The 'E' Type Forum

I am planning to repaint my car in the original Opalescent Golden Sand colour and am wondering if anyone has researched the colour


There are (al least) 3 paint manufacturers that supply the paint:
- Chromax (DuPont)
- RM
- Glasurit

I ordered samples of each colour and they look like this:



As you can see, there are obvious differences between them..

I have one part of the car that has original paint on my '63 e-type:

I kept it covered throughout the restoration process and it has been always covered by upholstery:


We tried to match the paint to this B pillar, and it seemed that Glasurit was very close. We made 6 different variations of Glasurit paint by playing with the colours:



As you can see the variations were subtle - the 6th one (not on the photo) was the best one, made with a different technique.

In order to compare this to an original sample I have sent all of these samples to a very competent Jaguar expert who has an original Opalescent Golden Sand swatch. By chance, he also had access to '65 Mark 10.

He and 2 of his friends have concluded independently that the closest match of the original Jaguar swatch AND the Mk10 was the ... Chromax (DuPont).


As you can see (even on these photos above), these are VERY different colours...


Has anyone investigated these colours before for a good match?

Could it be so that Jaguar switched suppliers and there was such a colour difference??

Tadek

Hi Tadek,

Try sending a PM to Alty Ian a member on here who restored an opalescant golden sand OTS a while ago. I know he did quite a bit of research on the colour and the correct colour for the interior.

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=5523

Simon

Tadek : there is in my opinion no easy, or for that matter no correct , answer to your question. I remember the colour well from the 1960s , and my recollection was that over the years it tended to get lighter. In 1962 or so when it first began to be popular, I remember it as a definite sandy colour very similar to that of the glasurit swatch you have shown . By the late 1960s, when gold colours had becomerather more common, in the UK at any rate , the Jaguars produced had a much lighter shade very similar to the Dupont sample . It really becomes a matter of preference : my own preference is for the later paler shade, but others prefer the original darker shade , which used to be known in the UK for furnishings etc as Old Gold .

I should perhaps add that one of the things which influence the final shade achieved is gun technique : the closer the gun is held to the surface, the more metallic the shade achieved

Many thanks for your help -

The darker colour has a definite orange/red tune in it which makes it darker.
The 'later' lighter shade seems more pale, so similar to what you describe Chis.

Most interesting - it would be great if we could get Alty Ian to comment.

Tadek

When I had my E-type restored (finished 2 yrs. ago), we could not find a good match for the Pale Primrose original color, particularly with DuPont and other more common finishes in the USA. We worked with a local paint supplier who made 4 or 5 small mixes to try to get a color match, but he could not get it right. Apparently, the modern yellow paint pigments are much paler/lighter than the original ICI colors. The supplier showed that no matter the mix, it would not get dark enough to match the original. Getting to the solution was frustrating. We found 2 loose-leaf binders of hundreds of Sikkens (a part of AkzoNobel) paint chips, and one of those that matched extremely closely to the original.

Suggest that maybe that is a solution to light color matches.