Paint Fade Under Removed Badges
 

So, I just de-badged my truck with no problems. However, you can tell where the badges were located because of paint fade. It is very faint, only visible up close. How can you get rid of this?

Will polishing compound and a mini-polisher get rid of this?

i have it on mine too...but its weird, cause under any other light its completely un-noticeable, but when i have friends driving behind me with HIDs, they say they can see where the big stock chevrolet sticker was on the tailgate lol....

When i peeled my 4x4 stickers off my 99 you could tell there was a difference in paint in 10 years but after a couple of weeks if faded and you can't even tell i had stickers.

Sun and the elements are what faded the rest of the truck in the first place, so I would just leave it alone and time will take care of the rest. I can still see a ghosting of the letters on mine if I take a halogen light to the area, but the other 99% of the time I can't tell there's any difference.

Just throwing it out there, but could you buff the newley exposed paint?

That is good to know. I pulled my door moldings off last year, and now you can't see where they were at all. Hopefully, this same thing will happen on my tailgate. I guess it just bothered me because the tailgate is more visible...the moldings were up against the crease in the door and harder to notice :secret2:.

IMO buffing won't get rid of the different shades. I'm not a bodyman/painter by trade, but from my experience with buffing, it removes the blemishes and imperfections from the clearcoat; and you would never buff deep enough to hit the paint coats, and I think it's the paint coats that naturally fade in sunlight. I'm sure it would help smooth out a lot of the more noticeable areas, but as far as blending the paint colours (new vs old) I don't think buffing will do the trick.

Same thing happened when i debaged my wifes Tahoe tailgate.

I used First: Wizards Finish Cut with a wool pad on my buffer.

Then after i wiped it off, i Went back over with Wizards Shine Master applied with a foam pad on my buffer, then wiped off again., And all shadow/ haze/ swirl marks were gone.

Wizards [products are the best ive ever used and i get them at my local paint/body store, no need to wait for orders.

After just hand application of the shine master my vehicles looks/gleam like new and are smoothand slick to the touch, and it lasts.

Just my opinions though, but im a detail fanatic when i can muster up the time to do it.

Depends entirely on how different the 2 areas look... if the fade is pretty extreme, the best you can hope to do is minimize it with buffing, if its not so bad then its pretty easy to fix. I de-badged red a 2006 truck last weekend, couple passes with the PC and you'd never know it was there.

how about side moldings on a black '00 :rolleyes: