Need to touch up a Rare Green one...

[Deathacus]

TLDR; I need a good spray paint for a PA green SHO.

Hello! Having bad luck with paint touch ups.
My SHO, ofc, a 1994 with a paint code of PA, the so called 'rare green', or more officially, Deep Jewel Green. Now, first of all, can somepony explain why it's considered rare? It seems like half the ones I see for sale online are in said color, SHOs and SLOs alike. Do they all have that sort of blue-shift effect?
So, here's my dilemma. I need to spot spray just a couple of things. I picked up a can of DupliColor PA from work, great paint to work with but color was wayyy to light. I have only used it around the fog light, a spot that's very hard to tell if it has the sort of blue shift effect. I later had a brush-in-bottle mixed at Hovis, just gave them the code and what they gave me is perhaps the best matching paint I will ever see in my life. I mean it is perfect! But super thick and really difficult to work with. I have only used it to fill small scratches so again, can't really tell if it has the blue shift. Next I tried to get them to mix a spray can, this time they tell me there is, like, four variations of PA. Is this true? Would there be more than one color/shade variation to use the same code? I can't remember why I didn't buy from them but I went to API and dude brought out the camera-thingy to scan my car. They mixed me a can of SEM, which oddly enough said Subaru on the sticker. Oh...kay, but it is a custom mix tho? Anyway, closer but too dark, and no blue shift. although I didn't use the clearcoat they sold me, wonder if that makes a difference. Didn't use it because it's one of those two-part things that's only usable for a day or so, and I have a lot of little spot work I'm doing little by little. Thinking about going back to Hovis and giving them the brush bottle I still have and seeing if they can match that. That said, do yinz have any other suggestions? Is the clear important to the blue-shift? can I get a one-part clear that will do the job? What's my best bet?
Is a rattle can even an option for this? How extreme do I need to go?

 

[Irish Pride]

When people say the green is rare they are being sarcastic. Green was by far the most common color of the Gen2.

When dealing with paint, clear vs no clear is very important. If the base coat is supposed to have a clear on top of it and the color has any kind of pearl, flake, tint, etc.... It will be in the clear top coat. Since you are not using the clear it will not match properly. Vise versa, if someone uses a clear top coat on paint that is supposed to single stage(Gen1 Oxford white) then that won't look correct either.

You need to do panels and blend it in if you want it to look right on the car. Just doing spot touch-up will never be good enough if you really want a match. If your bumper has some imperfections then scuff up the entire bumper and then paint the entire bumper. Even if the bumper is slightly off from the rest of the car it will still look a lot better than several mismatched spots here and there.

The paint code on your car is the correct code to match your car. There might be more than one option for the same color but the code will change with each option. Oxford white for example has 4 or 5 different color codes. Each code denotes the manufacturer of that particular version of that color and the corresponding recipe to reproduce it. A quality paint shop should be able to take your code and scan your car to come up with a pretty good match but you also need to keep in mind that they are trying to match a color that is is sun faded and weather worn for a minimum of 30 years now. Nothing will be 100% exact.

-Chad

 

[Deathacus]

Thanks for that info. Wonder why Hovis said there were 4 different PA paints then. Probably not gonna redo the bumper since you gotta get on your knees to see it, rn I'm gonna do the edge of the back door, where it and the front overlap so I think I can get away with masking that edge and not doing the whole thing.

I do wonder why the can I got mixed says Subaru British Racing Green then. Is that like, normal? And how can I be sure that the clear is correct, I was given a can of SprayMax 2K 368 0086. didn't see any details online of it being, well actually anything. Should I use a special primer if I'm down to bare metal or is the duplicolor grey primer good enough?

 

[Greg Corcoran]

There were multiple codes for another ford code for gen 2 Caribbean Teal, or Caribbean Turquoise or whatever that color was called. one was noticeably bluer than the other. Body shop said that wasn’t uncommon for manufacturer of a popular car to buy the paint from 2 or more suppliers, each will be slightly to significantly distinguishable. I suspect your guy meant Ford sourced the PA paint from 4 suppliers. Since it was so rare it was hard to keep up ;-)