Originally Posted by
jvaliensi
My airplane has the cayman paint scheme. So, I could mask off the sections that need repaired and then blending is not needed. Any slight color difference wouldn't be noticeable.
My questions are
What grit of sand paper should I use? I need to clean off the Zap and then sand smooth enough so the scratches don't show thru the paint.
Does the CARF touch up pain dry glossy, or do I need to color sand and polish?
I guess getting the paint from CARF will cost $200 and I hope I don't need to buy another $200 in supplies.
The tips from BVM were quite detailed. I checked their web site and they don't sell the materials that they used too.
The only material I see that is BVM proprietary is the pinhole filler. I would be shocked if this stuff has been dropped but it is 2022 so who knows (you cant even get purple retracts from BVM any more). You dont absolutely need it. Everything else is normal body shop stuff (not Pep boys, but a real paint jobber). I would sand up to at least 400 after primer before paint, but BVM goes up to 800, then color sand up to 3200 then polish.
The hard part is matching the color. Personally, I would just get the paint from the kit supplier but it probably wont be perfect match due to sun fading of the base color. I dont know but I suspect the factory paint is single stage, no clearcoat. To blend a single stage paint and make it look perfect, you have to do what BVM lists, but he used a blender at the end specific to PPG range. I have no idea what comp arf uses.
You can try to color match the paint, if I did that I would use PPG (whatever their current single stage catalyzed polyurethane is) but that would be $$$. In fact all automotive paint costs a lot.
You need a way to spray the paint, depending how big the area is will determine what will work. A large airbrush can work I prefer a small paint gun.
EDIT: this is exactly why I put at least pencil panel lines on everything, so you can mask a repair to a panel line. An old timer taught me that