I’ve had my MX5 NB since August last year. When I purchased it, it already needed some TLC on the paintwork. I thought I could ignore it, but recently I wiped some bird excrement off of my car with a microfibre cloth and I came back the next day to a huge pattern of scratches from where I rubbed down the area. This leads me to believe someone has used T-Cut on the car before as this surely wouldn’t happen to a lacquer coating.
This incident was the final straw, and I’m hoping to get a respray done. I have access to a professional spray booth so I was wondering if there was anywhere I could find tins of the correct paint (Racing Green, 18J). I have looked all over and all I can find are spray cans which isn’t really what I want to use. I don’t want to get some cheap knockoff paint that won’t look any good as I love the colour too much. Also, I don’t necessarily want to spend £1000+ on a respray if I could get it done by people I already know.
Sorry if you have to ask these questions it is apparent you or your friends are not knowledgeable about paint spraying. Only use a friend to spray the car that knows what they are doing!
Otherwise you will need have the car resprayed again by a professional.
On a more helpful note!
Firms like Colourtone Ltd have shops that will mix and supply a range of paints to your car’s paint code, however paint ages and fades so new paint might not be the same exactly. They can usually scan the paint in some way on the car and match exactly if you want, sorry not my field of expertise!
You don’t say where you are but a quick search of the internet should find a local supplier who can help you.
Dave
Thank you for the help. I am based in West Sussex and Colourtone appears to be in Stockport unfortunately. Would you know what I could search to find something closer to my area? If not, it’s not a problem. That’s a good foundation to go off of regardless.
West Sussex, bit out of my area.
I just put a search in for ‘Car Paint Suppliers’ but my search returns places local to Cheshire, sure yours will be more helpful.
Know you don’t want rattle cans, but Halfords mix them, or to be more precise get them mixed for you if all else fails might be worth an enquiry there to see if they could get tins.
Good luck.
Dave
Quote:- "I wiped some bird excrement off of my car with a microfibre cloth and I came back the next day to a huge pattern of scratches from where I rubbed down the area.
This leads me to believe someone has used T-Cut on the car before as this surely wouldn’t happen to a lacquer coating."
Firstly, when it comes to paint “I know nothing” (Manuel accent, Faulty Towers) I get runs using garage floor paint,
but being a country boy at heart I know my bird poo.
Birds that eat seeds need to also eat grit which is used to grind the seeds in their gizzard. Obviously this passes through their digestive system
and is ejected whenever they see an opened top car it seems.
If your ever out on a country road notice the pigeons pecking away in the gutter, especially when the corn is on ear through to stubbles being ploughed in.
Always jet wash poo off the car, never rub it in.
My next door neighbour once saw me looking at my car bonnet and said “I’ll go get a bit of paper.”
I did have this as a thought also, but the scratch pattern is so wide I wasn’t too sure if that was the case, but it could well have been. Having my car residing under a tree causes bird poo to be a constant enemy! A friend pointed out to me earlier this could be rectified using polish which I did also read elsewhere, so I may try this before resorting to a respray after all!
But now I definitely know to not be as care free when it comes to that blasted stuff! It was just so stuck on there I didn’t have much choice. Should have given the car an entire wash as opposed to being overly aggressive on that single area. Could’ve softened it up before wiping it. What’s done is done. Just hoping these potential solutions prove effective!
Hi, I’m not an expert on paint but have reasonable knowledge as my father used to do car restorations including spraying, i have also done a small amount of spraying myself.
Are you looking to just touch/blow in some small areas of the car, or a full respray.
If you have access to a spray booth then you really should be getting it done using mixed paint, most spray booths mix on site nowadays, if not they order in mixed paint for use with a compressor and proper spray gun.
Rattle cans are very difficult to get a good finish as there is not sufficient control of the paint pressure and pattern. Canned paint normally goes on dry if slightly if to far away or runs if too close unless you have good experience.
Having said that Autopaint St Helens are a good supplier and it’s all mail order if thats the route you go.
As others have said make sure you understand what your doing before starting, its 80% preparation and 20% paint application to do a good job.
The finish colour / lacquer will highlight any imperfections not hide them.
Another thing to bear in mind is that over time, the original colour may change slightly, so that paint mixed to the original manufacturer’s colour code might not be a perfect match for the old surface.
With that in mind, my local paint shop, who do a lot of accident repairs, has a computerised scanner which looks at the actual paint on the car and colour matches that from a surprising “library” of pigments.
A few years ago my wife had her metallic pale blue Citroen colour matched and resprayed after it suffered minor damage to the tailgate and rear bumper. The spray shop owner told me he was very surprised to find that there was a considerable amount of gold flake in it, not silver flake as anyone would expect from looking at the colour of the car.
My other car, in “Old English White”, has trace amounts of blue & yellow in it.
Thanks for the advice! If I am to get the car resprayed, I will have people who know what they’re doing to do it, anyway. I don‘t want to necessarily touch it myself as I’ve never done it before (And I am concerned I’d make it look worse haha)
And yes, I know spray cans can be somewhat unreliable from what I’ve read online, hence why I wanted to get tins of paint, especially since they have the correct equipment at the booth
Yeah I know paints do change over time, being exposed the elements, the age and various other factors. But having different flake colour is something I did not expect actually. Very interesting though!