Ordering auto paint online

Carmine

Old Man with a Hat
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I have a feeling my local shop won't be open because of the #rona, so I'm thinking about ordering (factory-match not generic) auto paint online... Which I have never done before. Has anyone done that? Who is your go-to? Many online shops sell their own brands, so I have zero idea of their quality.

For what it's worth, the color will be EW1, Spinnaker White. Some of you may recall my Magnum took a little poke in the nose last fall. (Multi-car in I-75 construction) It's fixed beyond this point now, I have the needed parts. This is also why I'd never consider lowering a car. It's bad enough that anything you hit is going to be an SUV that your bumper will miss. Luckily the bumper finally hit something on the Jeep and stopped the carnage. My fenders will keep their original paint, hood won't be so lucky :(

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I've used these guys twice and the colors were dead on.

Auto Color Library - We will match ANY Car Paint Color!

After 45 years in the paint and body business I call total bullshit on their claim. On some basic colors you might get a close match out of the can. Metalics or pearls are a much different matter.
first of all most colors have variant or alternate formulas. Meaning the same color has more than one and sometimes 6 or 7 different formulas. Different plants use different formulas. Paint suppliers usually have alternate formula color chips so you can compare to see which formula is on your car. Without those chips you have no way of knowing. This is on newer cars. On our old cars the other issue is age and the fact that all formulas were changed when they took the lead and other metals out of the paint. Todays mettalics are more three dimensional and are a lot more brilliant than the old ones. With Carmine's Magnum white yellows over time so even if you match the new original color it will be brighter than the old. Panel painting (IE Painting just the door) almost never works. Blending into the adjoining panel is necessary.
 
Do you have a local NAPA store? Most mix PPG paints and they should be open. Even one a ways away could mix and mail it to you. Here they're "essential services". I've had excellent results with matching my older cars. Just a thought....
 
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Do you have a local NAPA store? Most mix PPG paints and they should be open. Even one a ways away could mix and mail it to you. Here they're "essential services". I've had excellent results with matching my older cars. Just a thought....
Essetential services here too.
Order the paint and they do Curbside pickup at thier stores.
 
After 45 years in the paint and body business I call total bullshit on their claim. On some basic colors you might get a close match out of the can. Metalics or pearls are a much different matter.
first of all most colors have variant or alternate formulas. Meaning the same color has more than one and sometimes 6 or 7 different formulas. Different plants use different formulas. Paint suppliers usually have alternate formula color chips so you can compare to see which formula is on your car. Without those chips you have no way of knowing. This is on newer cars. On our old cars the other issue is age and the fact that all formulas were changed when they took the lead and other metals out of the paint. Todays mettalics are more three dimensional and are a lot more brilliant than the old ones. With Carmine's Magnum white yellows over time so even if you match the new original color it will be brighter than the old. Panel painting (IE Painting just the door) almost never works. Blending into the adjoining panel is necessary.

Besides EW1 being one of the hardest colors to match, TCP Global will not send you any spray cans or smaller quantities than a quart to check their match with your car ($110/quart). They do either acrylic urethane or urethane which are single stage paints and they are even available in California according to their tech rep (although they won't let you talk to anyone in their paint matching department directly). They also have 2 stage paints as well. My body/paint guy is much like Chris, and is never satisfied with anyone's paint matching capabilities of paint for our older cars. The issue about metallics is a big one, and although it doesn't apply to EW1, many other colors in Chrysler's older pallettes are very fine metallics, and I am unaware of anyone that makes those any more that would be needed in the mixing process to eliminate the brighter 3 dimensional effect. The best it seems one can do these days is to get close and repaint the whole car if you really want it to match well.

Tim in his current thread regarding Wyatt convincing him to destroy his 71 New Yorker has a discussion of some touch up paint he used on his firewall to match the exterior of the car:

Wyatt convinced me to destroy my 71..., starting with post #192.

He obtained his touch up spray can from colormyauto1 on Ebay (I tried and found it is impossible to talk with them either - you just place your order and hope for the best). It does seem to be a pretty good match from what I can tell on line. I ordered a spray can of their single stage urethane on Ebay for my 1969 Chrysler T&C wagon, which is T3, or bronze mist metallic. The color was pretty good, but no cigar in my case if you wanted to paint a fender and have it match an adjacent door without some blending. I really don't know of any way around it and this has been an ongoing problem for many years. Chris is correct, probably the best you can do is get various suppliers' set of color chips and pick the one that best matches your car, and spray the whole car or if you have a panel repair only, blending is one's only hope for getting it to look passable.
 
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