E30 Zone

best place to order paint for touch ups on my red sport any suggestions ?

Paints4u.com best place , the touch up tins pre mixed with laquer are great

i second my esteemed colleague

cheers bud

Hope you dont mind me taking over, save me having to start new thread.

IS there anywhere in the west midlands where I can get a paint matching service done, so that the paint matches the vehicle as it is at present I am planning on getting my arches rust repaired but if i get brand new paint it may not match the 23 year old paint on the 316

most body shops should have swatches of different paint colour variants within a particular paint code to get the closest match.

If your spraying it yourself then you'll find it difficult. Paint distributors (google) may have a spectrometer to analyize the colour on the car and suggest the closest match (not nesessarily a bmw colour)

A decent spray shop is your best bet, they can spray test swatches and offer these to the car tweeking the colour to get best match. Look at £150/panel.

it depends on what you mean by "touch-ups" Steve, stonechips (in which case, go to the BMW dealers for a correct colour touch-up stick) or larger areas?

If you do want to try a spray repair yourself the first thing you must do to get a colour match is bring the panel to the correct colour. Compound and buff being the best way but you can use cloth and effort. Most colours are now sold in the basecoat form and need laquer applied on top, however the same system applies even if using solid colour. After the repair, primer etc have been completed you apply the colour base or solid on the repaired area only. flick the gun into the good part of the panel but keeping away from the edges ( were the panel meets the door etc). When you are confident that you have a true colour over the primer area cover the entire masked area with laquer including the new paint area. On the e30 arch you will probably get away with stopping at the first body line by roll taping the edge or using masking foam. I have sprayed in a body shop for many years and this is the only way to get a good colour match. Edge to edge painting almost never works. I gave up trying long ago. One last point. You must also freshen up the adjacent panels so that they have no scum also.
Davy