01LEXPL

iTrader: (10)

Exactly, because they didn't just paint those panels, they blended them. When I had my rear bumper redone a couple years ago, my painter started at the quarter panels down to get a proper match.

The guys' in OP's case simply masked the car and painted the bumper with the color code on the door without taking the time to blend the fenders as well...

SW17LS

A good painter should be able to match the bumper without blending into the fenders. Remember on the ES you'd have to blend the hood too since the bumper comes up over the grille.

Take it back. Make them keep redoing it until its done right.

FYI, the bumper wasn't masked and painted. I'm sure they painted it off the car, they just didn't match the paint well.

lesz

With the 3 stage/tricoat painting process used with pearl white, there is, first, a base coat. Then, the second coat is the pearl, and the third coat is the clear. Assuming that the painter actually did all 3 stages, it is likely that the problem was with the second stage. In that stage, it is critical that the amount of pearl that is applied comes as close as possible to matching what was in the original finish. My guess would be that the painter did not apply enough pearl in that stage.

If the bumpers came pre-painted, the chances of an acceptable match would be minimal because there is enough variation from even one paint lot to another.


Maybe or maybe not. With many colors, a skilled painter should be able to do a panel-to-panel match with many repairs, but depending on the area of the vehicle that is being refinished and the angle of the sheet metal or bumper and how that angle remains the same or changes when it meets adjacent panels, blending into those adjacent panels may, depending on the color of the vehicle, be necessary. With the bumper, the critical area is on the sides where the bumper meets the fender. Because the bumper (on the sides of the vehicle) and the fender are on the same plane, any slight difference in color will be especially noticeable. Also, if you talk to any paint technicians, including the most skilled ones, they will be likely to tell you that pearl whites are, without question, the most difficult to work with and that, while many other colors will allow for a panel-to-panel match in many repair situations, with the pearl whites, need for blending is highly likely.

Possibly, but, more likely, there would not be a need to blend into the hood. The slope of the nose of the ES changes at the intersection of the hood's sheet metal and top portion of the bumper, and the hood and the top portion of the bumper are not on the same plane. When the paint technician is evaluating to determine whether to blend or where to stop a blend, he/she is going to look for places in the shape of the vehicle where the planes change. With a change in the plane from the hood to the top portion of the bumper, the hood is going to catch the light differently from that top portion of the bumper, which is likely to make blending into the hood unnecessary because the two different planes will make slight differences in the paint unnoticeable.

SW17LS

In his picture I can clearly see a color difference between the area above the grille and the hood...

lesz

And that is just my point. Because the hood and the top portion of the bumper are on planes at different angles, the light will hit them differently, and, when that happens, one panel will look darker or lighter than the other with metallic or pearl paint regardless of whether any paint work has been done, which is why that is an ideal location to break off new paint from the original finish.

On my Nebula Gray Pearl ES, which has not had paint work, if it is parked in the sun, you can clearly see, from various angles, how the light hits the hood differently than the way it hits the top portion of the bumper, and the same thing would be true with most metallic or pearl colors.

With metallic and pearl colors, you judge whether you have a good paint match, not by looking at adjacent panels where there is a change in the angles of their planes, but by looking at adjacent panels that share the same plane, such as, in the OP's pictures, where the bumper meets the fender on the side of the vehicle.

It should also be noted, though, that in the case of the repair on the OP's vehicle, if the problem is that the proper amount of pearl was not used in the second stage of the refinishing process, it could well be the case that the top of the bumper and the hood might not satisfactorily match, but, if the proper amount of pearl were used, the changes in those plane angles should make it unnecessary to blend into the hood. If any blending were still necessary with the proper amount of pearl, it would likely only be into the fenders. If the proper amount of pearl was used in the 2nd stage of the painting process, you likely would not notice any difference in color between the hood and bumper, but you still might see a difference between the fender and the bumper. Because using the right amount of pearl is so critical, that is what makes a tri-coat pearl finish like a white pearl so much harder to work with and match than other colors with a normal 2-stage painting process.

jbm79

Question: Is a brand new car painted as one or are parts painted separately?

SW17LS

The body of the car is together (doors, etc), but trim (bumpers, mirrors, trim pieces) are typically painted separately.

lesz

While, when new cars are built at the factory, bumpers are painted separately from the rest of the car, what becomes critical is that the paint formulation, pressure in the automatic paint guns, and other aspects of the painting process need to be kept as consistent as possible between the painting of the bumpers and the painting of the rest of the car, and that consistency becomes especially important with a color like a pearl white. Some manufacturers do a better job of this than others. I think that Lexus does a very good job, but it seems to me that GM often falls short of the mark in this regard, and, when I go onto a GM lot, I will often see brand new cars where the paint match between the sheet metal and bumpers is so poor that they look like they have a two-tone paint job. If consistency in the painting process between the bumper and the rest of the vehicle is critical to getting a good match, that is what makes getting a good match more difficult when a bumper needs to be refinished or replaced. That is because it is significantly more difficult for a painter in a body shop to duplicate the paint process used to paint the vehicle in the factory than it is, in the factory, to use the same process on both the bumpers and the rest of the vehicle.

While modern cars with integrated bumpers come with a higher level of beauty in their design, there is a part of me that longs for the old days with the chrome-finish bumpers. The last vehicle that I had with a chrome-finish bumper was a 1998 Toyota 4-Runner. With it, I could open the tailgate and let the dog jump into the back of the vehicle without worry. With my current Lexus GX, I can't do that because I have to worry about the dog's nails catching and scratching the pretty painted bumper. When I want to put something in the back of the GX or in the trunk of the ES, I have to be careful to make sure that my clothing is not brushing up against the bumper and scratching the paint. If a bumper on the 4-Runner had gotten damaged, it could have easily been replaced without having to worry about whether it was going to match the rest of the vehicle. It seems like it used to be that the purpose of bumpers was to protect the rest of the vehicle. Now, the integrated bumpers seem to have a need to be protected themselves.

jbm79

Paint match was corrected. Now with new problems:

1. Front sensors not flush with bumpers
2. Paint accumulation in the holes for sensors (it seems sensors were forced through the holes)

I try to be an easy customer, but these are simply horrendous!
I'm bringing it back in. The employees there already know me as I'm constantly visiting their shop.