Practically Classics Forum

My Acclaim was painted sometime in the past in a two-tone of silver and dark blue metallic. The silver is ok but the blue needs touching up. trouble is i don't know what colour of blue was used and can't get hold of the last owners! I've tried the local bodyshops and all they want to do is quote me for doing the work, but all I want to do is find out what colour if is and do it myself... I've also tried the local Halfords but they seem to have several hundred blue paint swatches!

Anyone tell me how I could find out what the colour is?

You need a paint supplier, not a body shop. They will match using optical technology, but need something to match against. Is there any part of the blue part of the car that you could take to them? Or could you take the whole car?

I could take the car if it was local. I'll try some paint suppliers then!

Hello

If you can remove a sample eg filler flap, then that is always the easiest way to go. Any decent paint supplier should be able to help you, but you may have to spend a long time going through hundreds of samples. Some of which will only be a Gnats apart. And add to this the matter of what light you are seeing it under and the state of your sample.

So whatever piece you are matching will need to clean and compounded, and you want to place the samples on the test piece in good even daylight. -Not full sun and not strip lighting. A licked finger wiped over the join of where the sample meets the piece will even out any refractive issuse and you should move the things about so as to see how they catch the light at different angles.

Sadly a lot of paint mixers have gone over to a new colour palette, which means that their decades old paint samples are now redundant.

Good luck. If all else fails you can have it colour anylised by one of the paint manufacturers.