I'm looking into deciding what color to paint my fiero soon. I've decided that I want a red color, preferably a slightly darker red. Now, I really enjoy the look of the House of Kolor kandy brandywine and kandy apple red paints. However, as a novice painter, my understanding is that I honestly probably couldn't pull off doing a true candy color. The thought has occurred to me that with many test panels, I could probably get it somewhat nice but probably not nearly as uniform as I like. In addition, I would probably waste a lot of paint getting it "right" or as close as I could right now.


However, I also noticed that House of Kolor has an alternative to the true candy colors where the candy effect is imitated by the basecoat. My understanding of this is that many of the difficulties of doing a candy paint won't be present in a base coat/ clear coat setup like this. However, I'm somewhat leery about something like this.

1) So does anybody know anything about these paints?
2) Would it actually even look half as nice as a true candy paint job?
3) Has anybody tried one of these before?
4) Am I right that it wouldn't be nearly as difficult as a true candy paint?

quote Shimrin2® Kandy Basecoat (KBC) System Shimrin2® is the 2nd generation of the proven Shimrin® Basecoat technology introduced in 1982. Attributed to advanced manufacturing techniques, innovative chemistry and robust polymer engineering, Shimrin2® Kandy Basecoats (KBC) are the next generation of ground-breaking universal basecoats from House of Kolor. Through innovative chemistry, we are able to meet and exceed waterborne with a solvent-based system designed for Kustom Painting. S2-00 Trans Nebulae is the beginning of all Shimrin2® effects, making It the heart of the Shimrin2® Kandy Basecoat (KBC) system. This diverse component of the S2 FX Karrier Base Series combined with our rich Kandy Koncentrates (KK) and 40 different S2-FX pacs options create extreme clarity, Depth, and Kandy-like appearance in a simple to apply 2 stage Base/Klear system. Shimrin2® Kandy Basecoats (KBC) remain a solvent base system and is VOC compliant coast to coast including California.

http://www.houseofkolor.com/products/shimrin.jsp

[This message has been edited by GraterFang (edited 06-28-2012).]

How "novice" are you? Do you have a spray gun and good compressor?

I use House of Kolor for all of my custom paintjobs and the candy colors are not that hard to do. Their system of paints allows you to go from the basecoat directly to the candy and then to the clearcoat all in one spray session without having to wait for the paint to dry and wetsand in between coats. The candy colors spray on very thin and you have to apply 1-10 coats depending on how dark you want the color to become. Their new paint line that you are describing is more of a pain in the ass then you can imagine. Basically, you mix their "trans nebulae" paint which serves as a neutral basecoat with their "FX Pac" which is basically the type and color of flake that you want to shine through the paint, and finally mix in the Kandy Koncentrate of whatever color you want and reducer. You are basically creating your own custom basecoat. If you are uncomfortable with candy paints, you will be terrified of this system. I would say that their new system is truly for the pros.

[This message has been edited by IMSA GT (edited 06-29-2012).]

quote Originally posted by IMSA GT: How "novice" are you? Do you have a spray gun and good compressor?

Fairly novice I'm afraid. Yes, I have access to a spray gun and compressor. They are fair but not top of the line. I need to do a little more research to see if I need to find better equipment but I can get it if need be. The real problem is mostly my experience level. I've helped paint one car in the past with a single stage paint but that's it aside from a lot of spray can experience. However, I'm meticulous when it comes to detail and can do the prep work very well.

However, my understanding of candy paint is that the layer with the candy needs to be applied very uniformly otherwise you end up with some areas being darker than others (or potentially even ugly splotches). I'm guessing that with the amount of experience I have with a spray gun, I would find this to be quite a problem. I'm just theorizing though.

And thanks, I had no idea that the new system was so involved. I hadn't read up enough about it yet.

[This message has been edited by GraterFang (edited 06-29-2012).]

Stay away from candy for a street car. You can't touch up or spot in any chips or scratches.
Find a good base color you like & use base/clear. Perhaps a three stage like on the newer cars if you're up for experimentation.
~ Paul
aka "Tha Driver"

Custom Fiberglass Parts

[This message has been edited by Tha Driver (edited 06-29-2012).]

