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Remember when we had to match paint by eye at the local swap meet? | Auto Body Repairers - Opinions Matter

Remember when we had to match paint by eye at the local swap meet?

I was at the big car show in Carlisle back in 2010, trying to find a fender for a '78 Trans Am. A guy there showed me his phone, which had a paint code scanner app. It read the code off a sample chip right there in the sun. I bought my own scanner the next week for about $400. Now I can't imagine mixing a batch without one. Does anyone still do the old eye-squint method for classic cars, or is it all digital now?

3 comments

3 Comments

violatorres4mo ago

Totally jumped on the digital train a few years back. I was trying to match a faded red on a 90s F150, and after three trips to the paint store for custom mixes that all looked wrong in the sun, I caved and got a cheap scanner. Now I use it for everything, even just fixing a chip on my daily. I still respect the old guys who can eyeball it, but man, for pearls and metallics that shift under clouds? No way. My buddy tried to do a silver flake repair on his Accord by eye and it looked like a weird patch in every photo. Zero regrets spending the cash.

evac895mo ago

Seriously? It's just paint matching. The old guys got it close enough for decades with a good eye and decent light. Dropping four hundred bucks on a gadget feels like solving a problem that wasn't really there. If the car's a driver, a slight shade difference adds character.

adam_lewis5mo ago

Yeah I kinda felt the same way until I did a rear quarter on my old Civic (you know, the one with the factory fade that's sunbaked into oblivion). I spent like three hours trying to get the mix right by eye, blending it into the door, and it still looked off in certain light. So I borrowed a buddy's cheap paint spectrometer, the $150 kind not the fancy $400 one, and it matched dead on first try. I mean, the old guys definitely had skills, but they also had decades of practice and didn't have to deal with modern metallic pearls that shift color under streetlights. For a daily driver that's already got some battle scars, sure, eyeballing it is fine. But if you're doing a single panel repair, having that tool saved me from a respray headache and a lot of wasted paint.