Paint

[Zlishous]

Has anyome had any experience with this brand of paint; "Rayflex", either heard of someone who has used it or had personel experience with it?

Any comments would be appreciated, thanks!

Zlish

Oh yeah here is the link to the company, thanks again.

http://home.att.net/~brer/products.html

[carguyinok]

Did you look under there CUSTOMER TESTIMONIALS ?

The last car in the before and after photos is a early Z. I wonder if its owner is a member here?

[Zlishous]

Yeah i saw that, that was the reason i posted it here, thought someone might know about it. I know u=you paint guys out there should know about this, Escalon, 2many any thoughts?

[2ManyZs]

Never heard of this brand before.

I used an "off-brand" called Limco on the race car, it was a urethane enamel that was really cheap. It was about 50 dollars for the gallon of paint and the reducer/hardener. It looked great, BUT,it didn't last long. After about 3 years, it started cracking, peeling and heat checking terribly. I didn't put a clear coat on it though, so that might have helped it hold up a bit better. Just didn't see the sense on a race car that was probably going to end up with body damage.

While this does sound tempting, I would want to ask the people who gave their testimonials how long it has been on their cars, and how it has held up.

If it holds up, it's sounds like a great deal, if it doesn't, then it's a waste of time more than money if you have to re-do the car in a few years. Better to spend a bit more and get a quality job than to end up with an job that last less time than the cheapest Maaco or Earl Scheib paint job...

[EScanlon]

Acrylic Enamel used to be "THE" paint to use. Nowdays, there are various paints that are considered to be the "cream of the crop". Where in the 80's and early 90's all you could find was Acrylic Enamel or plain Lacquer paints, in the later 90's they started coming out with new formulations.

IMRON was one such paint. Then they started coming out with the two stage paints which had isocyanates in them to make them harder, and offer a wider more dramatic choices in colors. Almost all of these newer paints require a full face respirator, that is, you can't filter the air in the booth. You must have an air supply from OUTSIDE the booth due to the fumes / vapors which have, in essence, poison in them.

As a result, there are many paint manufacturer's that have relegated Acrylic Enamel to the "secondary" product category. No doubt, this company got together with some paint manufacturer and proposed selling it to folks, such as ourselves, who are mostly interested in repainting to original looks.

The newer paints are the ones that allow the color changing effects, the intensely deep hue of the color, or the ones that have a distinct "glow" to them. Car manufacturer's have introduced these as both the stock and special order paint colors. Body shops, have in turn needed to adapt as well.

Acrylic Enamel is still an excellent paint. It is a one step paint, in that you shoot it, along with hardener or gloss agents added in and the results are excellent. (As long as you have a good painter.) The gloss will remind folks of the old Lacquer process of buffing / rubbing the paint.

It's biggest limitation is in the scope of the colors and effects you can achieve with it.

You won't find a true Candy Apple Red or Blue in Acrylic Enamel. The one they list on their site is just a very bright red and not true Candy paint. True Candy paint is a Lacquer process. It requires a color base; white, silver, black, gray, gold, or whatever your choice, followed by multiple coats of the translucent Candy Paint. The Candy Paint is TRANSLUCENT. It achieves the intensity of the color you want by the depth of the paint applied. I've seen Candy Red applied so thick that it literally looked like a Ruby. Then again, I've also seen it applied very thinly and it looks like a deep pink. The one on their site, from the fact that you cannot see the bottom of the can THROUGH the paint, tells me that it's going for color, and the name implies what you can expect, and NOT that it is a CANDY paint.

At the price of $29 a gallon, it is a good buy. The only concern I would have is how much for shipping, and the other items required (hardener, gloss agent, reducers) as well as if they have the different temp and humidity reducers that made Acrylic Enamel such a good paint to work with.

2¢

[Zlishous]

Thanks guys great response!

I can alwaays count on the two of you for good advice!

I will be painting my 260 for race purposes so this may be just the ticket ( i sold the 240).

