Nautical Blue Tailgate

[Bigshankhank]

The tailgate on my Nautical Blue 08 was stove-in by a rear end collision a few months back and the insurance has decided to total it. I am going to keep the vehicle + cash and my local pull-a-part has several 4th gens but none of them have a matching color, they are all either black, tan or silver and I think 1 white. As luck would have it the glass and trim pieces survived the crash so I'll just be grabbing the tailgate itself.
I've painted lots of motorcycle bodywork and would consider just sanding, prepping and painting it myself but normally I take a bike's parts all the way down to bare metal then prime, base, paint & clear coat, but I don't know how Toyota did their prime and base coats and don't like the idea of completely stripping the entire tailgate to metal just due to the time it will take. I know I know its all in the prep work. Still, does anyone know how the factory did the layers on their paint? I ask because if they used a dark base coat or primer for the Nautical Blue then I would take one of the black tailgates, if they used a lighter base then I'd probably grab the white one.
Thanks for the feedback
:lasercannon:

 

[Syr4RinNC]

My experience with touching up blue paints is that it tends to come out too light.

Usually when I sand down a scratch then fill in with blue paint that I need a lot more blue paint (which raises above the other areas) or when I smooth it out- it comes lighter than the surrounding blue

 

[Bigshankhank]

My experience with touching up blue paints is that it tends to come out too light.

Usually when I sand down a scratch then fill in with blue paint that I need a lot more blue paint (which raises above the other areas) or when I smooth it out- it comes lighter than the surrounding blue

So picking a darker one would be a better choice? Again I’m only intend to sand off the clear and scratch the OEM paint then spray the blue over it.

 

[gfxcruncher]

IDK if this helps or not...

No experience painting over different colors with this blue. When I did my front bumper it was on a light gray primer and it came out good.

If I was going your route, I'd probably get the white and do as many light coats of base as needed and then clear.

I did notice going over gray, it was easy to see if I had good even coverage, might be harder to see on black...