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PSA: A customer in my shop today asked me to match a paint code from 1987
He brought in a quarter panel from a 1987 Ford F-150, and the paint code on the door was completely faded. I had to dig through my old mixing books from the back room, and even then, the formula called for a toner they stopped making around 1995. We ended up doing a spray-out card and custom blending it by eye, which took almost three hours. How do you all handle matching paint for vehicles that are older than some of the techs in the shop?
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wendy325mo ago
But like, is it that big a deal? It's just paint.
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sammartinez5mo ago
It's way more than just paint, wendy32. That color is a fingerprint of the car's whole life. Sun, weather, and even garage dust change it over forty years. Matching it means you're not just mixing a formula, you're trying to copy history. That's why a perfect match can take hours of tweaking, even with the best tools.
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nancy_king295mo ago
Yeah, it's a huge deal, wendy32... it's not just paint, it's about matching decades of sun fade and wear. That custom blend you did is pretty much the only way when the old formulas are gone. I've seen guys use a spectrophotometer on the old panel, but even then it's a starting point for a lot of hand mixing.
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the_sean2mo ago
Three hours for a spray out? That's basically a full work day if you factor in the cleanup and the swearing at the mixing computer. Sounds like you earned a solid lunch break at least, and a new headache for the ages.
These old Ford paint codes should come with a warning label that says "good luck, this color is more faded than my grandpa's memory." You basically had to become a time traveler and a fortune teller to get that quarter panel right.
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