Tricoat Paint Repair
Tricoats should be sprayed...period! It is nearly impossible to use either the paint pen or
brush cap bottle successfully unless the area is very small. Both coats need to be blended in with the surrounding paint
area to look good. We have had customers who have been successful using the pen and brush...but it is very difficult to achieve
good results.
Tri-coats: are a special paint application consisting of three different layers
of paint. It gives the vehicle a milky pearl effect and can be quite
striking to look at. Unfortunately, it's not so easy to repair. Any color
listed on our site that has the word "Tri-coat" in the
paint name is a tricoat. This paint requires three different coats of paint. The first is a basecoat of color. Next a second coat of
transparent color, called the midcoat is applied and finally, a
coat of clearcoat. The midcoat color is applied very thin and adds
additional depth to the paint. In order to successfully match a tri-coat,
you should practice on a scrap piece of metal or plastic. The
clearcoat must be polished with rubbing compound to shine properly.
Applying midcoats is more difficult than a regular
base-coat/clearcoat combination but with some practice you can achieve
satisfactory results. Because these can be very tricky, you may want to
consider having a professional apply this paint or leave the entire job to
a collision shop. However, it is also a very expensive repair job in the
shop so why not try it yourself first to see how it turns out!