I am also taking my 66 Mustang to bare metal and thinking of using the orange color they have on that site, along with black racing stripes down the middle to pay omage to my San Francisco Giants. However i do want a deep finish so i hope that this will work here. The only question i have Escalon, is when painting stripes, base color first then stripes or vice versa?

Thanks again for the great advice,

Paul

[EScanlon]

When I've painted stripes on cars, for the most part, I've painted them over the predominant color of the car. That is, if the car is predominantly WHITE and the stripes will be black, I'll paint the whole car white, then mask off and scuff the area to be painted black, and shoot the black paint.

However, it can leave a tell tale "ridge" or "edge" at the transition point. Where this may not be objectionable on a race car, to some people it can be. There are methods of "knocking down" the edge so that it isn't as noticeable, but it is still there, and to the trained hand / fingers, it can be felt. (Heck, sometimes even an untrained hand can feel it.)

If the edge will be hidden below some sort of body moulding, then usually it will be left alone and no one is the wiser.

On situations where it will be noticeable there are techniques for knocking down the edge after the paint has dried OR just after the paint has been shot.

The first involves the use of either sand paper or scuff pads and the application of a clear coat to restore the gloss, or sometimes rubbing it out carefully in order to avoid "warping" the "line".

The other technique is to pull off the masking tape as soon as possible after shooting the stripe, BEFORE the paint has had a chance to completely dry. This is very tricky, as the intent is to remove the "dam" of the tape so that the edge can "flow out" and not present such a high ridge.

Then there are those folks who simply won't have the additional paint.

That process then involves masking the car such that the stripe is masked off before the application of the main body color. Then after the paint has dried, the masking is removed and now the stripe area is exposed, still in primer, to receive it's coat of paint.

The new masking is now done very carefully to match the inverse of the original masking, i.e. you mask up to the edge of the old mask, and then you paint the stripe color.

The intent of this procedure is that both edges of the paint, being of the same thickness, will then NOT present a palpable edge.

All of them become a matter of personal preference, and personal ability.

Probably the biggest factor will be the color of the paint being applied over the base.

Obviously a light color applied over a dark will require more paint to hide the base color, whereas a dark over light won't. A light over dark will have a thicker edge than a dark over light.

Hope this helps.

[2ManyZs]

One thing I noticed in their descriptions of the product was that any reducer/hardener could be used with the paint. So that would make the temp/humidity reducer point moot, you might have to pay a bit more for what you need from a local supplier, but you've already saved considerably on the top coat.

I don't know about EScanlon, but I think a clear coat would be a good idea, mostly to seal the paint and have it last as long as possible.

The biggest problem I see with their stuff is the lack of choices of colors..:disappoin

[EScanlon]

I've painted with Acryl Enamel and using a gloss additive and a hardener finished with a gloss that is hard to beat. No doubt a clear coat over the top would add ~some~ gloss, but other than for metallic finishes I don't know that it would add sufficiently to justify the added cost and preparation time.

But then again, clear can be a matter of opinion.

Personally, unless the finish isn't as glossy, or as "deep" in hue and intensity as I would like it to be, I try to stay away from clear. Clear can be very tricky, and deceptive to paint. I've seen experienced painters run it, or sag it, or even dry line it. I've even had the misfortune of having it sag due to very minor temperature fluctuations.

Unlike your basic paints, clear has very little tendency to want to stay put. I'm not sure if I'm describing this properly, but think of it as the thickness of the fluid. Regular tinted paint will actually "bulge" at the top part of the paint when you begin to pour it out. Kind of like a thick fluid. Clear doesn't. Even in it's unreduced state it is thin in comparison to paint. This is what makes it so tricky to paint.

Where a good paint job with Acrylic Enamel consists of 3 coats, first coat being a mist / fog coat, second coat being a smooth and even double wet ensuring everything is painted, with a final double wet coat to gloss out. The clear is basically a double wet final coat. I don't know that I would want to chance a second double wet on it. But that is what and how I was taught. Other painters have a different feel for the paint.

2¢