Hello gang,
I am praying someone has a cure for my problem or at least a fix. Upon laying my last layer of metal flake over my candy, I noticed a spot appear on the fender. It's a fiberglass buggy. It has 3 coats silver base, 2 coats tangerine candy and two coats metal flake. Now the spot is about the size of a qtr so how van i fix this without having to sand the entire body back down and start over. Can an airbrush fix this? This is my first ever paint job and all went well until the end. Here is a pic of my issue. Thanks so much. Knapp

ohhh....boy...... Well, first thoughts...do you know what caused that? Almost looks like an air hose slammed it pulled everything off down to the black sandable gel coat..... I would "hope" that is not some type of contamination problem....if so, then anything you do back over it is going to be problematic as well. And now on to other things that won't work....no an airbrush is not going to "lay" down the way your big gun did. Even if it did, stuff isn't going to "feather" out right into the rest of the paint. And since this is your first shoot I'd say the chances of blending out from there in your case is slim as well.
Okay, now cheating....I had been working on a custom truck project with candies/metallics, etc., for a few months one time and I was fairly new to more custom finishing. Got the truck all done and didn't notice that the tilt nose was just about an inch too close to my garage door as it went up for the first time in a couple of weeks. Bam! about a quarter sized hit right down to that same sandable gel coat you've got there. I measured....it was close to centered on the truck and visually was in a nice place for an emblem. I went on my computer and designed a graphic slightly larger than the damage, uploaded it to my local sign shop, and had a premium vinyl emblem printed for pick-up the next day. If I had been left to my normally anal retentive tendency I would have been trying to either blend out that nose, do some kind of flame job on it, or worse try and spot repair/blend just that area..... Yes, I took the coward's way out, but you know until this day I was the only one that knew what had happened.
Bottom line....this is all new to you....no easy paint fixes here.....

how big is the piece ? looks like a starting over to me

That looks like an adherence problem to me. Don't see any indication of damage to the area immediately surrounding the problem.

I am not the fiberglass specialist by any means but if it were mine I would be seeing if I could lift any of those edges with a razor blade. If the paint starts flaking off down to the same level, then you will know it is redo time.

What steps and materials did you use to prep for painting?

You know, I've thought about that spot in the back of mind all day now.... Hmmmm....you mentioned already what you sprayed sooooo....was that directly over that sandable black gel coat? I mean.....did you use any other type of sealer/primer coats over that BEFORE starting with the silver......?????? The reason I ask that is that I have found a lot of those sandable gel coats can easily trap mold release compounds, ohhhh, and I know this may sound stupid but you did thoroughly clean, degrease, and sand that black coat right??????

Hello all,

The entire body was sanded past the gel coat and it was sprayed with Feather Fill G2 Next Generation Premium Polyester Primer Surfacer, then with nason urethane sealer. I made sure i paid attention to the flash times for each layer after the sealer. Wiping with wax/grease remover and a tack cloth lighty as to not leave any residue from the tack cloth. I was very attentive to all my steps, dor this was a lot of work getn the body to this point. So if blending isnt gonna work, since the metal flake is .04 and .08 polyester, will i need to sand it all off before i can respray the metallic silver for new candy? I thought of a 101st airborne decal to cover it up and then clear over but not sure at this point. Im still sick to my stomach over this... oh the agony

PainterDave wrote:how big is the piece ? looks like a starting over to me

It's the size of a quarter...

Was there a particular reason for sanding "past" the gel coat? Sanding one of those gel coats completely off can be opening a Pandora's box of problems... If done by machine sanding traces of mold release can be driven down into fiberlglass and still keep coming up in successive layers. So is this an older buggy? Personally I like the sticker idea better than tearing all that off.... and you don't have to clear that sticker unless you want. Good sign shops have very thin and nice looking vinyls. With that one I did you could barely feel an edge on it.

Candy has had a reputation that it is impossible to fix, you have to completely repaint. I've been doing custom paint for 40 years, and can 'usually' successfully touch up a candy job. But it is extremely difficult. If that's your first job, I'd say stop, strip and reshoot. Yes, strip...you do NOT want to lay another 3 stages of paint over an existing 3 stages, way too much paint film thickness.

Yeah, I'd agree with that....if you go that route it should all come off, especially since it is fiberglass. Fiberglass vibrates, swells, shrinks, etc., a lot. It will just crack up if too thick.....