Just curious if anybody here uses single stage paint on their restorations vs base/clear that it seems like most have gone to.

Seems that the single stage would be closer in appearance to the original finish on their car if it was manufactured before the 1980s, and I'm guessing that it would also be cheaper and easier to work with?

Any other pros/cons to add to the conversation? What are your thoughts?

Single stage is more affordable, but if it has metallic in it and you end up having to wetsand it for excessive orange peel, dirt, etc. it can end up looking patchy. Adding some single stage clear to the color in the final top coat will make it more glossy if your after that look.

Base clear allows you to sand the clear flat and polish it. This method creates the closest thing to a perfect looking paint job, but won't look like an original oem enamel paint job at all. My car is base-clear sublime green and someone into original appearance restorations would not approve.

If the car were white, yellow, Vitamin C orange, black, or other colors without metallic then single stage is ok.

My dad has a car painted decades ago with white PPG acrylic enamel and it's still glossy like a new car. Just have to keep it clean and waxed.

Yeah there are guys who shoot single stage just so it looks original. Some of the really serious restoration shops do that and they try to duplicate some of the factory orange peel and they don't care too much if a run or two show up since the factory paint often had runs in it. My '65 Coronet is factory paint and if you look close you can find a few runs on the bottom of the trunk and places like that.

If you are doing it your self use base/clear. Any problem you have (except not hardening) can be resolved easily as you go.

What to use depends on what your goals are.

Personally, we use single stage in the engine bay simply because it is easier to touch up. But the rest of the car gets base/clear.

Base/clear does not look like the original paint, but neither will today's single stage unless you and your painter spend a lot of time matching and test spraying to mimic the old look.

Today's single stage is as different from the original paint as base/clear is. So, it takes a good amount of effort to duplicate the original finish. But single stage can be applied to look closer to the OE finish than base/clear can.

On a solid color you can make single stage look as good or better than base clear.

My experience is that base clear does not hold up like single stage. Usually the clear peels. My guess is that this is due to not having a bake booth to cure the paint and clear fast enough.

Catalysized enamel for me, sure it needs wet sand and buff but it lasts for decades.

There's a big difference in longevity between $150/gal Shopline clear and $400-up "name brand" clear. At least that's what all the painters I've ever talked to say...

As noted above the BC/CC (aka 2-stage) tends to look different than the factory single-stage. You can play with texture, but the clearcoat tends to increase the shine. That can be tweaked with a flattening agent in the clear. BC/CC will hold up better to sunlight, bird droppings, sap, etc than single-stage. A catalyzed single stage helps in that regard.
In 40 years of the collision repair & restoration business, I've probably inspected thousands of paint jobs: peeling clear has always been incompatible products, faulty application, surface contamination, or occasionally a faulty product (a PPG clear comes to mind, which was covered under their warranty). Paint is expensive, but generally speaking the least expensive product I've had good results with was Nason, if cost is a concern. Big fan of Standox. Both are currently owned by Axalta (formerly DuPont).

Thanks for all the replies! Good information there.

Let's look at another asppect - cost of materials and labor.

Say if you had an old 4-door with faded out paint that you wanted to look good but didn't want to spend a fortune on. In this case original appearance isn't as important as getting it done on a budget. Maybe you want to try to paint it yourself in your own shop or maybe you want to get the local paint shop to do it as reasonably as possible. What would be the best choice for each of these cases?

Another "rattle-can" option is Bill Hirsch Restoration Supplies. Excellent stuff.

- EM

http://www.hirschauto.com/

Acrylic enamel, like PPG Delstar, is a good choice.

Thanks, and I should have added this to my questions: What is the difference in cost of materials and labor (if I'm paying somebody else to do it) between the two?

Are both about the same from the viewpoint of health/safety considerations?

Appreciate all the info as I understand the paint situation has changed quite a bit since I last looked into it about 10 - 15 years ago. I'm trying to get a handle on the current situation.

I only do base clear on the exteriors. If I want something durable for trunk and engine bay etc. I use single stage urethane then mix with clear on the second coat. You can even mix base with the clear to make your own single stage.

I've sent a few 'driver' cars to Maaco after doing most of the prep myself. I've always been pleased with the results, but my goal was to have a presentable driver not a show car.

Thanks for the replies - really appreciate it.

I have applied both types. With a non-mettalic color, either acrylic enamel or base/clear can work fine.

Mettalic single stage is very hard to spray nicely. Not for me (an amateur) and also most body shop painters won't spray it. Its a lost art and/or formulations have changed. I do fine with mettalic in base/clear.

As far as cost goes, not sure... you would need to price it out with specific paints. I have used TCP Global/Autocolorlibrary.com house brand paints in both single stage and base/clear with good results. My Plum Crazy hotrod has PPG base clear... applied after an effort with single stage (mettalic) did not work out so well. Wish I had used base clear for this mettalic color from the start.

A driver type car with a solid color(non metallic) will be ok with single stage enamel or urethane paint.As stated metallic colors can be tough to spray and look right in a single stage,but can be done.Lighter metallic are harder to spray,like silver or light blue in single stage due to the high metallic concentration,mottling is a result.There are some decent base clear paints that are priced ok for a driver,ppg shopline for example vs their Delton line.If you have acess to Metalux paint it is good as well and priced very good,it is a polyester basecoat paint.
RT

Single stage metallic isn't that hard to spray if you know the right way to spray it. Problem is when it comes to wetsanding and buffing. That's the only reason I don't use it.

I hate hate hate base/clear. Every older vehicle I've worked with I have had to deal with peeling clear. Peeling clear is a pain to fix, it's a pain to feather the clear back into the base. I hate it. Once it starts peeling it doesn't stop. I'm an amateur but have found the same results with OEM base/clear as well as stuff redone at collision shops. The only time I begrudgingly use bc/cc is on metallic paints. Only because, like others have said, even the pros don't do metallics in a single stage. The internet is full of pics of how bad they can turn out. Because of that I try to choose solid colors whenever I can.



You can. The p sheets for the single stage urethane I most recently used even said how for a final coat you can mix the paint with their clear if more gloss is desired. I already find a nice single stage to be glossy enough for me. One thing I did note is my hack job back yard single stage paint jobs lay down smoother and flatter than OEM clear. I was somewhat unsure of my paint job until I took a close look at the clear on an 80k corvette sitting in the showroom of the chevy dealer last year. I would be embarrassed to lay down something so rough like chevy did on those corvettes. Yes I know if you want to spend a fortune on layering up clear and endless hours wet sanding you can get bc/cc laser smooth.



Single stage is cheaper. Materials cost half, sometimes less than half depending on how many layers of clear a guy intends on putting down when doing bc/cc. Of course that depends on the product line as prices vary wildly. I don't think your labor costs would be much different on a budget job. On a nice job the bc/cc will cost you more in labor because your guy will be putting on multiple layers of clear.

If you have something you want to get done dirt cheap, I have sprayed rustoleum. Buy a gallon of it, thin it out a bit to the thickness of milk. Do a couple thinner coats and lay down the final coat a little heavier to get it to lay down flatter. Don't even think about wet sanding it until you've let it harden in the sun for a couple months because with it not being catalyzed it will never be as hard a legit paint but it can do the job on a budget. Even when wet sanding that stuff you have to be very careful because it wants to gob up on your sand paper. I would generally caution against this however because to do a nice job, you will want to have spent some money on good filler (not cheapo bondo) and several coats of a high build filler primer, hours of sanding and resanding that in most cases it doesn't make sense to cheap out that hard on the final coat.