Was thinking of getting some reflective paint for more visibility when riding at night. After searching for the different paints, I decided to try out Rust-oleum.
1) The Spray
To spray on the reflective paint, coat thin layers on your prepainted smooth surface. It leaves behind a translucent surface. The coating sticks well and coated in an even layer.
2) Drying
The spray paint dries well and in 15 seconds, you can apply a second layer.
3) Finish
The finish once dried provides a good layer of protection.
4) Working with the surface
I tried using 2,000 - 3,000 grit sand paper and wet sand the surface. It did not make the surface smoother, but create black blotches. These black blotches are hard to work with and hard to clean off.
This is like one of the Matt surface paints where you need to have a very good painting skill because when you make a mistake, you need sand everything off and redo everything again.
This is what I have done to my front fender
I have sanded down the reflective layer 3 times as I've oversprayed it the first time and I had dust stuck on the second time. It is a lot of work, but overall, it gives an ok Matt look. Does not look much different than the original paint, just a layer of Matt coating on top which looks like a pearl layer.
When you shine light on it in the dark, you can see the pearl in the paint reflect well. It works a lot better on light colored surfaces, but as you can see, it still work on black surface.
If you want a glossy finish, you need to coat a layer of gloss on top of the reflective paint, then wet sand and polish.
Overall, I'd say this is a relatively good product if you know what you are doing.
-- Robin Low
