[DeTomaso] Campy wheel painting/paint code

[Asa Jay Laughton]

You do realize that they will have to dismount the tires in order to 
install a valve stem, right?  :)

Asa Jay

Asa Jay Laughton, MSgt, USAFR, Retired

& Shelley Marie
Spokane, WA

1973 Pantera L 5533
[ASASCAT]
    
******************************     
http://www.asajay.com
http://www.351c.info
  



MikeLDrew at aol.com wrote:
> 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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