Steve Walker wrote:
Hi -

Needed to replace my roof-mounted carphone aerial recently, after it
lost a fight with a low-hanging branch. Decided to mount the
replacement further back on clean undisturbed steel, and do a filler
repair on the distorted hole left by the old one. I managed a
lovely smooth repair with mesh-reinforced Plastic Padding, sanded off
with 1200 wet & dry. Went out and bought a specially-mixed
exact-match aerosol of dark blue paint, but now I just can't get any
kind of half-decent paint finish over it.

I masked off the area (approx playing card sized), and applied about
6-8 light sprays (with 10min intervals to allow it to go tacky).
Left this for a week to harden off, and you could easily see
boundaries where one spray run had overlapped another etc. Got the
metallic T-Cut out to blend it yesterday, only to find that this
removed the colour layer! I was just left with a really weird
silvery / undercoaty patch.

Tried to spray again today, but I can't apply it softly enough to
avoid obvious layers. I assume that this will mean polishing again,
which will remove the colour again. The area needing respray is now
an inch wider on all sides, and it's going to grow each time I get it
wrong.

A quick scamper around google suggests that it's practically
impossible to spray a small section of car body, especially with a
standard aerosol can, and the whole panel usually has to be redone.
Can't believe this - surely there's some way to get a *reasonable*
finish? I don't want concours, just a smooth, more or less matching
result.

I'm now torn between buying a little airbrush kit to see if an
accurate, gentle & slow application works any better, or else calling
in one of those cosmetic repair firms from the yellow pages.

Any advice would be gratefully appreciated!

Thanks -
Steve


You need to check this, but I've only come across 2-pack metallic finishes:
the metallic paint and a clear laquer finish. I don't know if modern
finishes are similarly 2-pack or if there is any laquer in the aerosol you
were given, but from the sound of it, you haven't been told to finish off
with a spray coat from a can of clear laquer. You should be able to
get the laquer from the same supplier as the base coat to ensure
compatibility. Then, by all means, use T-Cut to blend/polish the
laquer.

Does this make sense?

Martin