Over the past few months we have been occasionally running promos for full car respray service at myTukar’s Body and Paint centres in USJ and Ulu Tiram, Johor. In fact, there is a current promo running up to the end of September where you can do a full respray of your car from just RM2,250, which is a 25% discount off the normal list price.
Of course being the enthusiasts that you are, some of you really love your cars and would not want just any random person tackling something as big as a repainting job, so there have been some questions posed on social media such as who is running the show at the body and paint centre, and if they are experienced enough to do the job.
So today we would like to introduce Jumpei Yamamoto, who leads the team over at the myTukar Body and Paint centres. Yama-san, as he is referred to affectionately by his staff, is responsible for training myTukar’s refurbishment team in automotive spray paint techniques.
Yama-san’s resume, as we found on Linkedin, is an impressive one. He has been in the painting business for 25 years and he specialises in auto repair.
He has accumulated a wealth of experience at companies like Mitsubishi Motors, Rock Paint Co. Ltd. and even as a Japanese civil servant teaching painting techniques for the Advanced Technical College Painting Course. Yes, under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, he has served as a chief examiner for national qualifications in Japan.
He proudly says “I have 10 years of experience as a painting teacher all over Japan and I have never heard of a Japanese person with an experience like mine.”
A full car respray job starts with body work. Before a car is repainted, the body needs to be perfectly smooth. The myTukar team uses a paint thickness gauge to measure the thickness of the paint. They also carefully examine the body for defects, which they mark with a marker pen. This is so they identify the problem areas to be smoothed out so the expert painters can apply paint without issue.
Once the examination is complete, any imperfections, such as dents and dings, are knocked out as much as possible until the body is level. In areas that cannot be completely smoothed out, putty is used to level the car body by filling in cracks and dings.
Now, to ensure the surface is fully even, a primer is applied as the undercoat for the paint. The surface is then dry sanded which removes excess material and rust to create a perfectly smooth finish. Dry sanding is superior to wet sanding as it uses no liquid which is crucial as moisture can react with paint during and after application, creating imperfections like bubbles. Not even deep scratches will remain after a professionally done dry sanding process.
Nippon automotive paint is used for the painting process. But first, the colour has to be produced to specification, be it the original car’s colour or the owner’s preferred colour. To ensure an exact match, the team must first complete colour matching. This is done by mixing small amounts of paint and comparing them to the requested colour. This is done repeatedly until the test batch perfectly matches the requested colour. Only then does our expert produce an entire batch of paint for application.
This is an important step in the process, especially if you are doing accident repair. If it is not done properly you might get a front end of a car that has a completely different colour as the rest of the car. Like Yama-san says in one of his Linkedin posts, with practice, anyone can paint. But I will paint it as it was originally. I will recreate the original.
First, the base coat prepared earlier is applied, Next, a clear coat is applied to protect the base coat from scratches and UV light. At each stage, the painters move steadily and smoothly to ensure an even layer is applied to the car.
To maintain strict quality control and ensure every car meets expectations, Yama-san routinely performs checks on cars, ensuring that every car is spray painted to perfection.
We have seen Yama-san’s team’s work in person, and perhaps you might have as well. If you were at the EVX 2023 electric vehicle expo earlier this year, you might have noticed an orange BMW X4 at myTukar’s booth. The X4 was not wrapped, but instead it was fully repainted to the new orange colour. Many were attracted to the car’s beautiful paint job and some even offered to buy it on the spot. Orange is a good colour for the X4 as it gives an image of an X4 ‘GTS’, since the M3 GTS is orange.
If you plan to keep your car longer, giving it a brand new coat of paint can make you fall in love with it all over again because it will look like it just rolled off the assembly line. Take advantage of myTukar Body & Paint Centre offering 25% off their full car respray package as part of their Merdeka 2023 promotion.
What do you need to do to sign up? Just click here and fill up the form. Choose Body & Paint Services under type of services required, and choose either myTukar USJ or myTukar Ulu Tiram (Johor) which are the two myTukar Body & Paint Centres.
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