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Long story short, I had some damage above & around the rear driver side wheel well due to a tire blow out.
I brought it to a shop where they repaired it & repainted it & now I’m not sure if my eyes are playing tricks on me, if I’m being overly critical, or if it was a poor paint job.
My concern is that the rear fender now looks brighter than the rest of the car. Is it possible this could be due to a fresh clear coat rather than a poor paint job?
What are your thoughts? Does anything look off or does it look pretty decent?
I don't think you'll get any helpful answers from a photo unfortunately. Looks good to my eye on the photos. But with shadows and via a camera it's hard to know
A resprayed and freshly done panel won't have the tiny scratches and blemishes that others have so it might shine a bit more. Thought of doing a polish and wax job on the other panels to see if that helps?
Very hard to tell from these photos, if you have concerns, I would go to another paint shop or two and asked kindly for a second opinion. They also may have a professional device to measure the color and tell you the exact delta between panels and if it is within a toleration.
Looks fine to me, but you might find that if you did a paint correction on the rest of the car it would gloss it up, as it does make a massive difference.
Definitely looks darker than door at the midway and top of the panel. Silver is a bitch to match and it takes the right painter with the right eye to nail it properly.
I'm with those that say "can't tell from the pictures." It could be the shape is affecting the perception. Take a picture of the other side in the same lighting and see if it seems to have the same difference. Even so, it might be that no picture you take when viewed on a web page will be good enough. I get a change in brightness just moving side to side because of my LCD monitor. It's a good monitor, but viewing angle does matter.
Usually they mix the paint according to the factory specs that they look up in a computer. Higher quality brands may prove a better match but the silver itself is probably the correct silver. With metallics, how they lay that paint down, the angle of the gun, speed of moving it back and forth, number of coats, the nozzle size, air pressures, temperature, etc all come into play in getting those flakes or crystals to lay the same as the adjacent panels. Imagine that robot in the factory. What were its settings and how did it move? Is there any way a human with different equipment in a different place on the planet could exactly reproduce that? Even the best painter may never get it to match perfectly so instead of just masking off the rest of the car at the panel gaps, they'll sometimes do a blend to make it less noticeable. They'll sort of transition from the factory finish to the full respray and back to the factory finish on the other side of the repair, then clear over the whole thing. And some colors like silver are notoriously difficult.
As to seeing it in your online photos, even the highest resolution camera isn't going to pick it up because we're all looking at laptop screens or desktop monitors, the resolution of which means that the flakes in the paint are smaller than our smallest pixel. I figured out that this situation made it dangerous to buy any car online sight-unseen when I traveled to inspect a 1967 Mustang that was advertised to have been a fresh restoration in the factory original Dark Moss Green. The pictures online looked fantastic, but when I arrived, something just didn't seem right. I kept looking over the car and thinking this wasn't the factory color that I remembered. Finally I challenged the seller about the factory paint code and he admitted that he thought the factory color just wasn't eye catching enough.for car shows so he instructed his painter to use a larger metallic flake in the paint to "Make it Pop!" he said. I told him that he was successful because "it sure burst my bubble!" I was glad I didn't bid on that one.
But probably what you are seeing is a difference in the way the metallic lays compared to surrounding factory finish panels and we're just not going to be able to see it in photos. You may ask the shop to try again, but I'd suggest to first go to a Cars and Coffee or enter it in a local parking lot car show. Survey a dozen or so other gearheads as they walk by if they can spot the difference in person. Don't point it out to them. See if they can tell where its been repaired. If only say less than 25% can correctly identify the repaired panel, then I'd say try to get used to it because chances are another try and the shop might make it worse. Then you'd wind up spending a whole lot of time and whole lot of money repainting the whole side of the car or the whole car (BTDT, its hell being obsessive-compulsive). Good luck.
I do see a difference, when looking at the left/driver's door and that panel. But, if I visually block off that same area with a strip of paper, and then eye the door and the 'hip' to taillight area of the car (which I assume was part of the paint re-do) the color looks the same. I see the same color-shadowing between the door and the panel near the left front wheel. It may just be the way the new metallic lays in that curved area of the panel.
As others have said, metallics are really hard to match as well as apply. One would hope that the factory spec's were used to mix the color. Not sure how recent the paint went on, but give it some cure time and see if it still looks off.
and yes, a re-do might turn out worse and then it's like evening out chair legs.
From the way these pictures display, I’d say it’s a near perfect match.
After the new paint cures, try polishing/waxing the entire car. Maybe that will blend it.
If you have it painted again, the result may be no better, or worse.
That is a beautiful car!
Can't tell from the photos but if it bothers you that much check out doing a vinyl wrap where you can have a completely new color for your F-Type and make it look fresh. I may do that with my F-Type in a several years when its time to replace the PPF. Right now I'm thinking something intentionally obnoxious like a shiny gold vinyl wrap, lol.
Here's a link with some good paint info. Paint 'drying' is different from paint 'curing'.
My 69 E type was finished this past early winter (nov. 2024) Since then it has been in our heated (@ 54 degrees) attached home garage. Loosely covered only with a breathable car cover.
Does the paint look mismatched or am I paranoid?
