W210 - recommendations where to buy metallic paint?

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mj2k

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2000 Subaru Legacy GT (remapped to 300bhp)
Since the wings on my e320 are well and truly swiss cheese, I picked up a pair of 'platinum plus' wings from carparts4less (a Eurocarparts subsidiary) for £115 delivered, so I figure now's a good time to have a practice at paint spraying :)

I've got a nice 14cfm compressor etc so no need to bother with spray cans, but I'd like to make sure the paint matches as closely as possible the original Metallic Azurite.

Anyone had any experience with paint matching the wonderful Merc water-based metallics at home? Or does everyone use acrylic spraycans / not-safe-for-home 2 pack paints?

I'd like to minimize the chances of paints from different manufacturers reacting, so is there a company somewhere which does the whole range of paints (etch / epoxy primer, filling primer, water-based metallic, lacquer) at a reasonable price?
 
Problem with matching paint on older cars is fading and batch conformity. Its well known in the trade that factory finishes used to vary slightly according the time window the car went through production paint shop. This means there might be up to 10 factory variants of AZURITE depending on its age. Glasurit used to be OEM suppliers to MERC in the past. If you go to one of their stockists they will have colour swatches to match the existing paint on your car and will mix the appropriate shade for you. They will also advise you on suitable preparation products that will be compatible. Spray painting is a difficult art to get satisfactory results quickly. Even the pros get it wrong sometimes. In addition to the high quality equipment required a suitable environment freedom from dust and at a suitable temperature also effect the final finish. It depends on the quality of finish you want but as a rough rule of thumb as a novice if the project can't be dealt with
by a couple of custom spray cans its probably best left a pro--- and may well turn out cheaper in the long run.
Glasurit | Home
 
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All car manufacturers, not just Mercedes have used water based paints since the early 1990s.

With all due respect my advice would be to get a professional to do the job; a mobile car body (SMART) repairer should be able to spray both wings for about £300 all in and it will be done properly using the right equipment and following the correct process.
 
Must admit I haven't had very good experiences with garages doing sprayjobs in the past - they seem to fall into two categories:

1) Cheap job. Lacquer peels after a few months, or if the lacquer hasn't been applied thick enough (if at all), the paint 'dies' and goes dull, followed by rust patches forming under the paint. You're ultimately left wondering why you bothered.

2) Hideously expensive job. This is a professional job, but the paint match isn't quite right, so it ends up as a whole body respray. Weeks later you're presented with a bill so large you almost fall off your chair - last one I had done was almost £3000 ex vat! Still, at least it looks good for more than a few months...

Which leaves a third option - DIY.

The wings are cheap and I've got all the spray equipment bar the air-fed mask (which I may not need) so I figure it's worth having a try...

I've done a decent spraycan job with solid colours in the past on an old Lancia (full respray) and done some decent metallic repairs using custom mixed cans (rather than Halfords specials) in the past. But doing a whole metallic panel with a spraycan I normally end up with it looking quite good from one direction, but pretty poor from another, so figured it was time to try out a proper gravity-fed spraygun.

And what's the worst which can happen? If it all goes horribly wrong I can always strip the wings and get them done professionally, or just bin them and get some genuine MB wings sprayed / fitted by a specialist.
 
Must admit I haven't had very good experiences with garages doing sprayjobs in the past - they seem to fall into two categories:

1) Cheap job. Lacquer peels after a few months, or if the lacquer hasn't been applied thick enough (if at all), the paint 'dies' and goes dull, followed by rust patches forming under the paint. You're ultimately left wondering why you bothered.

2) Hideously expensive job. This is a professional job, but the paint match isn't quite right, so it ends up as a whole body respray. Weeks later you're presented with a bill so large you almost fall off your chair - last one I had done was almost £3000 ex vat! Still, at least it looks good for more than a few months...

Which leaves a third option - DIY.

The wings are cheap and I've got all the spray equipment bar the air-fed mask (which I may not need) so I figure it's worth having a try...

I've done a decent spraycan job with solid colours in the past on an old Lancia (full respray) and done some decent metallic repairs using custom mixed cans (rather than Halfords specials) in the past. But doing a whole metallic panel with a spraycan I normally end up with it looking quite good from one direction, but pretty poor from another, so figured it was time to try out a proper gravity-fed spraygun.

And what's the worst which can happen? If it all goes horribly wrong I can always strip the wings and get them done professionally, or just bin them and get some genuine MB wings sprayed / fitted by a specialist.

