Paint Colours?

[Mahin]

The SO appeared surprised to note a "new" telegraph pole on the neighbours lawn, but only after she reversed her Bulldog into it.  She didn't explain how she had reversed onto the neighbour's lawn and I wasn't about to ask.
"New" means it has only been there a couple of years.
Damage done?
Not much fortunately, she hit the.... sorry, the telegraph pole hit the car on the bumper at its extremity and pushed it into the rear wing.
The bumper has straightened out quite nicely after I took it of and bent it back in the fork of a tree. So OK, it has a couple of small dimples still.
The reinforcing strap underneath bashed out with a ball peen hammer to the same profile as its opposite number.

But, fibre glass is fibreglass.
It flexed as much as it could and then it gave way in a couple of places.
The main damage was a split from the bottom of the wing upto the reflector. 3.5-4" well cut back and the delaminations removed from the back side. Galssed it up from the back and P48 from the front.
 
Now comes the problem.
I now have some areas of gelcoat affected by over sanding, some areas I will sand to remove some star cracks in the gel coat and the repair itself.
I will paint.
Some research suggests one of the top boat builders paints over the gelcoat so I didn't have to worry about messing about with gelcoats, but paint or gelcoat, I still have the colour match problem.

Halfwits (sorry, Halfords) don't have colour charts you can take out to make a match to your colour and the one car not listed is the Pilgrim Bulldog.
Once upon a time you couldn't move for colour swatches, they seem  to be available everywhere they sold paint now they are rarer than hens teeth. Halfords do have a nice set in back where they mix paints but they didn't seem to want to let me take it home with me.
 
So I have two approaches.
One is to find a colour chart I can take to the car so I can match the colour to the car and then match to whatever cans Halfwits have or I try and find out what colour it should be.

So, this is a Bulldog with the flat dash, no louvres in the engine sides, it has the spare wheel on the boot lid and the boot lid is bottom hinged.  What is that, a Mk IV or V? (Picture is, I hope, attached. This is the picture that advertised it on Ebay... so apologies if someone reading says "Hey! That's my house!" )
It is Red (No, not an imitation of that snooker bloke who said "for those of you watching in black and white, the red is behind the green"; I don't know if the picture will appear so if not, then I'm telling you all, it's red.)
I can't imagine Pilgrim had much different an approach than Henry Ford's "You can have any colour you like so long as its black". So I guess that red only came in one variety.
Does anyone know what it is?
Surely it isn't unique to Pilgrim?

[Mahin]

Yes well, picture not attached or inserted.
I'll try and post in the picture thread and call it "Paint colours?"

[istreatf]

Hi Jon - you have a Mk5 for a start, and you are right in thinking that the colour is not unique to Pilgrim. They use a gel coat pigment, and the colour charts that they used I assume came from the resin production company? I would suggest having a word with Den Tanner at Pilgrim Cars and he should be able to help you.
Painting glassfibre, or in your case, a glassfibre repair and gel coat join, will be fine so long as the primer and top coats have an elasticiser mixed in. This might be an opportunity to give your car a two tone finish! Might well look very nice - and unique. 

[Mahin]

Thanks.
Will do.

[jigsaw]

Hi Mahin you will be Lucky to Mach the colour with an off the sheelf tin from halfwits cellulose paint
will crack in time i sprayed my Haldane with 2 pack pant but you will need to yous an self etch primer
or maybe you could get away with an synthetic pant what you need is a car pant supplies thy
can make you an aerosol the right colour. But Ian's right why not bite the built and spray all the
wings maybe black i don't know where you are in the country I'm in south Essex if i can help
give me a shout  . Les.

[Robin]

Hi

I have red MK5 also - if you do find a colour match can you post it on the web site in case I (or any other red bulldogs) need it in the future!

Many thanks.

