How did GM do it

[band1t]

I was told it can take from 50 to 100 hours to lay down a real nice black paint job
primer and sanding and paint and sanding and clear and sanding
Because black is a hard color to paint.

SO here is the thing, How did GM paint dozens of Black Bird a day and make them look great
in 1977-80?

even today I cant see how GM can paint a z06 so fast and makes it look great
when o chip foose spends tons of hours doing the samething to one of his cars

[spacepirate]

Robots!!

[SLO_Z28]

The paint back then didn't last that long, I think my factory paint job was 3 years old when it started lacquer checking. Now a days GM uses robots and clean rooms. Ive seen some good black paint jobs from single stage paints that only take about 8 hours to paint an entire car.

[band1t]

Robots!!

They had robots painting cars in the 70s???
Also If robots are fast and quick and do a top of the line job
how come a shop like well again chip foose still uses a guy with a gun

[absintheisfun]

Look closely at the black on vehicles coming from the factory...if you look at it up close you will see the orange peel texture. Sure it shines, and as it goes by it looks damn good, but parked you can see the faults.

Then....look closely at a professional after-market paint job. NO peel. it looks like glass. Smooth, perfect reflection, zero distortion. This is where the time and money come in. Hours and hours of prep, moments of spray, layers upon layers of clear. hours and hours and hours of wetsanding and buffing...

I have a black car and will post pics tomorrow of the reflection in it.

[grenade inspector]

They had robots painting cars in the 70s???
Also If robots are fast and quick and do a top of the line job
how come a shop like well again chip foose still uses a guy with a gun

like absitheisfun said, robots are good but there is no replacement for time and skill if youre after perfection. if you want a perfect factory paintjob get a veyron, they spend something like 2 weeks in post finishing inspection of just the paint.

also, that robot at gm has a refined program for painting each car it sees, park something different in there and god knows what will come out.

[Chad-1stGen]

IMO nobody mentioned the biggest reason. The metal was all brand new! No waves and tiny dings to work out. No existing paint to remove or prep. No rust and dirt to worry about...

[wmhjr]

Also, those robots and the systems controlling them are BIG BIG bucks. Even with all his swag money, Foose can't afford that kind of stuff.

[Happyfunballs]

I worked at an assembly plant painting Ford Explorers for a couple years. Look close. You see lots of imperfections. Peel, dirt, the occasional ding, grind marks, etc. Traditional "3D" robots based under the hood and liftgate, while humans base/cleared the jambs. Robotic bells did the exterior base and clear. Just enough material to color the body and a fuzz more material for the clear.

[analyte]

Nowadays more OEM's are using bells to spray both interior and exterior areas. An intrinsticly safe robot and applicator will cost a couple hundred thousand apiece and you need several per layer. The typical prime booth has 6-8 applicators, the base booth will have 8-10 applicators for a two pass setup, and finally the clear zone will have 8-10 applicators. Not mentioned are the robots to open the doors, hood, and other panels.

On average, each robot will require 5-10 hours to program one body style. That involves creating nodes, flow pressures, tip size, speed, shaping air,push out, purge cycles, etc within a rigid cycle time. The opener robots will need work to ensure an easy open/close process to avoid mars.

As stated previously, an OEM paint job should not be compared to an aftermarket high quality repaint. There are faults in the system no doubt, but when you're painting 1000 units per day you can't be beat the process. Speed and consistency are key in this business.

[daredvl22]

I can atest to the OEM black paint on newer vehicles. I purchased a jet black M3 in 2008, and was amazed at how bad the orange peel was. I could not believe a $70k car would look so bad coming from the factory. It was by far the worst factory paint job I had every seen. I also purchased a black Ford Raptor F-150, beginning of the month. It has a good amount of metal flake, which hides a lot of the tiny scratches and swirls. Like the M3, it has some pretty bad orange peel, but less noticable because it's metallic. Either way, black is beautiful, but extremely difficult to paint, and keep clean.

[Vegas69]

Factory paint jobs are normally pretty good quality, minus the orange peel. BMW's do seem to be one of the worst for orange peel.

[NOPANTS-68]

My shop does all of the warranty paint work for about 12 local dealerships. I can tell you that a Foose level paint job and a production car paint job have nothing in common other than maybe the paint itself. If you know what you are looking for, you can find dozens of issues in any production car paint job. Runs, dirt, overspray, tiger stripes, blotches, dry spots etc. are all very common in the industry. This is the norm when you crank out hundreds of units in a day. You won't find anything of the sort in a quality paint job like Chip's, Ring Brother's, Troy's etc.

I get lots of requests regarding "orange peel" from customers. As far as a driven, production car goes, "peel" is a good thing within reason. Keep in mind that the smoother the surface, the more reflective it gets. However, it's also more vulnerable to scratches your eye can see. The "peel" reflects in thousand of angles which hides small inclussions and scratches. I had a new car customer with a black Z06 insist on paying one of my guys to color sand and polish his whole car flat. I tried my best to talk him out of it, but he insisted. The car looked amazing as long as it stayed in its garage and nothing ever touched it. The very first time he drove it to the office, an oak leaf was blown across it and left a 4 foot scratch in the mirror-like hood. Within a year of average street use the car needed hours of polish work to restore its finish. He told me he should have left the "peel" alone because it would have hid all of those flaws. Once you cut it flat, there's no going back. It's great for a show/ limited use car, but not so much for a daily driver.

[analyte]

It is the truth that orange peel covers/hides defects.

Also, there is nothing similar about OEM paints and aftermarket products. They are completely different technologies.

[TheJDMan]

Dave,
Is it safe to say that the paint job for a daily driver or track car is not the same as a paint job for a show car?

[Vicinity]

Dave,
Is it safe to say that the paint job for a daily driver or track car is not the same as a paint job for a show car?

Very safe. I'd say a show car get's probably 4x as many hours put in.

[nekkidhillbilly]

IMO nobody mentioned the biggest reason. The metal was all brand new! No waves and tiny dings to work out. No existing paint to remove or prep. No rust and dirt to worry about...

yeah this and had a lot better paint both than most of us do

[NOPANTS-68]

Absolutely, but there are examples where the two meet like that amazing candy red Stingray that's been in Hot Rod and at optima Challenge. I can't even imagine the hours some of those builders put into those paint jobs. I'm a quality control manager for our chain of collision shops so I have a pretty picky eye. I saw Foose's Grand Master up close and studied it for hours and never saw one thing out of place. Even the bottoms of the fenderwells were cut and buffed to a mirror finish. That's not something I could ever own, but it's amazing patience and detail no doubt. When my boss and I do a resto we always find that that last 10% of the detail takes 90% of the time. We don't even do show cars, just really nice street cars that sometimes win paint awards. lol

[Happyfunballs]

I was a supervisor over the final inspection area in the paint shop. I was very frustrated when my boss ripped my ass for having something fixed that "looked just fine". Oh the stories of working in an assembly plant......

[absintheisfun]

I keep forgetting to get a pic of my black truck! Here is a pic of a professional black paint job--look at the level of detail in the reflection:


You don't get that clear as glass type of a reflection on a "factory" paint job.