Question about spraying pearl for the pro painters

[Blenderhead]

I need to repaint the front bumper on my Mark. Someone had done a poor job prepping it in the past, so all the paint was flaking off. I stripped the entire bumper down, and my friend's brother, who paints for a living, was going to respray it for me. Anyway, he's going to charge me a lot more than I originally thought he would (especially considering all the prep work is done and all he has to do is shoot the paint on it), so I'm going to attempt to just paint it myself. When I was younger, I worked in a few body shops, and I've done a decent amount of side-work over the years, even painted a few whole cars, but I've never sprayed pearl before. So what I'm getting at here, is I would appreciate some advice to help me do a decent job of it on my first time out. Thanks.

Mike

 

[unity]

What's you color code? Just want to make sure its pearl. Mine is Opal Opalescent and everyone calls it pearl. I even had a shop do some work and they clearly painted it wrong and had to re-do it.

 

[Blenderhead]

I think it was WF. It's a white pearl, and it comes up as 3-stage when I checked the paint code in an estimating system.

 

[unity]

So its a 98? Then that would be pearl. Opal O. is WK. And FYI, its a White Pearlescent versus the grey or ivory. There are several.

 

[k9t8m]

Tri-stage is hard to get consistent. It most likely will not match the factory finish, but you should be able to get it close.

Spray a let down panel, mix the color up, spray the card with the base coat, then 1.5" from the top, mask the rest of the spray card. After one coat of pearl is sprayed, move the tape down another 1.5". Repeat this untill you have 4-5 coats of pearl. This will help you with how many coats you need in order to match the factory paint.

Its really not that bad, but it is easy to tiger stripe with a tri-stage. Unlike base coat, you cannot overlap the tri-stage at all. This is what the tiger stripes are from.

Good luck.

 

[Blenderhead]

Factory finish...HA, that's funny. The only factory finish on this car is the passenger side door and quarter, and the roof. Every other panel has been repainted, and the pearl is noticeably different from one panel to the next. It was owned by an old man before I bought it, and I guess he just rounded off every corner of the car through the years. That's why I'm not too worried about making it match perfectly. As long as it is close enough that people won't think "man, who screwed up this car" I'll be content. Eventually, I'll repaint the whole car and fix all the spots where a body shop cut corners in the past, but that's at least a few years down the road, so for now I just want to make it look respectable.

I know about the let-down panel, and I was already planning on doing that.

As far as what you said about not overlapping it, how exactly am I supposed to accomplish that? I thought not overlapping enough would cause the tiger stripes. Also wouldn't not overlapping leave dry spots in between? Also, someone had told me to alternate the direction I spray the coats of the mid-coat, as in first coat goes across, then up/down, then across again, and this will help make the pearl consistent across the bumper. Is this right, or did he not know what he was talking about?

This is good info, keep it coming. Thanks.

Mike

Oh yeah, one more question; does the mid-coat get flex additive in it, or just the clear?

 

[tda13]

Tri-stage is hard to get consistent. It most likely will not match the factory finish, but you should be able to get it close.

Spray a let down panel, mix the color up, spray the card with the base coat, then 1.5" from the top, mask the rest of the spray card. After one coat of pearl is sprayed, move the tape down another 1.5". Repeat this untill you have 4-5 coats of pearl. This will help you with how many coats you need in order to match the factory paint.

Its really not that bad, but it is easy to tiger stripe with a tri-stage. Unlike base coat, you cannot overlap the tri-stage at all. This is what the tiger stripes are from.

Good luck.

+1

Make sure you add the flex additive to the paint on the plastic parts. If it was painted before, that could be the reason is flaking off now.

 

[tda13]

+1

Make sure you add the flex additive to the paint on the plastic parts. If it was painted before, that could be the reason is flaking off now.

Just seen your note at the bottom about the flex additive. Sorry.

 

[Blenderhead]

Well I made the let-down panel yesterday, and I feel a lot more confident now. 3 coats of pearl makes an absolutely perfect match to the hood/header panel, so that's what it will get. Hopefully I can get the time to paint it one night this week, but if not, I'll paint it next weekend.

 

[k9t8m]

You shouldn't overlap the pearl. you have to butt every coat right up against the last without to much overlap. You want it to be a nice wet coat, but without to much overlap. That is what the tiger stripes are from.