[Mahin]

Den Tanner has replied he doesn't have any records for 20 year old colours.
I have been reduced to creating a colour card using gradient fill to print strips of colour on photographic paper.
I am currently seeing if I can get a good match.
The next step is to go to halfwits and see which can matches closely enough or if they can make up a colour. I suspect this last is only where they make up cans for paint booths so I will probably be stuck with the spray cans nearest match and then hope to fade it in.
I'll let you know how I get on.
This is likely to be expensive in inks never mind paint!

[Mahin]

Robin, I'll do that.
By the way, it would be a nice feature if, given the lack of records at Pilgrim, there could be a seection where folks post whatever they can find out.
For example, I've seen a couple of queries which ask "I have just acquired a Bulldog but i don't know what mark it is."
It would be nice therefore if there could be one area of the site where there are some photos of the different marks.
Then under each mark to build up a knowledge base which could include engines and running gear options. Which fuel tanks were used and what can be used today.
Having acquired our car from ebay, it has very little useful history. There's things I'd like to know such as curing all the squeaks you get on dry days where bushings etc. are reaching their end of life, how do I identify the parts needed to renovate them.
I'd suspect there are few owners here who didn't build their car from the ground up and it could be useful information for them.
And somewhere for those of you who did to post information against the sad day you might sell your car.

[Robin]

Thanks for that.

By the way a lot of information ie build manuals etc are held by Ian Streatfield if needed.

Also the problem of putting photos onto the site needs addressing. I for one cant post any photos however big of small the file is!! So still a few glitches there.

[Mahin]

Jon PP Mahin:

I must live in the past.
I remember when spray paints had the actual paint colour on the cap.
I just realised that Halfwits rely on you picking the paint by vehicle make and model number.
After most of the afternoon with home made colour swatches matching can caps in Halfwits, we chose Volkswagen Flash Red. It looked right.
Alas, it sprayed an orangey red colour quite unlike the lid colour and glaringly different to the gelcoat colour.

Just tried another which is much closer but not a match for the lid colour or the gelcoat.

It appears that halfwits don't paint the lids with the paint in the tin, they attach a bit of coloured tape showing the "generic colour". At least, that's our guess.
So if you assemble a range of 10 or fifteen different reds from different car manufacturers, and expect 10-25 different shades of red, I'm pretty sure the Halfwits coloured tape will only show about three, max four different shades.

Next visit we will test this out.

Actually, I'm pretty sure what I need is coral red. It seems an old timey colour and is available as a gelcoat colour from Eastern Fibreglass. It looks right.

We'll let you know how good later on when the sun returns.

[istreatf]

My collection of unused airarsole cans bears testament to your findings Jon. It's the likes of us who gives Halfwits their profits. I have found that the only can top you can take as accurate is grey primer. I have so many very pretty spanners, long sockets, and gadgets littering my garage you wouldn't believe.

[Mahin]

We finally settled on Volvo Signal red, more by luck than anything Halfwits could do.
It seems marginally brighter or slightly more orange than the original but after a few days it appears to have cured a bit darker.
Thing is, this makes you take a good look at the geloat finish and the more we do the more we really like it.
Of course, its rainy and overcast and there is a fair element of wishful thinking.
I'm pretty sure now that coral red is not going to be the real colour. I have a couple of others lined up from wiki website colours. God knows how screen colours match real life colours nor how they will print, but on a comparative basis, I feel close. 300 cans later I might get a near match.
I begin to wonder if it is possible to get a match given that one is a gel coat and the other a spray paint and we have to factor in such things as light transmission through the fibreglass! A bit of household black on the inside of the wing might help. Then again it may make the gelcoat on the wings look like a bad spray job.

[simonl]

Sorry to dig up an old thread but did you finally work out what red was the best match ?

I've got a red Hawthorn which needs some bodywork TLC not from a telgraph pole though 

Many thanks 

[pccthebreed]

Can't help you with the paint colour Simon but never be sorry about digging up an old thread that's exactly what they are there for.