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Blending Paint of Wheel Pants

kjowen

Well Known Member
I have had some cracks in my wheel fairings for some time now.
This month I decided to repair with some fiberglass work and repaint a portion of the fairing. I am having problems with the blending of the paint. I have looked on YouTube, but can only find info on two stage blending, the white used on my -10 is one stage. I have tried some blending but ended up with orange peel at the taper...
No taper leaves a definite paint line.
Can anyone share some tips with me?
I have included shots including my paint gun and paint.
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For something that small I would just paint all the white. It’s only a couple minutes more masking. Jet Glo is not the easiest paint to do a blend with. It can be done but it takes equal helpings of luck and experience.
 
Blendiing

Have you tried wet sanding the blended area using progressively finer grit, e.g. 600, 1200, and then polish? It should be possible with single stage polyurethane to get a reasonable, though maybe not perfect blend, for that location (which is going to get dirtied and probably a bit scuffed up anyway).
The paint should not be sprayed right up to the edge of the masking tape like in the photo if you want to get a feathered smooth blend.
 
Wet sanding is the only way I know to successfully blend the paint. Mask at least an inch greater than you need, scotchbrite, paint (feather the edge as PvS said), leave as long as possible (several days), and rub gently with hard block and then soft block. It will take a while to learn to do it well. A spat is not the easiest thing to learn on. I would paint all the white as Bandera suggested and then lose the line (sand with 1200 & polish). But its only a spat, spend a few minutes and move on!
 
For something that small I would just paint all the white. It’s only a couple minutes more masking. Jet Glo is not the easiest paint to do a blend with. It can be done but it takes equal helpings of luck and experience.

+1

This is what I would do. Blending single stage isn't easy and spraying all of the white should be much easier.
 
It’s very difficult to blend a single stage and when it’s done, it doesn’t look great. Body shops in the old days (when single stage was popular) would spray the entire panel. For the same reason clear is rarely blended. The color is blended and the entire panel is cleared on top.
 
I have blended successfully but the colors did not match. I tapered the sanding prep allowing for the thickness difference. The final coat was wet/block sanded and polished (cut and buff) over the transition. The surface worked out well but the color match on a beige was less than perfect in some areas and just fine on others. It certainly was a lot of work. I later found that the acrylic enamel color was affected by reducing volume.

Wet sanding into the transition area and revealing the sand scratches is a challenging area if there is color difference.
 
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