The car is a Suzuka Blue (code B-513M). I had to have the LF fend and hood repainted due to flying piece of wood. The body shop has painted the car 4 times and color just does not come out correct. The last time it was painted with a factory pack from the PPG store. The paint can had a color code of B-513M-T.
The color looks more purple than blue, from most angles, or the blue is too light.
Monday we are going to try and get a PPG rep to come out and look at the car. The shop doing the work are friends and have not accepted any money, and they are more piss off about this than me and I am not happy

Anybody out there who knows about painting, please help.

Thanks

 

Almost any metallic or pearl paint is a bitch to match. Just ask the people around here who have had to contend with similar nightmares on their Spa yellow cars.

It's usually more a matter of process rather than the paint code itself which leads to a good match.

 

I wish it was a shorter process

 

Hi (bruce?),

I had to repaint my bumper recently (about 2 months ago). The bodyshop who is a friend painted it 3 times for me using PPG. The first time the color looks right but it was not metallic enough but the color seems right. The second time was terrible. The 3rd time was seems more blue than the actual paint on the car when you at it from some angles (since the car has a purplish hue when you look at it from an angle under certain lighting conditions) and other angles it is a perfect match.

All three times he blended the paint himself. We did not have the benefit of the factory pack. A few things I learnt from the process:

1) The amount and direction of metallic flakes changes the color significantly.
2) Paint codes are not very reliable at this time because the color is too new.( only slightly more than half a year since the color came out)
3) At least for me, the color seems to "cure" over time. After two months and with some zaino, the color seems to blend much better now. Many people who have seen the car cannot really tell the difference anymore.(from 2ft away or more)
4) Some bodyshop will try to improve to match by gradually blending the rest of the body to the newly painted part. DON'T do it. The original paint will always be much higher quality (because it undergoes a much better painting process at Honda) and it is not worth painting over it to improve the blending.
4) Honda has trouble matching the paint themselves since the plastic parts of the body is slightly different in color from the metal parts (at least for me). :-) So, try to match against the other plastic parts such as the rear bumper rather than the metal parts like the hood.

Best of luck!

lawrence

 

"Honda has trouble matching the paint themselves since the plastic parts of the body is slightly different in color from the metal parts (at least for me). :-) So, try to match against the other plastic parts such as the rear bumper rather than the metal parts like the hood."

The problem is the hood and LF fender. The color is so different from RF fender, door and the bumper. As you walk up to it, you see it from 50ft away and as you get closer it gets worst.

 

As with the yellow it might be a clear coat and coat application issue. I know from a friend that it took quite a while to match his yellow that the whole trick of the mater was the application coats and steps. I believe that the hanes manual has the correct paint matching tips and coats.

 

I had the same problem, but the body shop wouldn't let me have it back till they were satisfied with the color match. They ended up sending my gas cap door to the factory in Japan to get it matched and now it matches better than the day I took it home... if you want your body shop to contact mine to get the paint you can.... it would be a better try than having to wait a month like I did to get your gas cap door back.....

Rye's Auto Body Shop
6839 Summer Ave.
Bartlett, Tennessee 38135
901-377-7748

 

Typically a good shop will feather the paint into the next panel for excellent transistion regardless of color match and metalization angle. This costs a bunch more, but it's worth it.

 

We all need to realize that this is a problem inherent in the chemistry and physics of modern paints and processes, and applies to ALL recent models cars of ALL makes. There is something about metallic and pearlescent colors, and the particulate matter which goes into the paint, which makes it very hard to duplicate colors after the fact. Nearly every car I have owned in the last decade or so has exhibited some paint defect. My S2000 seems to be an exception, but then the New Formula Red is not metallic - probably will discover it fades after a couple of years of exposure to sunlight.
I remember my '98 Mazda Millenia, with its very special pearlescent white paint. The paint job was really excellent, but in certain lighting situations you could see that the plastic bumper was a shade different than the adjacent sheet metal. I do believe that factory painting generally uses some heat curing of the paint material on the metal surfaces, and that obviously cannot be done after the fact by body shops, and can't be done on the plastic surfaces. Another after the fact disaster [remembering with a groan my '91 Taurus SHO] is that commercial body shops do not necessarily have the dust removal facilities available in the factory, and your repaint can be further marred by tiny dust specks embedded in the paint. Yuck. Once you see them the first time, they seem to grow in size afterwards.

 

You'll note that factory spoilers/side strakes hue will vary from factory paint.

Even when Honda blends their colors their will be variation (hence the reason paint codes only take one so far..)

Randy