1930 Paint Question

Nabco

Nabco

Senior Member
Good Afternoon Gentlemen,

I have a paint question pertaining to my new A.

My father-in-law restored this car in the mid 70's and for a 30 plus year resto the paint is actually really nice, especially after I clayed the entire car.

This car was driven and used and has obvious paint chips that I would like to repair.

The colors are Copra Drab and Chicle Drab.

I went to NAPA and we were able to find the Martin Senour paint codes, the Chicle was 3927 and Copra was 11482... He was able to mix the Copra but could not mix the Chicle.

As we expected it does not look look like the color is correct, the guy at NAPA was pretty knowledgable and said back in the 70's when the paint on the car was mixed it was not an exact science, he said the color probably would come out different every time it was mixed....today he plugs the number into a computer and it spits out the paint.

He mentioned that at one of their other stores in town they have a gun that will shoot the paint and get you an almost exact match, they need a piece about the size of a half dollar to get a good reading....unfortunately this store is about 25 miles away, not sure I'm ready to drive the car that far yet.

I thought if I could take off one of the doors I could take that to the store with both colors on it, hiw difficult is it to remove the door.

I'm also open to any other suggestions the experts here have for me....really just want to fix some of the chips.

Below is the original paint codes my father-law-gave me.
 

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The hood is a lot easier to take off (& put back on) than a door if it comes to that.
 
If I had to do it, I'd trailer it rather than take a door off. Those hinge pins are rather persnickety. U-Haul rents car carriers or dollies fairly reasonable.
 
Thanks Tom, I think I just need some encouragement!!

Part of the hesitation is this store is not in the best part of town.

Nick
 
I know what you mean by "not the best part of town", but when I was in that situation, even the bad guys gave me a thumbs up.:D
 
Check around maybe a store nearer you has a Scanner. BTW some scanners work better than others. I had the same situation on my Roadster it was not the right color. I took It to one Paint manufacturer and their scanner had like a 72% blendable match, not close. I went to a CarQuest auto parts and their scanner hit about 98%. Not perfect but close enough.
 
whirnot said:
Check around maybe a store nearer you has a Scanner. BTW some scanners work better than others. I had the same situation on my Roadster it was not the right color. I took It to one Paint manufacturer and their scanner had like a 72% blendable match, not close. I went to a CarQuest auto parts and their scanner hit about 98%. Not perfect but close enough.
Click to expand...

Great idea, there's a CarQuest less than 10 miles away, I'll check and see if they have the scanner....thanks
 
Not sure if this will help you any, but here is a nice, large format photo of my 1930 Town Sedan in the same colors. I can e-mail you the image if it would be of any help.
Terry


 
It's not easy to match paint. Chemicals used in the pigments change, the solvents change and so on. Notice the Drab, it starts off as a GM truck color and them "tweeked" a little.

The guns will give the closest color to stock formulas and still need to be tweeked.
 
the paint codes you show are mixed in ditzler (ppg) DQE synthetic enamel no longer availble. so maybe try a ppg store they be able to get you a better match in a newer product line.
 
Thanks, I went to the NAPA paint store on Saturday here in Columbus, 100% dedicated to paint....nice facility.

They said if I bring the car in they could do an exact match pretty easy, that's my plan.
 
Many body shops now mix their own paint and also have scanners. I had a local body shop scan my '31 truck to get some touch up paint. The truck was restored in '69 and with the use of their scanner, the Rock Moss Green turned out to be a very close match to a somewhat current Porsche color. The paint matched very well, and the truck is a lot faster now also.

Best Regards,
Stew
 
Thanks Stew, these guys at NAPA are real pros, they have abandoned the use of the scanners because they could only get to about 97% accuracy on the color match using the scanner, in there own words, "97% is not close enough".

They can get to 99% plus using color chips with custom tinting.

Let me pose another question, I've come to the realization that I will drive the car the 50 plus mile round trip to bring it to their store, the problem is I can only do that easily on a Saturday morning and unfortunately their best "tinters" are not in on Saturday....not good

So I've been combing the forum on removing one if the doors, it appears the overwhelming concensus is pulling the pins are a royal pain. I did see in one of the threads that removing the 6 screws that attach the door to A pillar are much easier to remove...is that in fact the case....how is the the curved flat metal piece that goes into the middle of the A pillar attached, does that just slide out.

Thanks guys, this forum has been a wealth of info for me.

Nick
 
Nabco said:
Thanks Stew, these guys at NAPA are real pros, they have abandoned the use of the scanners because they could only get to about 97% accuracy on the color match using the scanner, in there own words, "97% is not close enough".

They can get to 99% plus using color chips with custom tinting.

Let me pose another question, I've come to the realization that I will drive the car the 50 plus mile round trip to bring it to their store, the problem is I can only do that easily on a Saturday morning and unfortunately their best "tinters" are not in on Saturday....not good

So I've been combing the forum on removing one if the doors, it appears the overwhelming concensus is pulling the pins are a royal pain. I did see in one of the threads that removing the 6 screws that attach the door to A pillar are much easier to remove...is that in fact the case....how is the the curved flat metal piece that goes into the middle of the A pillar attached, does that just slide out.

Thanks guys, this forum has been a wealth of info for me.

Nick
Click to expand...

it 9 screws and they will slide right out. thats your best bet .
good luck using paint chips to match the paint not sure how that will turn out.
the paint supply house i use has a digital Spectrophotometer scanner which usually gives a 100%match.
 
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