[Setec Astronomy]

Originally Posted by David Fermani

California has already made the transformation to waterborne paint. There's a huge push for it to trickle down to all the others, but there's quite a bit of resistance to change. Climates like the one here is Florida makes for a disaster waiting to happen. I know of 1 high end shop that switched over and it failed miserably. After countless hours getting coached from the manufacturer's techs/reps, they still couldn't smooth out all the problems they had. They ended up going back to spraying solvent again on most jobs.

We've already been through at least one round of this kind of thing industrially. When the CFC's were phased out 15 years ago anyone who was blowing any kind of foam had to relearn it, and then when all the rattle-can propellants and VOC changes, everybody had to relearn their rattle-can products. The car companies seem to be doing ok with their waterborne paints. It's just a learning curve, and possibly the body shops will have to get more sophisticated with their climate control. I was in my dealer a few weeks ago here in NJ and they had a big sign up about switching to waterborne in their body shop.