06/07/2023
Worth a read.
Something not many people outside of the trade understand or realises there’s something that goes on in workshops and it’s called “colour matching” You know, you have a paint code and you think that’s exactly what it’s……………. Well it’s not, far from it, sometimes not even close.
Sadly your paint code just points us in the direction of what it was on the day it was painted, thats all. Doesn’t take into consideration how old the car is, if it’s been in the sun and faded, if it’s been polished correctly and even worse if someone has attacked it with a spray gun before.
Then there’s more…. Who made the paint?? PPG? Octoral? Mipa? Standox? Glasurite? And then which variant of shade? Because each will have anything from 3-9 colour variants so just those above companies could have up to 30 different variants for one colour, and let’s think VW use over 200 colours, think of all those shades 🥹
But not all is bad news. We have colour scanners now that give more accurate paint matching, which is good most of the time, but only if some bellend from chips away hasn’t been near it after doing a 3 day course in a van.
Well think we I had a nasty colour. Was scanned by 3 different machines, mixed in 3 different paint schemes and guess what, still couldn’t get a match, on a vertically brand new car. Shocking.
Luckily I know someone that has the knowledge but mainly a really good paint system that helped me out to get a match and get a car painted and out. And to think, brand new car should only have one shade, well look for yourself 8 of the 11 spray out cards to get one match. Soooo if you hear the sentence “that colour was a little hard to match” feel that guys pain.