Would a candy really be that much harder to spot paint than a three stage paint?

How about a metallic paint? Or one with metal flake?

I guess I haven't found a solid base color that I like very much yet.

[This message has been edited by GraterFang (edited 06-29-2012).]

Yes, Ill agree with driver on this. You CANNOT match a true candy color if you damage it. The best you can do is come close. I fixed a door ding on a Mustang that was Laser red. It is a factory color and a true candy finish with 4 stages. I spent 9 hours trying to match the repair in. I got it close enough to get away with, but still not perfect. Average person may not see it, but I can from 10' away. The only way to get a better match is to paint the whole side or whole car. Late model Corvette 'candy' red even has a tech bulletin that says any repairs require a complete paint job to ensure a matched finish. One of the problems, and things that make it unique, is every coat you put on darkens the overall color. If you do an all over paint job, Ive found the best way to spray it is going down the sides from bumper to bumper in one stroke working your way up or down. Then the hood, roof and trunk are shot from bumper to bumper also in single passes. If you dont, everywhere you overlap that coat will get darker and darker exponentially. ie/ 6 coats all over will equal 12 coats at the overlaps, or twice as dark as the rest. Ive seen some painters just move the overlaps a foot or so each coat to avoid that, but thats too much extra guesswork for me. Go to any car show and you can tell in an instant if it was a novice or professional painter that did it by the color variances all over. You cannot paint a true candy with the car apart. If you get 4 coats on one panel and 5 on another, it wont match. Also if you get any dirt or bugs in the finish, your screwed. All you can do is sand it out and start completely over with the basecoat (gold,silver or white). Metallics and other colors dont have these problems. Pearls are a little less forgiving, but you can repair it satisfactorily. The only real issue is getting the metallic/pearl particles in alignment with each other on different panels.

On your original question, I do like House of Kolors color selections and it sprays fine. In my one experience of using their brand of clear, its total junk. It never felt 'hard' or dry and surface cracked in less than a year to where it had to be stripped. It would not sand off, just gummed up sandpaper in a few seconds. Use their colors, but buy other name brand clear.

[This message has been edited by rogergarrison (edited 06-29-2012).]

I agree with tha driver and Rodger on this. Candies are almost inpossible to repair. I've painted candies for overall custom paint jobs (even though I tried to talk my customers out of it) and I've repaired candies for insurance claims. You might take another look at two stage base clears. There are some very good regular base coat colors that can pass for a candy. I once painted a 55 Nomad with a corvette color called black rose and when the car was featured in a magazine the writer thought it was a candy paint job. ~BOB

Great. Thank you for the opinions everybody.

Does anybody have any nice red solid or metallics base/clear to recommend? I'll guess I'll keep looking to try and find something close to the brandywine.

[This message has been edited by GraterFang (edited 06-29-2012).]

I have used House of kolor candy red with silver base It's top of line and easy to spray I sugest you get there custom paint Book and read up on there aplication instructions !!
sounds like you would use gold or bronze base with two or more candy top coats with two or more clear coats, yes pratice makes perfect If it is your first paint job It will not likely be perfect but you can still do a good job if you prep well and chose the right reducer!! Good luck.

quote Originally posted by fasttommy: I have used House of kolor candy red with silver base It's top of line and easy to spray I sugest you get there custom paint Book and read up on there aplication instructions !! sounds like you would use gold or bronze base with two or more candy top coats with two or more clear coats, yes pratice makes perfect If it is your first paint job It will not likely be perfect but you can still do a good job if you prep well and chose the right reducer!! Good luck.

Yes, I had been considering using the gold base. And yeah, I know it wouldn't be perfect but I wouldn't want it to look like I had done it with my eyes closed either

Being able to do small paint repairs is nice but seeing as how its not a show car I would probably be able to live with the inevitable small damages. If they ever got too bad to the point where I couldn't stand them then I guess I could just repaint the whole car.

What worries me is whether or not I would be able to make the car look nice in the first place. That, and potentially any major damages or body mods that would need painted in the future.

OK I cant tell you how to keep your peepers open but if you can follow instructions you can use House of Kolor get a old hood and a couple fenders from a scrap yard and practice as far as woring about a future repair just make sure you save some paint left over to do the repair, you will likely have to buy extra, but thats the price you pay for having a cool custom paint job.

