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  #1  
Old 12-19-2005, 10:22 PM
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paint brands...do you know/care what your shop uses?

How many of you know and/or care what brand of paint your body shop of choice uses? What is your preference? Given all the discussions about oil I expect that everyone will have an opinion on this subject too.

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  #2  
Old 12-19-2005, 10:45 PM
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paint+ Mercedes= Glassurit

1.See above
2.If they are not using "The" system,They do not need to be painting your car.
3.Have Oxygen available and be sitting down when you look at the price quote.
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  #3  
Old 12-19-2005, 11:05 PM
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The brand is less important than the grade. Major manufacturers all offer various quality / price points. You want a premium paint. Glasurit is virtually extinct in the U.S. and there is really no point in seeking it out unless you have a gullwing or something like that. MB paints come from a variety of suppliers.
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  #4  
Old 12-20-2005, 12:38 AM
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I am getting one panel repainted on my 400E. I have the paint code, but I need a good brand of paint. Any suggestions?

Shes Metallic Beryll #888.

Thx in advance.
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  #5  
Old 12-20-2005, 02:13 AM
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In a MB bulletin Mercedes recommend only the use of paint from the following suppliers:

Du Point Performance Coatings - Standox, Spies Hecker (used by my local shop) and Du Pont Refinish

BASF Coatings AG: Glasurit & RM

PPG Industries International: PPG Auto Refinish

My local shop uses Spies Hecker for all cars due to the superb finish, see my car for an example. He also paints F1 car parts who's per car value exceeds a million GBP!

I have also seen work using Spies Hecker on a variety of cars and all are superb, on a Lotus 8 after respray the paint finish was far Superior to that of any production car.

But of course the paint is only a part player in the process. Conditions, tools, chemicals, booth and most importantly experience are all involved.

Go see some of the shop's work first - that's what I did. And pay the slight premium for the best shops as otherwise you'll regret it and keep on looking at the work - even if it's only visible to you...

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  #6  
Old 12-20-2005, 02:32 PM
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A good body shop (especially one that does lots of insurance work) has the know-how to offer different levels of quality depending on individual needs.

I go to a shop that can spend up to three weeks applying a show-quality paint job, while rushing out a Earl-Shieb like quickie for a stingy old cod that kept the insurance check and just wanted to get by.

Don't get me wrong, their prep work and paint brands are top notch...but not everyone wants that type of attention to detail!

The guy I talk to over there refers to jobs as "driver" versus "show". True enough, no point in spending $$$$ on a high-quality effort if the car is just going to get beat up on a regular basis.

I plan on painting the W124 soon...but since it's a driver, I'm certainly not going to go all out on an expensive councours-quality effort!
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  #7  
Old 05-01-2008, 07:47 PM
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Old thread, but just an update:

All the Mercedes new car prep facilities in the US converted to the BASF Glasurit 90 water based system many years ago (2000?), and I believe they still use it, so the comment that Glasurit was non-existant in the US was incorrect.
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  #8  
Old 05-01-2008, 08:49 PM
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Jes, I have to defend a two and half year old thread - there ought to be a statute of limitations on these things. The thread was actually about the refinishing market, not the new car market, which of course is an entirely different marketplace and not the subject of the thread. Glasurit is not the only MB approved refinish supplier but one of six, the others being RM, Dupont, Spies Hecker, Standox and PPG. Glasurit is not competitively priced in the U.S. and has for some time been difficult to find at retail. Their share of the refinish market is infinitesimally small. So I substitute this for virtually nonexistent.
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  #9  
Old 05-01-2008, 09:02 PM
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I read the topic of the thread to concern respraying by a professional shop. Where are you having problems sourcing BASF Glasurit? If I can get it in Honolulu, it should be a snap anywhere in the "lower 48."

Last edited by MTI; 05-01-2008 at 09:20 PM.
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  #10  
Old 05-02-2008, 05:55 AM
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FWIW,,, the most important part of the procedure is the clearcoat. Any paint will last forever and look good if the clearcoat is of high quality and durability.
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Old 05-02-2008, 09:55 AM
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How many coats of paint and clearcoat would you normally have in what's considered a good quality paint job?
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  #12  
Old 05-03-2008, 06:05 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by G-Benz View Post
A good body shop (especially one that does lots of insurance work) has the know-how to offer different levels of quality depending on individual needs.

