The Auto Body Blog

It’s a New Age for Refinish
Years ago, when many of us first got into the collision repair business, 90 percent of the colors we dealt with were direct gloss formulas, with no clear involved. When we repaired a panel, we finished to the nearest edge, and considered the job done.
Today, that’s no longer the case. When you look at current OEM palettes, just about the only direct gloss colors left are gloss white and a handful of reds. Nearly everything else involves a base color—which can be solid, metallic, or tinted clear—with a clearcoat over the top. And that’s not the only thing that has changed.

Blending basics—your keys to invisible repairs

By John Hristias, PPG Industries Australia
The difference between OEM painting conditions and procedures and those used in the typical collision shop have never been as great. OEM metallic and pearl paints are typically waterborne, as opposed to the solvent-borne paints used in collision repair. Many modern assembly plants have used electrostatic spray to apply metallics, which can polarize the metallic materials, and thus change the reflective qualities. And to reduce the amount of topcoat color required, many OEMs now use a colored undercoat, or colored primer, under the actual color. Final color, then, is the result of the undercoat showing through both the topcoat and the clearcoat.

In addition, OEM pigment choices tend to be extremely broad, compared to the range of colors carried in most refinish systems (for example, 50 yellow OEM pigments, compared to the four carried in most premium refinish systems). And regardless of how the vehicle was finished at the factory, color is quite likely to have faded a bit if the vehicle is several years old, or has been continually exposed to the elements. Even armed with the more than 200 tinters that it would take to provide accurate matches to every OEM finish, a collision shop could still see some variability, just because of painting conditions. Little wonder, then, that edge-to-edge blending has, by and large, become a thing of the past.

Assessing the Situation

When doing the estimate on a damaged vehicle, it’s important to note that, when we talk about the “repair area” for a damaged panel, we are just talking about the area of damage itself. We need to consider the area that will be covered by the new primer coat we apply during the course of the repair. As the primed area will in most cases be several times larger than the damaged area, it’s important to allow for this, or you can seriously underestimate the time and materials that it will take to do the job.
Bearing that in mind, here are some things you should consider when deciding how far you should continue to blend a repair finish:
Mentally divide the panel being worked on into thirds (both lengthwise and heightwise). If a metallic or pearl color repair extends into more than two of those thirds, then you should continue the blend into the next panel.

If the finish being used is a solid-color basecoat/clearcoat, the blend can, in most cases, be restricted to the panel being repaired.
If a panel is being replaced, rather than repaired, then the color should be blended into the surrounding panels regardless of the color being used.
The Clear Difference. When we talk about blending, we’re talking about color only. The entire panel (or panels) should be clearcoated to ensure maximum durability of the repair.