Fair enough. As long as you are going in with your eyes open. :thumb: With darker colour-dense metallics its usually easier than lighter metallics which are often a nightmare even for the pros. :eek:
 
Problem with matching paint on older cars is fading and batch conformity. Its well known in the trade that factory finishes used to vary slightly according the time window the car went through production paint shop. This means there might be up to 10 factory variants of AZURITE depending on its age. Glasurit used to be OEM suppliers to MERC in the past. If you go to one of their stockists they will have colour swatches to match the existing paint on your car and will mix the appropriate shade for you. They will also advise you on suitable preparation products that will be compatible. Spray painting is a difficult art to get satisfactory results quickly. Even the pros get it wrong sometimes. In addition to the high quality equipment required a suitable environment freedom from dust and at a suitable temperature also effect the final finish. It depends on the quality of finish you want but as a rough rule of thumb as a novice if the project can't be dealt with
by a couple of custom spray cans its probably best left a pro--- and may well turn out cheaper in the long run.
Glasurit | Home

Interesting point, guess I'm not bothered about a 100% paint match since I've never seen a professional single-panel respray with metallics / pearlescents which looks 100% right from every angle anyway. And interestingly even the Halfords Azurite Met can which I've been using to prevent the rust spreading further under the paintwork seems to be quite a good match, which is encouraging.

Since it's a W210 and not even an AMG it's not worth spending mega bucks on it yet, esp as it'll eventually need a full bare metal respray when the factory paint finally gives up the ghost, but I'll certainly hunt down a Glasurit supplier - sounds like they may have what I need :)
 
Fair enough. As long as you are going in with your eyes open. :thumb: With darker colour-dense metallics its usually easier than lighter metallics which are often a nightmare even for the pros. :eek:

Very true, that's how my met silver Alfa GTA ended up with a 3 grand full respray :eek:
 
Halfords Azurite blue is a fairly good match.
This is the base coat, buy a can from them.
Then buy 1 x 400 Ml can of 2K (to be activated) clear lacquer, via ebay etc.
This, of course, is highly skill-dependent in the application. But the chemistry / materials ... no, internet conflation / nonsense.

In short, if you can spray OK, and can wait a week, then flat / polish ... you can do a fitting and acceptable job
 
The actual painting job isn't that hard

I have sprayed a computer case etc just with normal cans and got a near perfect job

The only issue is that you need somewhere suitable to carry out the job, dust free and suitably ventilated

I did it in my garden and the only issue was that when left to dry etc insects or other debris would fall onto it... got round this by drying it under a box... hence perfect results.. if you have a reasonably clean garage you could probably do it with the door open for ventilation? But get a mask...

P.S lots of thin coats works better IMO that risking it running...
 
The actual painting job isn't that hard

I have sprayed a computer case etc just with normal cans and got a near perfect job

The only issue is that you need somewhere suitable to carry out the job, dust free and suitably ventilated

I did it in my garden and the only issue was that when left to dry etc insects or other debris would fall onto it... got round this by drying it under a box... hence perfect results.. if you have a reasonably clean garage you could probably do it with the door open for ventilation? But get a mask...

P.S lots of thin coats works better IMO that risking it running...

Yep, you're dead right there - I used a similar technique to respray my 306 cabriolet's badly lacquer-peeled bumper back in 2015 and it looked great for a couple of years.

But over this winter the primer reacted with the basecoat for some reason, and the paintwork severely microblistered, taking the lacquer, primer and basecoat off completely in a few places. I'd used paints from three different suppliers so I reckon the basecoat and primer must have been incompatible and eventually reacted with each other once the lacquer was damaged by stonechips.
 
I ended up using a standard cellulose primer, waterbased basecoat and a 1-pack lacquer, and the results were pretty good:

AGWUtr.jpg


They would have been even better if I hadn't chosen to do the lacquer on Sun when it was v windy; despite all my precautions I still got loads of carp blown into the paint.
 
I ended up using a standard cellulose primer, waterbased basecoat and a 1-pack lacquer, and the results were pretty good:

AGWUtr.jpg


They would have been even better if I hadn't chosen to do the lacquer on Sun when it was v windy; despite all my precautions I still got loads of carp blown into the paint.

I didn't even notice I thought it was factory

If you look closely there is a slight difference between wing and door

But frankly who cares, you only notice if you look for it
 
I'm very pleased with the quality of those Eurocarparts 'premium' wings - they didn't need any fettling at all to fit :)

And the paint match is actually better from most angles than it looks in the picture - you have to look really carefully to notce the colour difference. But up close it doesn't look so great, so I'm going to have to do some careful polishing to get rid of the bits of dust in the final coat of lacquer once it's fully cured.

So overall I'm v pleased with it (except the dust) - it looks a lot better than many 'professionally' sprayed W210 front wings I've seen, though I guess the real proof's going to come after it's spent a couple of weeks in the sun, it might end up looking like crazy paving.
 

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