How can I tell what colour my car is?

[mjhmjh2]

Pretty much as the subject - how do I know what colour my car is... It's a 20 year old white and someone has done some repairs at some stage which are a slightly different white colour - it's bugging me now and I quite fancy having it the same colour!

Thanks
Matthew

 

[jamesmc]

Hi Matthew

Try adding your full VIN here:

http://www.mbclub.ru/mb/vin/?lng=eng


You should end up with something like this for example:

Paint
040 black (T) (с 01.01.1963)

040 being the paint code for my black CLK.
er.... except yours will probably show as 'White'

 

[mjhmjh2]

nice one - thanks very much.. I'm as cool as a polar bear.. well it's artic white anyway

Matthew

 

[philharve]

nice one - thanks very much.. I'm as cool as a polar bear.. well it's artic white anyway

Matthew

Hi Matthew

Is it your intention to repaint it the original colour?

MB colours are not always obvious. Mine is officially 'green-black' but you'd swear it was a blue. I expect there will be a variety of white shades too. If you Rumanian website can't help (unlikely), either a dealer or a good bodyshop will.

REGARDS

Phil

 

[mjhmjh2]

Hi Matthew

Is it your intention to repaint it the original colour?

MB colours are not always obvious. Mine is officially 'green-black' but you'd swear it was a blue. I expect there will be a variety of white shades too. If you Rumanian website can't help (unlikely), either a dealer or a good bodyshop will.

REGARDS

Phil

Yes I want to paint it to the original colour... why?

The Romanian site that jamesmc gave decoded the colour from the VIN as Arctic White.. There are 3 whites around that time going on the info of a website I found that sells paint.

Why is it unlikely that is right? I dont fancy buying the wrong paint if I can help it!

Matthew

 

[philharve]

Yes I want to paint it to the original colour... why?

The Romanian site that jamesmc gave decoded the colour from the VIN as Arctic White.. There are 3 whites around that time going on the info of a website I found that sells paint.

Why is it unlikely that is right? I dont fancy buying the wrong paint if I can help it!

Matthew

Hi Matthew

'... why?' I was thinking about what percentage of your car might need repainting? The odd panel, perhaps? Blending with adjacent body panels might be tricky and you may have to paint several panels to get it looking right.

Do I take it that you are going to paint the car yourself? I infer this from your statement about buying the correct shade of white. A good bodyshop will be able to match any shade of colour, including white, so there's little chance of buying the wrong paint. An amateur repair is frought with problems unless you know exactly what you are doing.

I had an arctic white Triumph Dolomite Sprint which needed a partial repaint following a repair. It was difficult to affect the base colour to match the rest of the car because the original paint had aged and had become every so slightly ivoryish. These days colour/shade matching is performed by spectrographic analysis and the results are perfect first time.

REGARDS

Phil

 

[mjhmjh2]

one of my mates workes for ewelme coachworks so I was going to enlist his help (specialist TVR and lotus body shop).

My plan was to get a pot of paint and see how well it matched in the first instance.. it's only a tenner to see. I'd be doing the whole wing probably off the car, the lines where it edges against everything else should hide any very minor change.

I dont think ewelme has a spectro analyser, infact any place I've been to before has just got colour swatches out and held them against the paintwork!

If you know of somewhere that can do this matching service (espmail order or berkshire or hampshire way) please let me know.

Thanks
Matthew

 

[jamesmc]

Of course you could remove the front bumper and be presented with the the code in numeric format and a Bar code (by way of a weatherproof label stuck to the front chassis member),.. which is something I didn't know (not rare) until I actually removed the bumper!

 

[mjhmjh2]

had they invented bar codes in 1987? I think the paint code is in the bottom left of the punched plate that seemed to match up on antoher site with the arctik white bit anyway - here's hoping anyway!

Matthew

 

[television]

there is alway a plate on the car with the paint code attached

 

[mjhmjh2]

well I found the VIN plate and a weird looking plate with punched holes in it - can only guess it was a machine readable thing, but oh I dunno, maybe not.. I found a paint website which said the code was on that, the code I input linked back to the arctik/arctic white I found through the earlier website.. so thats good

Matthew