[DeTomaso] Campy wheel painting/paint code

David & Marilyn Bell davidabell at worldnet.att.net
Tue Apr 17 06:23:18 EDT 2007


Great detective work Mikey!

What are 'dead-nuts' though?  I'm not all that sure I'd want it on my
wheels.


Dave Bell

-----Original Message-----
From: detomaso-bounces at realbig.com [mailto:detomaso-bounces at realbig.com]On
Behalf Of MikeLDrew at aol.com
Sent: Tuesday, April 17, 2007 12:43 AM
To: DeTomaso at realbig.com
Subject: [DeTomaso] Campy wheel painting/paint code

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>
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