Matching Paint on GB - 6.9

[Styria]

My 6.9 that I have owned since the mid '90s, was very capably resprayed by Jerry about ten years ago. The paint still looks good, the texture and feel are very smooth to the feel, all obviously helped by the fact that nowadays , and since then, the car has lived indoors. Many times I have advocated that Mercedes themselves should have endeavoured to carry out some special treatment to distinguish 6.9s from its less powerful models, such as maybe two tone paint, 15" Bundts that were already available, in short anything that would set them apart. Nothing like that ever happened. Anyway, that had been bugging me, so when I took the plunge to have GB resprayed, that was my opportunity to chose a two tone colour scheme. As in this picture - well, this hasn't worked. So, I am going to try again.

The following three pictures do illustrate the quite conservative two tone arrangement - in fact, so conservative, that a number of people had to be shown that there is a two tone scheme.

 

[Styria]

Okay, the paint is now reaching about 10-12 years of age, and I have been concerned with not having surplus paint on hand. The Petrol MB 877 I had saved had gone hard, but I managed to save it by mixing it with Thinners. The other colour, shall we call it Charcoal of sorts, mixed up by Jerry, had long disappeared. So I was racking my brains as to what options I would have in having a new lot of paint mixed up that would match the car's.

The local Automotive Paint supplier that I found purely by accident has some sort of tie-up with Dulux and he suggested that their representative call in and "copy" the paint by computermeans (there is a special name for that procedure) and then come up with the right formula to mix up the new paint -that is one litre of each colour. I thought that was excellent service to do all this free of charge, and sure enough, after two visits the Dulux guy was satisfied that he would come up with the correct shades. The advantage of copying the paint as it now is on the car is simple - if paint was mixed up utilizing the MB 877 formula, it would likely be a different shade to what is on the car now. Besides, the supplier that Jerry used at the time was VG Concept Paints, and there would be every chance that even then the shade may have been different to paint by Spies Hacker and others. So, they mixed up two colours, one litre each, at a cost of $129.00 per litre - there were no additional costs.The representative from Dulux had called in the second time to check on the match, and frankly I thought that the colour match was perfect. Hereunder, pics. of what they came up with. Regards Styria

 

[Styria]

They called the Charcoal "Blue" - that's not a worry. I also believe that the Nippon Paint is of a cheaper variety than Dulux. BTW, Dulux has taken over, or have been taken over, as a result of Intercompany machinations. The guy did explain it all to me, but it sort of went over my head. Regards Styria

 

[BenzBoy]

Dulux Australia is owned by Nippon Paint Holdings. The computer matching is usually very successful and gives a reliable result.
Regards,
Brian

 

[c107]

I always assumed the bottom colour on your 6.9 was 906 Grey/Blue, same as my 450SLC.

 

[Styria]

No, it was a mish mash of a particular colour that Jerry had on hand, and we just added a bit of black as we went along. I wanted to make sure that the two tone scheme wasn't too crass, but my thought centred around the area where the two colours were to be separated. Any different colour BELOW the body mould was simply too conventional for my liking. I am glad I went the way I did - along the crease line. Regards Styria