question about the new Corvette color Chrystal Red. This is an $800.00 option to get this color. It is a tri-coat. If I screw up during the painting or future repairs, how difficult is a repair to match color?? The paint package for everything, including the tinted clear, is $1100.00 from Dupont. This is one of those colors that look great, but take a photo of it and look at it later, and it looks like another reddish car. With an overcast day it is gorgeous. DG

[Len]

I pursued my question about the new Corvette color Chrystal Red. This is an $800.00 option to get this color. It is a tri-coat. If I screw up during the painting or future repairs, how difficult is a repair to match color?? The paint package for everything, including the tinted clear, is $1100.00 from Dupont. This is one of those colors that look great, but take a photo of it and look at it later, and it looks like another reddish car. With an overcast day it is gorgeous. DG

If you have enough spraying experience and a "good' spray gun you can probably do a nice job but a noobe with a cheap gun is probably going to have problems getting a consistent color using a tri-coat application.

[Mark G]

I've only done a couple, so I'm not an expert, but I've had success. The more difficult one was a front end collision. I blended into the doors and made my color blend beneath the outside mirrors. That's a little trick to blend there because any subtle color difference in that region isn't noticed because of the natural shadow that occurs from the mirror. It turned out fine.

But I did my homework first: To get the best match, the night before I cut out a few test plates, sprayed them all with the same color sealer as the car originally had, then a couple coats of the base color. Then, each plate received a different number of coats of tint, then the clearcoat. I was careful to record on the back of each plate the number of coats. Then I let them cure. Sounds like a lot of work but ultimately by holding up the test strip to the car color the next day, I was able to pretty quickly w/o a lot of ambiguity determine which plate was the "best" color match and therefore how many coats of the tint I would need to apply.

I did all of the above and then blended in a coat of tint into the door about a foot or so on the last coat. Clearcoated the front end and the doors and it looked fantastic. A really discerning painters' eye on a day when the light is just right could see a slight color difference under the door, but it certainly was not noticable and nobody else noticed it even when I pointed it out.

I've heard guys say that on some cars it's just better to respray the whole side of the car and not have to worry about having blend problems. It's tough on some year Corvettes because there aren't really very good blend areas. The key thing is to get good dispersion of tint so you don't get any 'stripes', so be aware of that. If you get too many coats then you obviously get a slightly darker area where you make an extra pass. Good luck with your paint job. Sounds fun.

Mark G

[vettnut]

Thanks for the replies. As much as I want to spray this 60 vette this color I will have to choose a different color. I do not have the experience it requires.
At the 2011 Bloomington Gold Corvette show, I saw a 63 vette painted a beautiful custom red. The restorer claims the secret was to spray the First Base color silver. He claims it brought the out red. Is this BS? Why wouldn't the 2-4 coats of red base cover the silver base?
DG

[Len]

Thanks for the replies. As much as I want to spray this 60 vette this color I will have to choose a different color. I do not have the experience it requires.
At the 2011 Bloomington Gold Corvette show, I saw a 63 vette painted a beautiful custom red. The restorer claims the secret was to spray the First Base color silver. He claims it brought the out red. Is this BS? Why wouldn't the 2-4 coats of red base cover the silver base?
DG

You're right, painting 2 or 3 coats over any color using paint that covers decently will produce the same result. Also, you may be able to get real close to the three stage color using two stage paint, check with a good body shop paint supplier that has a large color chip board to find variations that may be close to your color. Some paint manufacturers produce paint chips about the size of playing cards that give you a good look at the colors. I use Glasurit which is manufactured by BASF and my supplier brought me a couple hundred variations on white the other day so that I could get a good match on a Land Rover I needed to paint.