Need new bumper, but dealer said paint is hard to match

[suaveflooder]

Originally Posted by spitfire481

On the bumper I did I had to spray 6 coats of Pearl and a drop coat. With my ppg envirobase system your basic pearl coat is considered 3 plus a drop coat. Color looked decent dead on. The flop (on an angle) was way too light at 3 coats. Almost a dead on match when I tested with 6 plus the drop. Matches the car way better than the rear, factory bumper matches the car lol

Can this be done after the part has been cleared? I paid A LOT and had it redone twice. I don't want to do it there again. Just like you said, dead on, the wing is pretty perfect. Any angle and all I see is white

[spitfire481]

Originally Posted by suaveflooder

Can this be done after the part has been cleared? I paid A LOT and had it redone twice. I don't want to do it there again. Just like you said, dead on, the wing is pretty perfect. Any angle and all I see is white

It can be sanded/scuffed with 800 grit and a grey scuff pad, more pearl mid coat added then cleared. The base color doesn't have to be sprayed again

[brz_star21]

Thought I'd chime in to let others know it's not just Whiteout paint owners. The whole color lineup has these problems from the factory. As someone else previously mentioned, it's the differences between surfaces. If you'll notice, the front bumper and rear bumper are different colors than say the fenders, hood, and trunk. I'm speculating because the black color of the ABS plastic possibly?

In either case, whatever body shop you take it to make sure of course they're reputable and do great work but also that they confirm the color code via your VIN#. Case in point for my DGM (which IMHO is much harder to match than Whiteout) has several different blends from factory according to the paint supply store. Some VIN#'s call for more blue, green, etc. so that will have an effect on the overall color hue. In my example, the first paint run (without using the VIN#) the part came out with a very noticeable green hue (when it was supposed to be more purple). The second run, again without using VIN# info, came out with a blue hue. Finally, my body shop friend talked it over with the paint supply store and provided my VIN#. We discovered my VIN# had indeed more purple color added to the mix.

[spitfire481]

The vin isn't the best way to match up a color. In some systems entering a vin will show you the most popular choice chosen for that model by other body shops using the same mixing system but that's about it. Every paint system has variant decks which contain the available variants for every paint code that has variants. Enter the paint code in your mixing computer, take out the variant deck that the computer calls for, match up the variants to the car in question with a 3m sun gun or clear daylight. If nothing is close enough to blend out then its time to start tinting and spraying test cards