Posted 02 April 2009 - 08:58 PM
If I was doing a blend I'd do it like so.. Firstly, make sure that you have the most accurate colour match possible, take your car or a part of your car to a bodyshop/paint supplier and get them to match it, there are usually a few variants of any colour. If there isn't a good match, then paint can be tinted, but some places wouldn't want to be bothered doing that. To prepare the area, ideally you'd polish up the paint that you plan to blend over with a polishing mop and cutting compound, or if you haven't a mop, then a bit of compound on a cloth does ok. The reason for this, is that if it's a solid colour, it will likely have faded unless the paint is quite new, and it also removes contaminants that you might not see, but when you paint over them it will be obvious. It's easier to blend basecoat and laquer than solid gloss, but both are relatively easy if you do it right. When the area is polished up, use grey scotchbrite to abrade upto where you want the blend to end, and mask up etc. For basecoat, apply the basecoat at quite a low pressure, about 1.5 bar, with the gun pointing away from the blend edge. You want to keep the base about 4/5 inches away from the edge of the scotched area. Next apply the lacquer over the top, keeping the pressure about the same, apply the first coat upto about 2 inches from the scotched edge, then after that has flashed off, apply the next right upto the edge. Straight away tip the lacquer out of the gun ans swill it out with thinners. Using a good blend out thinner such as Lechler 744, and keeping the pressure of the gun very low, about 1/2 a bar, blow a very dusty coat onto the edge, aiming it into the painted area, but starting it on the shiny paint just after your lacquer. Leave that for about 25 seconds, then apply another the same way, but take it about a cm further out. Let that dry, and polish the blend back with cutting compound, but not too much, just until it's shiny, then it helps to stop the blend becoming visible and "pulling back" if you follow the course compound with an anti swirl compound on a finer mophead. For solid colours, use the same emthod, but miss out the basecoat section and replace the lacquer for solid gloss. Phew that was a bit of a lecture.. >.>
. Well...not all of my mini needs to be sprayed, the front end was done about the middle of last year, and most of the drivers side has been doe from the crash, but here and there, there are scratches and small bubbles, and I was wondering how hard it would be to repair the small area they are in, and blend it into the old paint 
. Obviously you would need to get the same colour paint...also where can you get paint from 
? 
