Paint colour matching woes.. anyone here worked in the paint industry or know what might be going wrong?

[charlysays]

Will try to keep a long story short.

I have an old car.
I took it to a motor factor and they used a spectrometer on a good condition polished section of paint.
It came back with a Renault fleet colour 04318.
The car is painted with direct gloss, solid white. Definitely no clear coat.

I had an aerosol off said factor so I could stone chip inside the wheel arches and colour the stone chip correctly.

Moving on some years and some bits of the car could do with some remedial work but I don't think it's bad enough for a full strip back respray.

So I emailed HMG and it turns out they have 04318 white on file. They send me the formulation and I had a litre of nisocoat 2 mixed up by my local HMG paint supplier.

Its not a good match. I made spray out cards both sprayed, brushed and without hardener to see if I could hone in on the issue and came to the conclusion it's the pigments. It's worse than both the aerosols I've had for that colour code and worse than the touch up pot I have for the same code.

I went back to the shop which is 50 miles away with the bonnet off the car.
They tried to get me to buy basecoat instead and were mumbling about nisocoat being an industrial coating.
It's still a 2k acrylic and can be mixed to automotive, fleet, ral and bs colours so I didn't accept their argument.

They kinda ignored my concerns about the first litre of paint and persuaded me to buy another litre of paint, this time we matched it by eye using an HMG colour box paint chip set. To my eyes it looked a perfect match.
I just opened the tin and it's basically a mint green colour!

Heres a pic of the paint spread onto a bit of white card. On the left is the alleged 04318 paint, on the right is the shade we picked which looked perfect.

Im going to push for refund/ replacement of both tins but sadly leaning towards a refund as there seems to be something profoundly wrong with their paint mixing machine.

Going back there tomorrow with the bonnet for one last attempt at sorting it out and actually getting some usable paint.

Anyone got ideas what on earth is going wrong?

 

[Misterg]

this time we matched it by eye using an HMG colour box paint chip set. To my eyes it looked a perfect match.

I presume you matched it outdoors, in daylight, yes?

 

[charlysays]

I presume you matched it outdoors, in daylight, yes?

Not quite, in a large unit with the roller door up a few feet from the door. It's hard to look at in direct sunlight!
Even so, there absolutely no way the colour i picked was a mint green hue of white

 

[Misterg]

Not quite, in a large unit with the roller door up a few feet from the door. It's hard to look at in direct sunlight!
Even so, there absolutely no way the colour i picked was a mint green hue of white

Sounds like they messed up the mixing then... Should be easy to prove if you compare the paint / your test pieces to their chip.

 

[Slowcoach]

I take it that it has had a colour change at some time if no colour code available.
Is there only one shade of the 04318.
Why do you have to go to HMG for the formula and then take that to paint suppliers, the suppliers should have all the info to mix the paint.
In the pic it doesn’t look too bad, maybe they can tint it a bit.
Is the 04318 on the card the aerosol or what was mixed.
Spray some of the aerosol on a card and compare if you have any.

 

[charlysays]

I take it that it has had a colour change at some time if no colour code available.
Is there only one shade of the 04318.
Why do you have to go to HMG for the formula and then take that to paint suppliers, the suppliers should have all the info to mix the paint.
In the pic it doesn’t look too bad, maybe they can tint it a bit.
Is the 04318 on the card the aerosol or what was mixed.
Spray some of the aerosol on a card and compare if you have any.

The car used to be royal blue and it's had a respray in Renault 04318 white direct gloss.
I don't know if there are any other shades of 04318. HMG didn't mention any so I assume there aren't.
I'm not sure why I went to hmg tbh, I just figured if they make the actual paint then their formulation would be best.
I've had two aerosols made by different companies and one touch up pot made by a third outfit all to 04318 and they were all a better match than the 2k I got mixed up.

although it doesn't look too bad, it is noticeably more creamy/ yellow than the car and definitely more cream coloured than any of the multiple previous paints I had with the 04318 code so it seems likely they've messed up both tins of white paint, it's just the one they've somehow managed to make mint green looks by far the worst!

