AUTOMOTIVE & COLLISION

3445 Main, Springfield, Oregon 97478 Phone (541) 726-8453 Fax (541) 746-7085

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The Most Critical Part Of Quality Collision Painting Is The Color Match

Almost all collision repairs include painting part of the vehicle. To produce a quality finish that will match the rest of the vehicle, all trim and hardware must be removed from the panels being refinished. This allows quality through paint preparation of each panel and assures that there will be no peeling or bonding defects.

The most critical part of quality collision painting is the color match. To assure that the color matches perfectly the adjacent panels must be color blended and clear coated completely. A good example of color blending would be a front fender replacement. The new fender would get completely painted with color coat, the hood and fender would be blended with color coat on the areas that are adjacent the replaced fender. All three panels are then sprayed completely with protective clear coat for a factory appearance.

Blending adjacent panels is widely accepted by insurance companies. The only real problem that arises with the blending process is the fact all used vehicles have rock chips, especially in the hood. Insurance companies will not pay to have any rock chips removed during collision repair because they are previous road damage that were not generated from the collision. Many times it is not even possible to remove all rock chips during the preparation process without painting the entire vehicle.

Base color can only be blended over approximately half of a panel before the next panel must be painted for color match. As you can see this puts a paint technician in an awkward position on vehicles with a lot of rock chips. There are two issues to be addresses with rock chips: who pays for the extra preparation to remove them before painting and where do you stop to allow for a good color blend? Clear coating over rock chips is a practice that we like to avoid but it is a necessary evil in many cases. At A Street we know that rock chips can be a sensitive issue to a customer. We always like to take a few extra minutes to explain not only the collision repair process but also the refinishing process.

AUTOMOTIVE & COLLISION

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The Most Critical Part Of Quality Collision Painting Is The Color Match