Auto Restoration 101

We finally have all of the undercoating and old seam sealer removed from the body. The next step before we have the body sandblasted is to document the original colors. There are several colors on this car. The exterior, the interior garnish trim and the underside of the car. For the exterior color I found a good spot of original paint on top of the cowl by the windshield that was underneath the dash. On the backsides of the interior garnish trim the paint still looked new so the paint was fairly easy to match. The underside of the car was originally a gray metallic. We found this out after we started removing the old undercoating.

I use Lesonal and Sikkens paint made by Akzo Nobel. They have an easy way to match paint with their Color Map charts. After a match is found with the Color Map it is always best to spray out some test panels. Most of the time I still have to do some tinting to get the correct color. The Color Map gives me a great starting point.

This is the underside of the car with the gray metallic exposed after the undercoating was scraped off.

I then cleaned an area with some wax and grease remover to take off the remaining tar.

This is the Sikkens Color Map for metallic and pearl colors.

The next step is to start going through the pages until you find one with the closest matching colors. In this case the page is #333. Each horizontal row on the pages are lettered and each verticle row is numbered. The next step is to locate a paint chip on the page that is a good match. I found one that is very close and that is #333F1.