A couple issues ago, we gave an '07 Toyota Tundra a Fantastic Four transformation but the story doesn't end there. The Tundra belongs to Thor-not the god, but the maker of riding gear for the motocross market. It's a company with an epic reputation in the moto market that wanted a truck with a little urban flavor to flash its logo around town. Not wanting to settle for a vinyl wrap or similarly easy solution, Thor tapped the painters at Kelly & Son in Bellflower, California.Kelly & Son made the truck available to us for the Fantastic Four makeover. After that, Kelly & Son gave us the heads up about the truck's pending paintjob, so we thought we would shoot some pics. So here we are, with a paint tech story for you.
At first, we were skeptical of Kelly & Son's choice of colors for this project. Mitch Kelly mixed Crystal Black with Silver Star, both from PPG's Vibrance Collection, to get various shades of gray and silver, and kept some of the factory Tundra black. These are three colors one wouldn't expect to explode from the page ... but, this is the paint shop that gave us the candy orange and black Project Intimidator that we ran in our paint and body issue. Mitch Kelly and the rest of the guys at Kelly & Son-Tom, Jon, Shaggy, Brandon, and Jesse-are no slouches. Everyone involved made black, silver, and gray look pretty-darn good. Here's how they did it.
Our Tundra began with factory...
Our Tundra began with factory black paint, which was retained as the base color for the custom paintjob. Here, you see Mitch Kelly hamming it up for the camera as he color-sands the factory paint in preparation for another color. Sanding was done with a Quickcut sander and 600-grit SM paper. Afterwards, he wiped the freshly sanded paint with a tack cloth to make sure that it was nice and clean. You'll notice, too, that before this point the truck was masked to protect the parts in preparation for the next step.
A darker blend of Crystal...
A darker blend of Crystal Black and Silver Star was shot onto the cab, tapering along the side of the body, and covering part of the hood, including a Thor logo stencil on the hood that you can't see in this photo.
Then, the paper was pulled...
Then, the paper was pulled off and the side graphic was outlined with quick and careful applications of tape that were then trimmed to a perfect point.