hey guys some one rear ended my car and i am in the process of repairing it myself, i have finished the rear beaver panel and bumper, all i need to do now is finish off the boot.

anyway i fitted the bar back on and the colour seems to be off, its only noticed when its not in direct sunlight or as the suns going down. i got the colour matched up to the fuel flap and it s**t me that its not right.

the guy at the shop said its the amount of thinners i have used in
the paint. is this correct? can the amount of thinners change a colour so dramatically? also since its acrylic paint i was adviced to sand it all back after its all done with a wet 1200 grit paper and cut it with a cutting compound. im a little bit weiry about doing this part. any advice or recomendadtions on this??

i was quoted $1700 to do this at the smash repairs and its cost me $250 to do it all my self. im happy with everything except for the colour!

thanks.

it's not very often the colour matchs perfectly. you'll just have to blend it in with the surrounding panals so is not a sharp line where it changes

im not expecting it to be 100% but its really noticable, its lighter.. how do you blend in though? ive never attempted to do it as i beleive that where its blended the paint will be 'rough' and not smooth. its also gunmetal grey which is apparently one of the harder colours to blend?

you basicly dont mask up the painted panels around what you are painting and take the new paint about 20cm onto each panel.
when you are cut and polish as you would after any paint job.

but if its WAY out, you might have to take a section of the old and new to the paint place so they can see and adjust the mix,

Sounds like crap to me. After spraying several cars in acrylic I never had any problem with colour matching and I never accurately measured the thinners when mixing the paint.

As for rubbing back the finish with 1200. Acrylic paints do need to be cut back. However depending on the quality of the application you can generally just cut it back with a good cutting compound. If the paint is too rough for cutters then I would use 2000 grit not 1200. Being a metallic paint you don't rub back the colour only the clear top coat.

thanks for the advice guys, i just went back there and spoke to a different bloke, he said its because the bar is plastic thereofre thats the reason for the colour differene. when i pointed out the beaver panel and said that was sprayed too and thats different he then said yeah well you wont get it 100% unless u blend it in, he said blending in requires fans and alot of expereince and recommended i dont attempt it. sounds liek s**t to me. im jsut going to finish off the boot and see how noticable that is, then if its real bad ill take it to a panel beater/s for advice on matching it up.

as for sanding it the paint quality came up excellent its not rough at all so i think i might just try cutting it without sanding it back.

thanks again guys.

I run a panel shop and we dont even bother trying to match silvers we always blend them, even putting an extra coat of clear on will make it darker.

yeah my old boss showed me how to blend in. He had a red HJ Monaro with a few major parts where we fixed the body so it was bear metal. He painted it while taped up twice then the next time he painted he went out like 20cm and then he said a trick is to add a bit of thinners to every coat you do and blend. Hard to explain but after that u really couldnt notice that it had been painted.

me foreman showed me a couple of blends at work ,and he just masks off the prepared area and sprays it , then he pulls back the masked off area and he just flicks out the colour , then sprays sum thinner over the area.

Story of my life!


We used our fuel flap to colour match, and it was WAAAAAY off. Our car ended up having an original roof, a different coloured bodykit, and another different colour rear bar, all matched from the fuel flap.

And, it was VERY noticeable on a Le Mans red EF.