Plenum painting

I told one of the FC members advised and painted my plenum as recommended.
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Good job.

 

It's difficult to be certain from the picture, but it looks like you have the correct wrinkle 'red" color, which is not pure red but actually has a tiny bit of orange in it from the factory. The vast majority of then have been redone with VHT Wrinkle Red, which is great paint and the VHT pure red looks great (looks better than the factory color in my opinion), but is not actually correct.

 

One of the issues people have matching the original red is it turned orange over time. When new is was much more red than they look now 30+ years later.

 

It's a very poor photo, but the image in the lower left below is from a 1986 328 road test and shows a bit of orange in the color. It definitely does get faded and chalky a bit as it ages.


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Good powder coaters have a color/finish which matches the original. It shouldn't be too expensive and will be durable. Mine came out beautifully.

 

One of the suppliers made a product called Desert Red. It is a really good choice.

 

A bad scan of a bad photo on a computer terminal is a nonsensical way to display a color but whatever.

 

Agree, but it's the only period photo I have and I don't have the magazine to do a better scan. To my eye, you can still see the more orange tone versus the Rosso Corsa right next to it, but it's definitely a crap photo. If somebody has a period picture or better scan of a 328/Mondial 3.2 when it was new, that would be great.

 

The interesting things is that my 85 QV came from the factory w/o a wrinkle finish on the plenum. Here is a shot before I restored it. As you can see, the TB is wrinkled, the plenum is not.

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I think when I had my plenum and throttle body powdered coated, that would s the color they’ve used.

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That was not unusual. It was wrinkle paint, just badly done. The paint came smooth, lumpy and sometimes they did it correctly and it wrinkled.

 

Old period color photos are a really bad way to establish the correct color for anything.

 

Magazine colors tend to preserve pretty well -- an old scan of a magazine would be even better. The only to establish how much orange was in the original color from new, versus the orange being more of a byproduct of years of heat exposure changing the color, is to look at photos taken when the cars were new. Probably an NOS part that had never seen heat would work also. If you have better ideas, would love to hear them.

 

What about a car with let’s say less than 20k miles, will it still retain the true original color?

 

https://www.propowdersupply.com/product/ferrari-red-wrinkle-2/

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Well lets see, I have access to 2 undriven 328s and an undriven 512tr and a 288 with less than 1000 miles and a pair of F40s and I think 3 BBs. just for that era. I think the one BBi is just delivery miles I use them for color matches. Photographs are just not a good source for correct colors. In film photos the film makers intentionally altered colors to make them look more like what people expected to see. And it differs regionally. Not to mention if it is an actual photograph the colors change all on their own.

The silver wrinkle changes with time too.

 

Speaking of unwrinkled wrinkle paint here is a BBi with delivery miles. Look at the wrinkle paint on the intake manifold.
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Maybe just snap a picture of those minimal mile examples? Digital photos don't change. We've all taken many photos of cars, we know it's not perfect, but it isn't catastrophically/prohibitively imperfect either.

 

I tried to be a stickler about it and had Ned's Auto Body make me up a can of two part paint matched to my existing plenum. Problem was it wasn't wrinkle so the plan they gave me was to paint it first with VHT wrinkle black then spray the matched red over it. That didn't work, the two part paint pretty much melted the wrinkles out. Maybe I didn't let it cure enough but in the end I just went with the VHT red wrinkle and honestly I've been happy with it. As noted the color I was trying to match had probably changed over time and was no longer representative of the original anyway. I think we can easily get OCD about some of this stuff.

 

VHT Wrinkle red looks great. I actually got points off at an FCA concours with my original paint because the judge said the orange-ish color was wrong. I told him it was original -- it was a long time ago, so I can't remember if he buckled or kept the points off. I ended up redoing it with VHT Wrinkle Red and it looked great, but I still don't really know whether the color is right or wrong.

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Rifledriver do you know a good silver for the plenum on a 348 and Mondial t?

 

Krylon dull aluminum is a little too shiny and silvery when it goes on but dulls nicely after being on the engine a bit.

I did my 328 covers like a 360 because they had been damaged and could not restore an unpainted finish. I think next time they are off I get them powder coated in some silver gray kind of a color. And I'll do the belt covers to match.
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Ok thanks.

 

"Digital photos don't change."

It is true that the 1's and 0's that make up the digital data that is converted to a "picture" doesn't change but the same subject shot by an assortment of digital cameras will produce files with different color rendition. Also, unless specifically calibrated to the same standard, every computer/pad/phone screen will display the colors slightly (or very) differently.

Absent the availability of the specific brand/color/part number of paint used by the factory, it seem to me that the best way to pick the paint is probably the "Hmmm, this looks about right" method!