I go to a shop that can spend up to three weeks applying a show-quality paint job, while rushing out a Earl-Shieb like quickie for a stingy old cod that kept the insurance check and just wanted to get by.

Don't get me wrong, their prep work and paint brands are top notch...but not everyone wants that type of attention to detail!

The guy I talk to over there refers to jobs as "driver" versus "show". True enough, no point in spending $$$$ on a high-quality effort if the car is just going to get beat up on a regular basis.

I plan on painting the W124 soon...but since it's a driver, I'm certainly not going to go all out on an expensive councours-quality effort!
Not sure that I agree with you there. These days body shops that do lots of insurance work are working "for" the insurance companies directly with partner programs. I have had a few cars repaired under these programs and have gotten poor quality repairs and have spent a lot of time going back over and over never to really get the car repaired correctly. These were shops that I previously worked with directly without the partner programs and got really good work from.

The problem is the shops mindset of YOU are not the customer the insurance company is. The insurance company does not care what your car looks like and neither does the body shop. Your just another "check". They use crummy after market paint brands (if its not Glassurit it has no business on a Mercedes Benz body panel) and use untrained flunkies to spray it on. I had a friend that was once delivered a car with the paint sprayers hair embeded in his fresh coat of paint.

I am going to be in the market soon to have my front and rear bumpers repainted which from what I understand is a common issue on late model 140's. I am going to go out of my way to avoid shops that do insurance work and find a specialty shop that does more restorations than anything else.

A friend of mine in Las Vegas was lucky enough to find a local shop that specialized in Exotics that did not deal with insurance companies. Someone backed into his E55 AMG and they removed the rear window so that they were able to blend the paint up the whole back half of the car and not have any masking lines.
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  #13  
Old 10-05-2008, 03:47 PM
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I have to agree with the last post.

A good shop locally became affiliated with an insurance company. Their quality dropped to below zero, and I would never take a car their again. (Their prices stayed quite high, although.)

I would go and ask local speed shops for advice. There are a lot of car nuts there, and usually they'll have some good recomendations. Usually the prices of the people they recomend are a lot lower also.

Standox used to be the best when Herberts was a separate company (that would be my professional opinion when I was in the industry), though that was before they were bought out by Dupont. You will not go wrong with the top end from Dupont, PPG or BASF.

As an aside, bake ovens in refinish shops are used to improve throughput. You do have the advantage of not having to wait 30 days for full property development in the finish.

You can't use OEM paint (even if you could get it) because you really need to bake it at 285 F for full properties, and none of them will cure right below 230 F. At those tempratures, you'd have to remove everything from the car to prevent damage to all the components.
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  #14  
Old 10-05-2008, 05:22 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jmk View Post
You can't use OEM paint (even if you could get it) because you really need to bake it at 285 F for full properties, and none of them will cure right below 230 F. At those tempratures, you'd have to remove everything from the car to prevent damage to all the components.
Yeah that's slightly warm. It is possible to bake a car though but not all in one piece. I have found the higher end body shops are more willing to "dissasemble" a car than the lower end spray and go type establishment. Of course the labor costs go up substantially as it takes a long time to "take apart" a car.

Insurance companies are horrible to deal with. We recently had a tornado pass through downtown and almost 6 months later all of the windows are still covered with plywood even on high end skyscrapers because of insurance companies dragging their feet with claims. Its really pathetic!
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  #15  
Old 10-13-2008, 06:48 PM
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The plants will do spot repairs with heat lamps. Some will add additional catalyst to the coatings to promote a cure. It is not something for the feint of heart. Uncured melamine coatings are more toxic than a lot of uncured isocynates. If you do not get enough temperature to push the reaction to completion, the material will have no durability.

Even the extreme restorers never seem to use OEM finishes. I would love for them to be able to ecoat the disassembled bodies. I have always wondered why they do not do that. Ecoat would definately improve the quality of the repair.

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