Paint Tips Needed

[awdfury]

I am rebuilding a 93 S13 coupe and am trying to do all the work myself. I stripped the car of everything and reundercoated the underside and inner fenders. I gutted the engine compartment and sprayed it white with DuPont Championship White. I was going to spray the exterior the same color until I was at the mall and saw a civic with blue pearl mixed in with the white. This looked hella good. I am an amateur painter so do any of you pros out there have any tips for me? Is this way to hard to paint with for an amatuer? Does the pearl go in the paint or in the clear? Where can you buy the pearl?

[ThatGuy]

Base Coat, then Pearl Coat, then Clear Coat.

Just Google "Automotive Paints" and such and you will get PLENTY of information.

[DOOK]

pearl is going to be tough for an amatuer to do, just as a candy, metal flake, or any other kind of specialty paint. If you're set on doing it yourself, and you're set on doing it in pearl, do yourself a favor and practice on something until you feel confident you can do it on the car. You only have one shot at it.

[InlineS13]

Dupont makes powder pearls that you can just mix in with the clear. I use to do base, one coat of clear with pearl, and then more clear so you can color sand and buff. You can just mix the pearl in with the white aswell. The only problem with doing custom colors like that is matching that color if you ever wreck the car or something. If you look at the new Lexus Is350 white color is got a shit load of blue pearl. I would just paint it that color. Looks good.

[Addicted2Kouki]

because you have no experience spraying pearl. i would suggest either mixing it with the base or the clear.

mixing it with the clear will look better. mixing it with the base will spray easier. kinda...



the REAL way to pearl is what ThatGuy said...
Base>Pearl>Clear

[bribot]

ive painted pearl a couple times and it looks awesome if you do it correctly but it can also ruin the paint job if done incorrectly.

like dook said, spray a practice panel first so you can decide on how many coats of pearl you want. on the last m3 i did i used 2 coats on the whole car and that was with a water bottle cap full of powder pearl. it look really good.

When spraying pearl make sure you walk down the whole side of the car, dont go back and forth from panel to panel like you do when your spraying base. if you dont walk down the whole side of the car and just move your arm from panel to panel you will see a line of pearl from when you stopped and went the other direction. also DO NOT lay it on wet, dust it on pretty dry, this will let the pearls lay down nice and even. then after doing however many coats of pearl i would hit it with like 3-4 coats of clear, i like alot of clear because then you can wetsand the shit outta it.

hope htis made sense, i suck at explaining things over the internet

[firelizard]

I had no trouble spraying pearl when I did it.

Just mixed it in with pretty thin clear base, sort of dusted on like bribot said. Then cleared over normally.

Used 2 pearls and a microflake on my bicycle. Light blue and gold pearl, and tiny rainbow flakes on white base.

It's not tricky, just be consistent when you're spraying a broad area, and do a test panel first.

[morbid]

Don't mean to go off topic, but what'd you use to re-undercoat it?

[awdfury]

Dupont makes a rubberized undercoating that I used on almost the whole undercarraige.

[Kouki]

Go to a paint shop and look through the chip books. They will probably have something that is close to what you want that can easliy be mixed into a base/clear instead of doing a 3 stage paint. Just tell them what you want, and they can make it happen.