I might drop by another paint shop tomorrow and see if they might put their spectrometer on it, get a second opinion basically.

 

[richie00boy]

Most colours used on cars and commercial vehicles have several shades or variants, some like Ford Diamond White have loads of them, where others might only have a couple. HMG probably have a certain shade of Renault Fleet 04318 in the Nisocoat system and the place that used the spectrometer probably identified it as a different shade of Renault Fleet 04318, but maybe it's really Bedford White 1234 (as a made up example). Spectrometers only pick the closest match to whatever is in their system, you need a real fancy expensive spectrometer to get colour values.

Nisocoat will use different tinters to other paint systems, they all have their own tinters and the formulation system will only have certain colours and shades, that's why the paint shop is complaining about it being an industrial colour. Probably have to get HMG themselves to scan and develop this particular shade for you, unless there is an old wizard at the paint shop who knows how to tweak colours.

Colour chips can vary from the actual paint and depend on lighting conditions, that's probably why the second tin doesn't match.

 

[Kram]

You dont know that its 04318, the first shop told you that but may have adjusted the mix or told you the closest that the computer found.

If you want a good match, you need to ask for a good match, its a skilled job. Telling them some non original paint code and expecting it to be the same is never going to be good.

It can also depend what primer you use and they like to sell a complete system.

Either buy more and do a conplete respray, or accept it wont be a match. Use the mint for under wheel arches etc..

No chance of a refund in my opinion.

 

[Slowcoach]

some places put a dab of mixed paint on the tin. Is there a label saying what is in the mint green tin so you can compare it to the chit you chose.
I doubt HMG would spend a lot time matching shades. What market is nisocoat aimed at, refinish work, industrial, marine?
All the paint manufacturers come up with different solutions and vary quantity of shades, some will have 3 and others will have 4 or 5 for the same colour,
Maybe they can tint the 04318 but difficult and time consuming.

 

[colnerov]

Different ways of mixing for colours are used of old and modern, one by weight the other by percentage (I can't remember which way it changed). A good paint mixer (The man not the machine should be able to do it on the fly) but finding one is the trouble. Doing a side or the whole car might be the answer to matching.

 

[charlysays]

You dont know that its 04318, the first shop told you that but may have adjusted the mix or told you the closest that the computer found.

If you want a good match, you need to ask for a good match, its a skilled job. Telling them some non original paint code and expecting it to be the same is never going to be good.

It can also depend what primer you use and they like to sell a complete system.

Either buy more and do a conplete respray, or accept it wont be a match. Use the mint for under wheel arches etc..

No chance of a refund in my opinion.

I don't know it's 04318 but I DO know that two 04318 aerosols and a 04318 touch up pot from 3 different places were a much better match, almost perfect in one case.
So is it not reasonable to conclude that the place who got the worst match (which was the first litre tin I bought) may have got it wrong?
I'll admit a refund on that tin is questionable as it isn't a mile out and I did supply the formula to them (which I got from hmg).

The second tin... Here's how it went.
Paint person, "here are some paint chips. Here's one which is an excellent match. The paint will be exactly as it is on this chip because these formulations are accurate to 3 decimal places".
Produces paint which turns out to be mint green.
How is that not worthy of a refund?!

 

[500e]

We had a painter who would tint he was Ace at it.
You did give it a good stir ??
The green is just wrong either base colour's wrong or not mixed, or wrong wight % of tint color.
They had a chip that matched why give you a tin so far out.
We had a Shaker to mix in tin

 

[Kram]

Tbh I think you have gone about it the wrong way, you'll not get a refund but if you go back, they will likely be able to adjust the pigments.

I assume you stired the tin well and not just pour it straight into gun? Any mixed paint I've bought has never been well mixed, theres usually a layer or two floating on top! So that may expain it.

 

[Misterg]

they will likely be able to adjust the pigments.

On a white?? No chance. It's miles off.

The paint they supplied should match the chip *under the same lighting conditions that it was chosen* - if there was any artificial light, this may be significant (Low energy / LED lighting can play some cruel tricks).

Assuming the paint was thoroughly mixed, etc. and the colour looks the same in the shop, I think the OP is due a replacement.