Gel Coat Mismatch?

[Donnieb 0]

I had a well-respected gel-coat repair shop work on my 2010 Enzo to repair a 1"x 6" scratch.  I gave them my hull number and they worked with Centurion to get the correct color, and then had Spectrum make the gel coat.  However, the final dried/sanded/buffed color is lighter than the surrounding gel coat.  I'm not sure what to do.  They said that it's possible Centurion's color is not accurate...that the original boat color may have been poured at the end of the week and that the workers may have added a little extra gel coat/coloring to the final batch.  Or it's possible that someone at Spectrum didn't mix the colors correctly.  They just don't know.

They said they'd be happy to take another crack at it at the end of the season for free (since I'm trying to get the boat into the water now).  But I know they are going to want to be paid now for the work they did. 

I'm not sure what to do.  I don't want to stiff anyone, and I know the shop did a lot of work to try to make the boat look good.  

Should Centurion stand behind their colors?  Spectrum? 

Any ideas?   

 

[WakeDoc 471]

what color is it?

[InfinitySurf 302]

Can you post pictures so we can see the color and shade difference? I assume they compounded and polished the repair along with area around it so you are comparing base gel to base gel.... if new area was done next to existing gel with some oxidation, etc....that could be causing a difference tho if a reputable shop, they would know this already and you would think have taken steps to disprove. 

Anyway, Here is a link to resize pictures so its small enough for you to post here so we can see:

https://resizeimage.net/

My suggestion with dealer so you have the boat for summer and you have some protection (also gives time for Centurion/Spectrum to fix the color match), is to either hold back a percentage till re-done by them later (without knowing how much they are charging you, maybe hold back roughly 15%?). This way they are paid for their work and out of pocket costs yet have some incentive to follow thru later.....AND/OR, get something in writing from them saying they will re-coat this fall when season is over and do it for free....or for the balance of the amount you agree on to hold back on now.

From their point of view, they did the work and since they did not mix the gelcoat, the question is does the color match fall on them. Seems like probably not....tho I know that is small consolation for you since it doesn't match and naturally that is what you expected after taking the steps you did to ensure that. Some colors are harder than others to match. Flip side of that, is most shops I know of would put a "dab" of the new gel on the boat to make sure it matches before doing all that work, guess they assumed it would match and just went with it. I got some gel from Centurion to do some small repairs to my black hull (Imedge Black) and it matched my gel perfectly (mine is a 2014 so it also had to be made after the fact). 

Does Spectrum have some kind of match guarantee? Another option may be to also send pics to Spectrum and ask them to send you some extra color so you can "manually" do some playing around with the formula to get it too match, if its lighter then Spectrum should know what color to add to darken it up.

[Donnieb 0]

WakeDoc - The color code is:   991-LX-113, and the color is "Too Blue".

Thanks for the advice, InfinitySurf.  The repair shop is working with Spectrum to figure out the color issue, and I have mail into Centurion.  

 

 

[Shaka 146]

Matching gel coat color exactly is a rare thing.  I'm curious how off it is.