About 5 years ago, I had the nose of my 2000 coupe painted, after having a crack at the end of the turn signal/parking lights repaired. The crack was about an inch long, and not that noticeable. I had the work done any way because I had confidence in my body man, who had made several accidents on other cars completely go away. Also, at that time the car had only 25,000 miles on it.

Body Shop #1 tried to match it twice. The first time it was close, but there was a milky haze at the top of the bumper cover. I had paid $750 for the work and thought that it should be done again. The second time it came out too dark, discernible in any light, but easiest to see with overhead lights, as in my garage. Body shop #1 is thought to be the best in the area, and I had many mistakes repaired before. I was buffaloed as to why they couldn't match it, and just chalked it up to a fall off in their quality control.

This past winter I hit the same area again, trying to get out of my garage, hitting a huge bank of ice and snow at the entrance. I hadn't driven the car in 5 weeks, and I needed to give it a run.

This past week I brought it in to Body Shop 2, to fix the returned crack, and to re-shoot the bumper cover for a better match.

The price was much better, and I really liked the owner, who had a lot of high end work in his shop. Upon picking up the car today I was really disappointed again with the color match, which was virtually the same as the tone of the work as done by Body Shop #1, second attempt.

The car is 11 years old, perhaps the rest of the hood is faded? Or, maybe there is more than one formula for Navy Blue? Whatever the reason, I am 0 for 3 on this work- with first class shops, and I'm starting to think there is some trick to matching the color.

Does any body out there have any experience with matching this color?

Thanks,

Bluemill

 

GM even had trouble building C5's that all the body panels perfectly matched from the factory. I've had several attempts made at various body panels to get the best "possible" look from different paint formulas using VIN, scan, and color codes. Then upon getting very critical about trying three different color matches.....I noticed that the original body panels also had different "aspects" of color depending which material the body panels used. SMC stuff(front and rear bumpers) looked different from main body stuff.

Anyway...the point I wanted to make was....don't beat yourself up over worrying about the perfect match.

 

flex additive can affect the color

 

Don't really have to use flex additive with Urethane paint.

When I painted my Navy Blue front facsia, MCM hood and rear spoiler the match was nice. When I bought the car, it had some rock nicks on the head lamp covers and the tonneau cover from the top rubbing and the outfit I bought the car from had it those parts painted, nice match too. It's almost impossible to get a 100% match without painting the entire car-blending helps but even slight variations in metallic density can make it look different to the eye in different lights.

 

I just had a top painted to match my 2000 NBM. The match is dead perfect. A friend painted mine, we discovered that there are 2 NBM on the color chip for the 2000 model year. One is slightly darker, we took the chips and matched to the car, can't tell it was painted.

 

UV rays from sunlight and washing with harsh detergent will fade the paint. You really only see it when new is next to old though the color matching should have taken care of that. Car is 11 yrs old, I'm sure there is some paint fading. And most likely, you are the only one that sees the darker repair because you know it's there. Ask someone else to look at the area and see if they see anything. I bet not. Have a beer and don't worry about it.

 

The color coat does NOT fade it's under the clear, the clear can breakdown over time and get chalky white.

 

From Meguiar's:

Most modern car finishes consist of a base coating that contains the color, topped with a protective clear coat that is designed to keep the pigmented paint from oxidizing. This outer clear coat adds UV protection that helps prevent the sun's rays from drying out the base paint. Oxidation was an obvious problem ten years ago because you quickly saw the color fade. Now that the outer layer is usually clear, oxidation is less obvious, YET IT STILL OCCURS. The sun dries out top paint layers and natural oils are lost. If these oils aren't replaced, the paint oxidizes and the surface gradually becomes duller and duller.

 

There are no OILS to dry out, especially in many of the water based paints. VOC's in some older paints or lacquer but the clear is what oxidizes today.

 

The pigments in paint do the UV blocking. The best UV ray blocker is a pigmented paint. Clear coatings have no pigments unless it was added and it is expensive, hence, while they add additional gloss and ‘depth’ to a fine paint job, they are generally considered to be performance inferior to the pigment coatings.

A very minimal ‘UV Package' is generally added to clear urethanes. Since most clear urethanes are applied over pigmented urethanes the manufacturers tend to let the pigments in the bottom coating perform the UV blocking, thus the fade.

 

George, so you must have asked one or both body shops about the color mismatch. Curious as to what did they say? What did they attribute it to?

 

I wished I checked this site first before having the work done, although I did caution the body shop owner that there maybe two codes out there for navy blue. He showed me yesterday a section of urethane bumper they tried painting "another formula." He showed it to me and told me they thought it looked too light.

Looking at the code on the glove compartment sticker, I did find a definite code number there.

Can anyone out there tell me what the code for the lighter formula Navy Blue is? -or by process of elimination, the code for the darker of the two codes?

Best,

Bluemill

 

2000 NBM could either be coded as 28 or the GM code WA352E. What does your glove box sticker indicate? Paint code cross reference for '00 NBM, PPG color is 5381, Dupont is B9808 and Sherwin-Williams is 54696 but they should all be the same color. BTW, looks like '99, '00 and '01 all used the same paint code and it looks to me as only one paint was used.

Corrected: I found 2 paint codes used for '99 NBM. WA352E and WA353E but only one for '00. That's where the lighter shade may come in. For GM WA353E, the PPG # is 5387, Dupont is B9820 and S-W is 54694. Your best answer as to the light/dark difference will probably be to drop in to a S-W store and talk with them and bring their part numbers. I still think the paint is faded to a certain degree, even though it was garaged.

I had the same exact problem with '99 magnetic red, it's a metallic red. Car has always garaged, waxed, no repaint, never hit, no bodywork, no wet sand on the clear coat, ever, but it is under the Florida sun and the paint color, not the clearcoat, has faded somewhat from the original. I know what it looked like originally and now it's slightly more orange-ish than when the red was new. I see the difference inside the door jambs and if you look closely you may see yours too. Looks like your in MA, not FL but I still say the paint is not 100% the original shade and that's what body shops complain about all the time, that it's difficult to match aged paint. That's why they always want to paint much more than what's absolutely necessary.

 

I have not seen problems doing that, but I follow the Paint Mfgrs instructions to the letter

if there is a problem with the job, i have grounds to get re-imbursed

 

I was rear ended in the summer of 2009 in my 2001 NBM and my body-guy sprayed from the doors back and the match was absolutely perfect.

 

I just got my 2000 NBM out of the shop about 2 weeks ago. We painted the nose, hood, rockers, drivers door and moth mirrors.
Paint was a dead match the first attempt. We used Dupont Chroma Base, I had heard that the Dupont paint matches blues better and it did.

 

well were talking about painting nbm, how much r u guys getting set back for doing the nose/hood type stuff? would love to get all the little nikcs filled in.

 

Just got mine painted about 2 months ago. Absolute perfect match. Guy does great work, only one that touches my vette. Sanded, primed, & painted....$225.00 + tax.
Mine is NBM also. But I removed it and re-installed it by myself. Not hard at all.

Gregg

 

Wow was that eye opening! First the 353, NBM is much darker on the chip than what is supposed to be on the car, WA352E. Even under the 352E chip there was a base color, and two other noticably different colors, Alt A and alt B, both lighter than base.

I'm going back tomorrow to match it to the car.

Best,

Bluemill

 

you always pick at least one shade lighter than a Chip

take the car, and get it Scanned