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From: Beverly Hills No Job is Too Small, No Fee is Too Big!!!
Paint Technology
When thinking about all of the improvements to the vette, I was wondering if there has been any new technology instituted to paint jobs as well. This goes for the C6 and any new production cars.
I heard many things about testing color encoding and so on, but has there been really any improvements in the last decade for durability, scratch resistance, etc....It seems the paint industry is way behind.
Current base coat/clear coat technology with water borne primers has been around for about 20 years now, but the early examples had clearcoat durability and adhesion problems that were solved at least ten years ago.
The Bowling Green paint shop was completely retooled for the XLR and C6, so you can consider that both the materials and processes are state-of-the-art.
I don't think I've ever seen a production car that didn't have some orange peel, somewhere, if you really scrutinized it under strong flourescent lighting.
You can always find a custom painter who will give you an orange peel free paint job for maybe as little as ten thousand dollars by spraying on enough material to allow several wet sandings down to 2000 paper and keep redoing it until its perfect.
Our SC400 has no sign of orange peel. Not even the slightest bit. Mirror smooth....that is except for the areas that have been repainted due to gravel damage. Unfortunately, they have mild orange peel. Our new FX45 has orange peel. My '93 300ZXTT didn't nor does my current '92 TT.
Our FX45 is about as bad as my 2001 C5 was.
I don't think I've ever seen any lexus with orange peel.
Our SC400 has no sign of orange peel. Not even the slightest bit. Mirror smooth....that is except for the areas that have been repainted due to gravel damage. Unfortunately, they have mild orange peel. Our new FX45 has orange peel. My '93 300ZXTT didn't nor does my current '92 TT.
Our FX45 is about as bad as my 2001 C5 was.
I don't think I've ever seen any lexus with orange peel.
Both our SC400s - the last one was Teal Mist Metallic and the most beautiful color I've ever owned - was flawless. My '98 C5, which is Nassau blue, appears to be free of orange peel. I just finished applying Meguiar's NXT Tech wax under flourescent lamps and didn't notice any orange peel.
I sure hope the Magnetic Red II turns out to be as nice as my C5!
Last edited by jackcasa; Jul 22, 2004 at 11:39 PM.
Every Lexus I have looked at lately has orange peel. Lexus does a much better job than GM in this department, but no manufacturer is free of this issue.
Going to be interesting when the first nanopaint cars arrive>>>
from Mercedes. The new SLK and a few other models will have this new paint technology...MB went this route due to the inherent tech flaws of water based paints etc. Shall be interesting to see if all the hype of this paint system meets the 'eye test'
Designer Imagines A Corvette That Looks More Like a Corvette Than the Corvette
Slideshow: A Jaguar designer's personal project imagines what a modern front-engined Corvette might look like if Chevrolet revisited the golden age of the Stingray.