They say on the internet that silver is the fastest color, that is debatable, and it is, ad nauseum. They also say that when painting, silver is the hardest color to match. I can now speak from experience and I’m in full agreement to that statement.
When we bought the CTBNL it had a few ding and dangs, including a couple of big black parallel marks on the rear bumper along with some other random scrapes. Donna did not like them at all so she asked if I would try and paint over them.
I had some silver paint that I had used to fix the yellowing center caps of the OEM wheels that were on the Emperor for awhile. I took a clear plastic juice bottle and sprayed several coats of silver on it and compared it to the stock color. Hmmm, not bad. So I masked off os square of the bumper and gave it a go. Three coats of silver and 3 coats of clear coat and the results weren’t too bad, just a bit darker.
I thought not bad, but maybe if I ordered a custom can of touch-up paint from automotivetouchup.com I could get it even closer. Twenty five dollars and a week later I was ready to go again. Masked off a slightly larger square and sprayed the bumper area with 4 light coats of the new silver paint. Let it dry about 5 hours in the afternoon sun and then applied three coats of clear. After dinner I went out to pull off the masking tape and the colored square had a markedly green cast to it.
I’m now thinking that maybe I should have burned every one of my Atta Boy points on this one and told Donna to leave well enough alone. I’m fairly sure I could have put up with the scratches as they were naturally occurring, so only one of us would have been frowning when looking at the back of the car. Now there are two of us not happy with the rear view of the CTBNL and me worse than her, because this disaster is by my own hand. Don’t ask what the next step will be because neither one of us has the faintest idea…
This afternoon the odometer of the CTBNL marched past the 47,000 mile mark.