Just remember, for the reasons I already said, you wont get a match on repairs...even if you use the same paint you have left over. To get it even close, you need the same exact reduction with the same reducer, same exact base color, same temps and humidity, same air pressure, same gun and the exact same number of coats. With all that and luck, it may be passable.

Like mentioned there are some really nice colors out there that are just basecoat and clearcoat. To be able to touch those up, just stay away from silvers and golds. Theres some really nice oranges out now, blues and even though I dont like them...some cool greens. I did my Sebring in GM Atomic/Sunset Orange and love it.

As I mentioned, you can do this paint job fairly easily. You just have to lay down even coats of the candy and absolutely make sure NOTHING lands in the candy while wet. If dust or even a piece of lint lands in the wet candy paint, it turns almost black and can ruin the paint job.

This is the closest paint I have found next to an actual brandywine. You can select which type of paint from the selection box below the picture:
http://www.tcpglobal.com/re...ionshop/rsp2702.aspx

Or this one:
http://www.tcpglobal.com/re...ionshop/rsp2916.aspx

[This message has been edited by IMSA GT (edited 06-30-2012).]

Thank you very much for the links. I do like the colors you found there.

I have a few more questions for those that are willing:

1) Is Restoration Shop a decent brand when it comes to paint?

2) How difficult are other "special" paints to do repairs with? For example, a pearl paint? I know it was touched upon briefly, but I was curious where the difficulty lays between a solid base/clear and a candy. Roger mentioned the difficulty was mostly in just getting the particles to align correctly? Does that just basically mean that the panels would have to be painted as they would sit on the car?

3) I'm curious about the paints posted by IMSA GT. For example, the Fire Red Pearl #2702. Is that really a true pearl? It looks like if you order the base/clear you just get a base and a clear. Therefore, I would assume that any pearl in the paint is already mixed in appropriately? I also wasn't able to find anything in the techsheet about special considerations for pearl being present in the paint but I don't know if that's typical or not.


Sorry about any stupid questions I may ask and thanks for your patience!

[This message has been edited by GraterFang (edited 06-30-2012).]

2....yes set up the panels as they are on the car. I prefer to do it all together myself.

3....pearls come both ways...some are a seperate stage (3 stage) and some are mixed in the basecolor (2 stage). The 3 stage one is where you spray a coat of just the pearl over the basecoat color. Those generally 'pop' just a bit more than 2 stage pearl. Be aware thought that the more coats of just the pearl coat can affect the final color. Its really obvious on pearl whites...each pearl coat makes it yellower. I generally just put one light coat of pearl on. You cant just choose 2 or 3 stage....its just the way its mixed. You can usually find a 2 stage pearl that looks nearly identical to the 3 stage one. You can also buy a jar of generic pearl any color you want to put over any color. This type of pearl is just added to clear paint. So you can say paint your car blue, with a coat of red pearl. That will look like a blue car, but sun highlights will be reds and purples. One of my Corvettes I did in white, followed with light coat of red pearl. In the sun it looked like just a white car, but the highlights along the fenders and hood glowed red. Looked great with the red interior.

[This message has been edited by rogergarrison (edited 06-30-2012).]

quote Originally posted by rogergarrison: 2....yes set up the panels as they are on the car. I prefer to do it all together myself.

Seems like the only difficulty there would be doing the door jams. Do you take the doors off, do the jams, then put them back on again to paint the whole car?

quote Originally posted by rogergarrison: 3....pearls come both ways...some are a seperate stage (3 stage) and some are mixed in the basecolor (2 stage). The 3 stage one is where you spray a coat of just the pearl over the basecoat color. Those generally 'pop' just a bit more than 2 stage pearl. Be aware thought that the more coats of just the pearl coat can affect the final color. Its really obvious on pearl whites...each pearl coat makes it yellower. I generally just put one light coat of pearl on. You cant just choose 2 or 3 stage....its just the way its mixed. You can usually find a 2 stage pearl that looks nearly identical to the 3 stage one. You can also buy a jar of generic pearl any color you want to put over any color. This type of pearl is just added to clear paint. So you can say paint your car blue, with a coat of red pearl. That will look like a blue car, but sun highlights will be reds and purples. One of my Corvettes I did in white, followed with light coat of red pearl. In the sun it looked like just a white car, but the highlights along the fenders and hood glowed red. Looked great with the red interior.

