[DeTomaso] Campy wheel painting/paint code

[MikeLDrew at aol.com]

Hi guys,

I have been in a bit of a quandry regarding my Campy wheels.  My car is a 
1972 Pre-L, and thus came equipped with third-style (out of about six) wheels.  I 
bought what was purported to be the very last set of 10-inch Campy wheels 
ever to be made, when I bought my car (and this was actually true, back in 
1989--until Gary Hall got Campy to make another production run in about 1993 or so). 
 

Anyway, my ten-inch wheels were never used on the road--they propped the car 
up as it rolled onto and off of the car hauler, and then they went into 
storage while I drove around (to the extent that I drove at all) on borrowed 7's and 
8's with crusty early 1980s-era rubber, which is what the car has been riding 
on since about 1996.

Now that my car is finally coming together, it was about time to mount my own 
wheels and tires.  The problem, of course, is that 10-inch wheels follow the 
general architecture of the later L-model wheels, not the Pre-L wheels.  As 
the certified Pantera Wheel Dork, I knew that if I was ever seen in public with 
mis-matched wheels after I had pointed out such trangressions to so many other 
people, I would probably be stoned to death.

To that end, I had procured a pair of L-model 8-inch wheels from Larry Stock 
many years ago.  These wheels had undergone the full treatment that he 
performed for a few years--they were crack-tested, machined for trueness, annealed, 
then powdercoated.  The problem, as it turned out when I pulled everything out 
of storage a couple of weeks ago with a mind towards putting everything on the 
car, was that they were the wrong damn color.

So, my choices were to run mis-matched wheels painted the same color (my 
Pre-L 8-inch wheels had been perfectly painted to match the rears about 15 year 
ago), or run matching wheels in obviously different colors.  Neither would do.

So I decided to have the L-model front wheels painted.  I suppose I could 
have gone the DIY route with rattle-can paint from Eastwood, but there's no 
guarantee it would have matched the rears any better than what I already had.  So 
that meant I had to have it color-matched and painted professionally.

Kirk Evans wisely suggested that I mount the tires on the wheels BEFORE 
having them painted, so that the new paint finish isn't damaged by the 
tire-mounting machine.  Bloody brilliant, that.  So last week I had the tires pulled off 
the Pre-L wheels and mounted on the L wheels, then trotted off to the body shop.

When casting a critical eye upon my 10-inch wheels during the color-matching 
process, I was saddened to discover that Luigi must have been at the Grappa 
pretty hard that day.  One of them was painted perfectly.  The other had 
significant areas where the paint had been applied thinly, if at all; there were a 
half-dozen spots where the green zinc chromate primer was showing through, and 
two spots where all the finish had flaked off, leaving bare magnesium exposed 
(which was corroding).

So, I sucked it up and left all four wheels to be painted together.  That was 
on Friday at about noon.  Today at about 2:00 p.m., they called to inform me 
that they were done already!

Simply put, they are BEAUTIFUL!  They were lying out in the sun when we went 
to pick them up, and the finish is spectacular.  They put a fair bit of clear 
on there, more than they had originally, and they just look terrific.  Since 
the front wheels had been a different color, they painted the entire wheel, but 
since they were color-matching the rears, they taped off most of the back 
side of the wheel and only shot the front, and the visible parts of the back 
side.  This then enabled me to pull the masking tape away and compare the new 
paint with the original paint.  Other than the fact that the new paint is a bit 
richer because of the extra clearcoat, the color is an exact, dead-nuts match.

Which is the point of this whole long story.

The Ford TSBs issue a paint code for the wheels, which is Ditzler DX 8555.  
That sounded simple enough to me, but it turns out that Ditzler was purchased 
by PPG (or rather, Ditzler purchased PPG but then decided to use the PPG name 
for the new, combined company), and none of the old Ditzler paint codes exist 
anymore.  Garth Rodericks had unearthed a recipe for creating DX 8555 by mixing 
three other Ditzler colors, but in calling around, I learned that these are 
laquer paints, which aren't available in California, or many other parts of the 
country either for that matter.  So I was limited to starting over with a 
modern PPG color.

And so, at long last, to the point of this story, which I said I had come to 
already, but in fact, hadn't.

The absolute, dead-nuts, spectacularly accurate modern color match for 
original factory Campy wheel paint is:

DBC 3822C, known as Bright Silver Poly

Not only is it the right shade of silver, but it also has the correct 
metallic content.  There were several variations on this color available that were, 
in fact, the same 'color', but had more or less sparkle added.

Apparently it is an OEM GM color.  SOBill, there's a datapoint for the 
Gearhead Database.

Oh, and the cost to have four wheels sanded, prepped (including masking the 
tires), primered, painted, then clearcoated came to $567.55.  That part wasn't 
quite so much fun.  But I'm certainly very happy with the result.

I am letting them dry and harden up for a few days; later this week I will 
take them to the tire shop and have metal valve stems installed and have the 
tires inflated, then balanced.  Then I can install my new wheel centers, put them 
on the car, and then have the wheels aligned.

I haven't seen my car sitting on its own wheels and tires since about 1996.  
I'm looking forward to it!

Mike<BR><BR><BR>**************************************<BR> See what's free at 
http://www.aol.com.</HTML>