thank you. Thats the one thing I cant stand… “I need this hood to match how much to paint it”. First thing out of my mouth is chances are it wont match painting just the hood, here is the reasons (specific to your job/car) why. Then I say the right way and the only way I would put my name on the results would be blending it and this is why. THEN I gauge their response and if they ask “how much for that then” I give them the est.
I have burned WAY too many times by panel painting. Usually it needs to be done “cheap” and they expect magic wand results. If it doesnt match I feel like crap and cant let it go like that and try again, usually NOT charging much more if ANY to do it again, aka that “cheap” job at best I did for FREE but usually I loose hundreds on a $300 job.
I dont gamble on that anymore at my shop. Blend first, if you dont like it either take it somewhere else or I am in NO WAY liable for the results. If you still want me to panel paint it, I appreciate you trusting me with my abilities and understand I will try my best.
I agree with everything KK says, paint mixing and panel work is so different on every color and application. Its very common to have colors so far off with the correct code, shades etc. Any good painter will tell you this. Some hondas a few years back had paint so screwed up that if you took the emblem off a panel on the dealer lot, it would be a different color underneath. And no thats not the single stage issues, that goes way back.
Neals should have told you VERY clearly it wouldnt likely match well. Since they didnt, they shouldnt have let it out of their shop without giving you n at cost option to put a few more hours in to try do mix a better flavor… thats how GOOD business is done.I would approach them one more time and offer them a limited sum to use their years of skills to try to do better.
That said, guessing they dont run a business the way I would.
I panel painted tons of parts. Ever since the Jag hood that didnt match the old fenders very well after painting it twice, and the green bmw hood on that $500 car I painted twice and still didnt match right… both of which were CHEAP jobs, where I would have made only a few hundred in labor… I bit the bullet and bought another pt of paint, put another few hrs in labor, used more reducer and more clear… all for FREE to help them out like you said above. Becasue both jobs were for friends of friends.
Its safe to say I didnt make anything on those jobs. I took money OFF the bill for each of them, and on top of taking twice the time to complete the job and using twice the materials, I LOST money on the job and gained two pissed off customers.
Those two were my worst jobs to date. Both cars were 15+ years old one metalic red and faded fender tops, other was metalic green rusted, dented, steering wheel fell off in my hand, trans shot, hg shot, 4 different wheels, but it had a fresh hood and I even painted and fixed the grill and front bumper on it for them!
Lesson learned by me… You want cheap, dont expect perfection. You want middle of the road cost and panel painting, it will be a cleaner job than cheap but I am by no means saying it will match perfect and I am NOT painting it twice for free. Sorry but I believe more in doing the job right (blending) the first time, and I waste WAY too much money and valuable time to be doing freebies on cheap jobs when it doesnt work out the first go around. :dunno
short answer: painting more than what needs to be painted and adjusting the color match to make the transition from a newly painted part to original paint less noticeable, an example would be if you were to repair something like a quarter panel and you spray the entire area including the arch that goes over the doors, otherwise trying to perfectly match original color is damn near impossible, think of it as camoflauging the new paint next to the old.
There is zero difference in the paint being shot. its the same color/base still in the same gun start to finish.
Autobody clear has to be shot start to finish, its very hard to near impossible to “fade” fresh clear out into existing clear then buff that transition out to not be noticable… so ANY work; a tiny paint chip on the leading edge of a hood or someone sends a fire axe through the center of the hood… the entire hoods being “painted”, more specificly the entire hoods being cleared.
That beind said. Lets use the bumper in question for an example.
Repair VS Replace.
If you are replacing the bumper you are painting the entire thing with color and clear. Thats called “panel painting”. Any edges that meet existing paint, like the fenders and hood edge are called “adjacent panels”. If the colors off thse jump out and punch you in the nose.
If its a repair, say the emblem wa shaved in the center. if the rest of the bumper is in good shape (as in scuff and shoot clear back over) there is NO REASON to paint the entire bumper. You can feather out your body work and primer into the existing good paint, then when you shoot your new base coat you blend or feather out your color to cover the repair and fade it out into the existing color. that way the adjacent panels will still have original paint just new clear and be a perfect match. Now… if the repair was too close to or on the edge of the bumper at an adjacent panel, you loose the ability to blend the base coat color out past the repair, becasue that action would now extend out to the adjactent panel!. AKA you are no longer panel painting you are full on blending. On an insurance est it would say “blend adjacent panels +1.25hrs add for clear” or something to that effect.
So blending is just fading the color into existing colors. Blending can be done on one panel, 2 panels or the entire front clip or so.
The farther your blend out the less you will notice the color difference. Hell you could blend out that straight fucked up color difference on the OP, over the hood to the windshield and down the fenders and not notice it as much or at all, becasue the closes original color would be 8 feet away on the trunk. But that color is too far off to pull off a blend like that and not be on the cobjobish fence.
This is why I laugh when someone thinks I am a crook when I say its going to cost $1400 to fix a tiny dent on the top of a fender, or a little rock chip or dent on the corner of a hood. Some people think I am painting a 1" area! Heck no, I am painting the entire hood and the fender, maybe even the bumper!
Yeah, I’m going to try- it’s just hard b/c I live pretty far away, and am busy days/nights of the work week. I appreciate all the input/expertise people have given, thanks Shift!
sorry man, I enjoy my career path and when inquisitive minds ask I share whatever knowledge I may have on the subject. If you don’t care to learn something new, just keep on scrolling down.
