I am needing to have my fender repainted, and I heard that the painter will have to blend the hood and door panel as well. The new fender is primed, and on the car. Typically, do Honda dealerships do a good job with this type of thing? Or am I better off putting my money elsewhere? The reason I ask, is I am very particular with how my car looks

 

Most dealers don't do body and paint work.

 

Blending is a very common practice. It would be very hard for a painter to match "aged" paint without blending. They go by a color code but after a few years of used, sun, weather, etc. it gets more difficult to match.

 

I would suggest that, as mentioned, most dealerships outsource their body work to body shops.

You can call and ask who their outsource is, and just contact them directly.

As for the paint match, yes, it is standard to blend. And it looks very nice when the do.

IMO, worth the extra $$

 

Good luck. I tried the paint match deal but ended up getting the whole car repainted.

 

i know a good shop that doesn't blend...

i dunno why.

 

Body shops doesn't necessarily have to blend. If they blend to the hood, they will still spray clear coat throughout the entire panel further emphasizing the rock chips on the hood, which is quite ugly. I would rather have the shop charge additional labor time to tint the paint, which is changing the formula a little bit to match the paint on the adjacent panels.

 

Same story here. Had a quality body shop try to paint match the bumper and fender. They tried several times with different applications and types of paint but in the end they couldn't get it right. The paint vendor even helped out with the last couple attempts. I thought the last try looked pretty good but they said in the sunlight it would really stand out. I gave it a day and came back the next afternoon and looked at the car and they were right. Blending was the next step but to blend everything they were already spraying half the car so might as well just do the whole thing. They even got the paint vendor to donate the paint since they couldn't get it matched.

Just know what your getting into. And most importantly look at the car in the sunlight before taking it home.

 

Dont be like me