Sounds like a neat way to go, and fairly easy at that.

If you use the pearl that you add to the clear, I imagine you typically do a couple coats of clear without pearl over the coat that does have clear in it?
Basecoat --> clear with pearl --> clear without pearl?

Yes, you always have to put a couple of coats of just plain clear over any of them. 2 is usually enough, 3 if you plan on lots of color sanding and buffing. Never any more. It will crack and chip easily. It wont make your car shine up any more to put 6 coats on. You only see the shine on the top coat. On dealers used cars that dont get buffed, only 1 coat is plenty enough...thats all the factory puts on.

Her are a couple of shots of House of Kolors Candy Apple Brandywine. I caught these while he was sleeping

I love pearl.

So if you are laying "pearl" on after the color. What techniocally is pearl. Really really fine metallic?

Pearl in its real form is crushed mother of pearl.....from a pearl . Its also often simulated with glass. Metallic is actual aluminum fleks available in different sizes. Sometimes even the fleks are colored in the same way as colored foils. Metallic colors are different from solid colors in that they are mostly transparent with color added and the fleks are suspended in it. If you let a can set for a day or so, all the fleks will fall to the bottom into a thick paste. Pearl does its unique look be refracting light. It looks like the inside of a seashell or the scales on a fish. With glass, its actually bits of colored glass made into tiny little prisms that cause different colors to appear. We used to even make custom colors with powdered actual fish scales to get eye popping colors. Metal FLAKE is very different from metallics because its not mixed into a color. Its very large actual flakes of aluminum carried in just a clear. The process with FLAKE is to paint a base color, then follow with the flakes (in clear). You can also apply a transparent color like candy over that to enhance the flake color. At that point metal flake paint is very rough, almost like 80 grit sandpaper. You have to bury the flakes with multiple coats of just clear. You must put enough on the be able to sand that clear down till it feels smooth. You cant sand too deep or you run the risk of hitting the flakes, making them silver and ruining the job. Think of it as putting glitter over your paint. With flake, your paint job could be as much as 1/8" thick and very susceptible to cracking and chipping...not for a street car.

So I found a color that I like quite a bit today at a somewhat local paint supply. Its a BASF color (rad red effect -- a dark red metallic) and is available in Diamont and Limco. Now, I know Diamont is supposedly a good brand when choosing paint but its also rather expensive (base would cost me about $550 for a gallon). That's a bit more than I'm looking to pay.... so, on the other hand, a gallon of the base from Limco would be just under $200. I couldn't find many reviews on the quality though so I was curious if anybody had any opinions about this.

1) So, does anybody know anything about the quality of Limco products? I wasn't able to find much through google searches but then again I might just be looking in the wrong places. Also, I'm assuming that $200 is fair considering the color and nature of the paint if Limco is a fairly good product. Does that seem right?

2) The clear that I was recommended was also a Limco product. He recommended LC42000GL (Limco Low 2.0VOC). Again, I was curious if anybody had any opinions about the quality of the product or where I could find out.

3) My last question is does anybody have an idea of how universally known BASF colors are? For example, the other paint supply place I visited used only PPG numbers (a system I'm familiar with). I'm just worried that I might be buying a color that would be difficult to have made up if I was living in a different location in the near future. I tried looking up the name of the color I was interested in and got absolutely no specific results with a google search.

Thanks again and sorry for any novice questions.

[This message has been edited by GraterFang (edited 07-07-2012).]

I used (occasionally still do) BASF Diamont. Its very good quality paint. I use it on hard to match colors because Ive had great luck with the colors. DONT USE LIMCO. Its cheap crap and the results show it. Ive used it on several used cars. It really is just acrylic enamel and cheap acrylic enamel at that. If you want something similar but better, use Sherwin-Williams Dimension 2. Spend the few extra dollars for the Diamont. This is the brand a lot of customizers like Foose use. They also have some great candy apple colors for custom work. As paint prices go, Diamont is relatively low priced.