962 I need your help.

[Bill Douglas]

Hi 962, hi Guys.

I need your opinion - thanks in advance. I have new fenders, new bumper and the hood needs painting on my silver SC.

25 years ago I had the car professionally repainted silver with un-tinted PPG metallic silver. I've been experimenting with today's PPG silver and in some lights I can see it's fractionally lighter. I keep repainting the engine lid as my test location as it's small and I can see it on the same angles s the rest of the car.

I took the car with the newly painted engine lid to my paint supplier who used to be a car painter. He said "Your paint job is very good for an amateur, but it's a huge step up to the next level so I suggest you just be happy with the level that you have achieved." But in certain lights can see that it's slightly lighter. I tried using a dark primer thinking it was a case of being slightly transparent, but that didn't change it at all. So... I'm thinking of adding a couple of drops of black tint to the PPG Deltron D772 coarse metallic silver. I am on my own as the paint supplier has been very helpful but after a certain point they don't want to do too much hand holding.

Very subjective of course. But lets say a paint place gave me some black tint, how much should I put in?

[Dpmulvan]

I’m not 962 but I can tell you it’s next to impossible to match 25 year old silver metallic perfectly without repainting the whole car. A metallic color like that you wouldn’t even want to paint the panels off the car.

[962porsche]

this could get very long and a little confusing but I will do my best to explain this.
with silver's many factors come into play as to how and why a color could be lighter or darker.
my 1st question is are you using the same exact tint your car was painted in before?
2nd is the clear your using the same exact clear as used before when your car was painted?
are the guns the same spray guns?
everything will effect the way the metallics will lay down and this will effect the way the color looks.
even the same silver out of the same mix and can of paint will and does lay down different using two different guns. even if the guns have the same tip size of say a 1.3 tip.
air pressure will also effect the way a silver lays down so just a few LBS different in pressure will make a color lighter or darker. in many cases a lower pressure will make a silver darker and a higher pressure will make a silver lighter.
and other thing is how far or how close the gun is to the panel and the speed of your gun making the passes will effect the color of silver.
when you look at a color seeing if its matching you look at the color from two directions. the 1st is what is called the face. this is looking straight at the panels.
the other is the flip and this is looking at the color from the side. you didn't state if the color is lighter on both the face and flip.

with silvers clear has a lot to do with the shade of the color too.
different clears will change the color or shade of a silver greatly.
the amount of clear or mil build will also change the shade of a silver.
in general the more mils of a clear the darker the shade of the color will be. this has to do with how the light reflects back off the panel. the thicker the clear the less light can reflect back to what your seeing and the darker the shade will tend to be.
if you have ever opened up a few different brands of clear at times you will see in the can some clears have a yellow ting to them and others are 100% clear. once mixed in the mixing cup they are all clear but in fact the yellower one to the totally clear one will change the shade of the silver.
say if two panels were painted both panels using all the same products and you sprayed 3 coats of clear on both panels. when your done both panels match and look the same but one panel you color sand and buff. there is a chance the panel you buffed will look lighter then the panel you didn't buff. this is because you have removed some of the clears mil build and now the light is reflecting back off the silver passing thru less clear.
you can do a little test by masking off half the engine lid your doing sand it with some 800 or 1000 grit and just spray 3 more coats of clear on it. just clear!
there is a very good chance that the area with the 3 more coats will be darker.

in most cases adding black to make a color darker doesn't work at all it will make a color look muddy.
with silvers much have to do with what is called the cut of the flake and what the flake is made from. there are two main types of metals used to make metallic flakes one is titanium the other is aluminum.
there is also the cut of the metallic flake round , square, rectangle or triangle. this too effects the shade of a silver or any metallic.
also the size of the flake effects the shade so by swapping out the size or cut with some or all of the silver you have will make the color darker or lighter.
this is how you tint a silver not by just adding black to it. don't get me wrong I'm not saying adding another color tint may not bring the color around to what you need but in many cases it doesn't.

I don't know PPG and what tints do what when it comes to there silvers being so I can recommend maybe trying a different silver tint that is a darker silver.

[Bill Douglas]

Thanks 962 and Dp.

I'll experiment with how I lay it down. I make sure it's not too wet when I do it.

Sorry... I missed giving a crucial bit of information. My paint man added 15% matting to help with the flip. The original silver was untinted out of the pot PPG metallic silver and so is the stuff I'm working with. But formulas will have changed over that time. It's very close though! A particular thanks for the tip regarding amounts/thickness of clear 962. It makes sense. I haven't put much clear on, about three or four coats, because I'm only practicing. Whereas the rest of the car has very deep thick clear. I will be using a non-isocyanate clear called PPG Dulon 1K Premium Clearcoat 526-48213 for the sake of health and safety. Plus it's meant to be very good and clear.

[962porsche]

when it comes to doing test panels for color matching they need to be done the same way as you would be doing the cars panels them selves. one mistake many people make is they will spray them differently and then go do the car and it will not look like as it should or as the car or the test panel.
don't think that just because your using a product with out a hardener that it's any safer!
all this crap will kill you.
with a 1K product they tend to need a bigger tip size for the gun most are 1.7 to 1.9 tip for the gun to get the needed mil build.
being a 1K product more coats are also needed. with a product with a hardener two coats are the normal 3 if your going to cut and buff . 3 because you will be cutting and buffing one of the coats off. with a 1k there is more evaporation of the product as it dries so more coats are needed to get the proper mil build. this was why back in the old days people would spray on 10 to 20 coats of a 1K product to get the proper mil build and depth in the finish. in most cases half to 1.5 % of what you put on is a silent ( thinner) that evaporates back off the surface.
back in the day when I started painting 1K products were hell to deal with for color matching.
the reason is unlike now the weather would also effect the color greatly. just from one days weather to the next would effect a color hell just from the morning to mid day would effect the color.