On Sun, 01 Jan 2006 18:39:13 -0500, "Built_Well" <
[email protected]> wrote:
>Local dealer's down to 3 Camry LEs that have
>carpteted floor mats as the only option. Two are
>"Desert Sand Mica" and one is "Super White."
>
>Do you think the Camry's "Desert Sand Mica" (kinda
>light tan) will hide minor dings and small scratches
>as well as the Camry's "Super White" should?
>
>Also do you think the light tan color will hide
>dust and dirt as well as the white?
The 'Desert Sand Mica' sounds like a Metallic paint, with
microscopic aluminum flakes to add sheen. There's only one big
problem with metallic paints, if you need to repair a panel you can't
touch up the paint without redoing the whole panel, unless you get
lucky and the body shop has a master car painter who can duplicate the
'lay' of the paint from the factory.
It literally matters what angle they hold the paint gun at, how fast
they move it, whether they apply L-R, R-L, Up, Down, at an angle...
And how heavy per layer. This all affects which way those metal
flakes are laid down.
If you back off 30 feet it won't matter, and to the average person,
they can't tell - but if you park the car in the sun and look any
closer, it sticks out like a beacon to people with a good eye for it.
White is White. Coolest in the summer, among the best for
visibility, easiest to touch-up invisibly...
And good for being anonymous, too. You can slap a couple of
appropriate fake company name stickers on the plain White door (or
call in a favor and borrow a Pizza Shop shirt, roof sign, a warmer
pouch and a few pizzas) and bluff your way into industrial sites or
gated communities to look around. ;-P
>Does silver really age badly, like some say? I'm
>still considering the silver-like "Lunar Mist
>Metallic" but somebody wrote 4 years ago in another
>newsgroup that:
There were a lot of horror stories about Silver cars at that time,
when they were reformulating car paints to reduce emissions - The US
Domestic paint and automobile makers all had the paint peeling off the
hood roof and decklid in sheets down to the primer, and there were big
fights over warranty repaints when this showed up just out of the
warranty periods... I sure hope they figured out exactly what they
were doing wrong by _now_.
Car paint was never meant to be permanent 50-year stuff - back in
the days of Organic Lacquer paints you were lucky to get 10 with it
still looking decent. Earl Scheib (regional auto painting franchise
shops) made a boatload banking on this.
But the materials and methods have gotten a whole lot better over
the years, to where 25 years before the car really needs painting
isn't at all unusual - but let a lot of cars painted a certain color
all go bad in 5 to 10 years, and people notice it.
--<< Bruce >>--
--
Bruce L. Bergman, Woodland Hills (Los Angeles) CA - Desktop
Electrician for Westend Electric - CA726700
5737 Kanan Rd. #359, Agoura CA 91301 (818) 889-9545
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