What does it take to color match a panel with out blending into the adjacent areas and is it even possible ? Thanks, Yasir
It is possible, but difficult to have a good match. If your car is new, or has had very little sun exposure, it can be pulled off successfully. However in most cases, blending is necessary for satisfactory results. -Cyrus
I'm with above plus, this is what is termed a "Butt Match" in my area. Newer paint and solids (especially black) are the easiest to match. Metal flakes are difficult because of the way the flake lands. Also the amount of "orange peel" must be considered. What color do you have? Maybe a member who is a current painter can add some tricks or insites? On an F-car I would remove the part/ fender/ bumper etc. if possible and then strip the paint and primer off to bare metal and build up with the same color primer, color etc and thicknesses.
A good mixing system, a very good eye and a lot of experience. A nice booth or controlled environment helps also. It is possible to paint in a spot and blend the spot into the panel if you do not need to paint with color all the way to the edge and then clear the entire panel. However clear really isn't completely clear and can darken light colors a bit.
I have two metallic finish cars that recenty underwent some body/paint work. One, which I wanted to patch up inexpensively, (small spot on my #4 car) did not get any blending done. Even though the paint is less than a year old, stored under cover, etc, you can still clearly see where the work was done. It does not blend well with it's adjoining panels. The other, done at greater expense, by the same shop, painter, booth, has been blended into the adjoining panels. I would defy you to tell that it has been painted, despite being a four year old car, metallic finish, sits in the sun and my daily driver. This is not a fly by night shop. They do excellent work. I trust my BMW, Ferrari and other cars to them regularly, but a blended paint job is preferable, at least in my experience, and in hind sight, I should have done it for the extra bucks to my other car.
It can be done but it takes luck, I just had my front end,door, and drivers rear quarter resprayed on my 77 930, the color is Viper Green Metallic which is a bright metallic green, they thought they would need to blend it but it came out perfect and it was uneccessary, unfortunately with metallics how they are spayed is very important so the unpainted rear quarters texture doesn't match which is only something and expert would see but it's going back in next week to get painted along with the decklid. Reds are hard to match my 328 has been touched up in a few spots and has been blended perfectly, nothing wrong with having paint blended.
I thought I knew what blending meant but, at least judging by the responses so far, maybe not! Are you guys talking about partially respraying adjoining panels in addition to the damaged panel being repaired? If so, how is this different from spotting, or whatever it's called, within a panel?
Paint just a panel involves spraying a basecoat (your car color) and clearcoat on just one panel. The surrounding panels are left original, and more than often do not match the new paint (not just in terms of gloss, which could easily be taken care off, but also in metallic flakes, orange peel, etc.) Therefore it doesn't necessarily matter how well you have taken care of the car, it is up to the painter's precision and skill as well. And remember even the best of painters cannot match some paints perfectly. Blending involves spraying a basecoat on only the panel in need of paint (or panel that was repaired), and then clearcoating over a larger portion of the car. The larger portion can include anything from 2 doors (on one side of a sedan or SUV), to the entire side of a car (more typical). -Cyrus
