E30 Zone

I have two unpainted blanking plates for the front fogs to go on a 316i touring (lux, no mtech gubbins).

Does anyone know of a convenient rattle-can option to match the stock dark grey "air dam" / bumper cover? Halfrauds etc. Some sort of matt grey I'm guessing.

It's a 12/93 in diamant schwarz whatever that's called metallic black, if it matters.

try paints4u.com

Paints4U.co.uk definately, perfect match. I had my touch up pot delivered last week for my airbrush, small areas i prefer to use my airbrush rather than a rattle can but they do both, 100ml pots, 400ml rattle cans, 1 lt pots everything. Not too expensive either.

Is there a paint code for the bumper?

Paints4u just appears to give you an option to buy kits to match the body colour. Whereas I need the dark matt colour for the bumper/air dam.

it should be black ? not grey ?

It should be body coloured to match the rest of the car, i think you'll find your paint has faded and the lacquer has come away.

My Schwarz 2dr it totally body coloured apart from bottom part of the sills and very bottom of the rear valance (of course the side mouldings and parts of the bumpers are grey plastic).

you will need a 2K kit, 1 rattle can of basecoat and another rattle can of lacquer. Luckily mine is non metallic so its a black cellulose with lacquer pre-mixed for a straight gloss finish (once mixed 50/50 with tinners and sprayed onto the car).

Just need thinners now and i can finish off the blemish repairs and rust patch repairs on mine. still using rattle cans for larger areas and also got to spray the new boot lid (rattle can too) so everything matches, then once the car is back on the road, start saving for a re-spray, great yet more expense.

Saga wrote:Is there a paint code for the bumper?

Paints4u just appears to give you an option to buy kits to match the body colour. Whereas I need the dark matt colour for the bumper/air dam.

I'm a little confused, are you saying you need paint for the bumper or the air dam??? the bumpers will either be un-painted in which case they are self coloured plastic, should be black but is probably faded grey now, otherwise they will be colour coded to the body, the air vents next to the fog lamp blanks should be body coloured the same as the front valance and your lip spoiler should be black plastic.

although the front spoilers do look look body coloured on black cars.

You don't mix lacquer with Cellulose paint, it's a direct gloss.

Also the fact that you have two differnet tins does not make it a 2 pack paint, what you have is a solvent based base coat and a single pack lacquer in an aerosol, the term two pack refers to the fact that it has two constituents, a coloured/clear resin and an activator/hardener.

Paints4U sell it as a 2K paint kit. Again paints4U advised that the paint is a cellulose with a pre-mixed lacquer so its a straight gloss paint. I am only saying what i have been told.

Sorry, perhaps I am just confused. It's the covers that go into the air dam to replace the fogs. So between the bumper cover and the actual "lip"/splitter thing that clips onto the bottom of the dam. On mine it's a non-metallic very dark grey or black.

Tried to take a picture, but I don't think the camera phone shows the difference very clearly. Basically it's matt or semi gloss and not metallic. Was that once body coloured back in 1994 then?



You can sort of see the wing on the top of the photo is the glossy diamant thingy metallic, but the air dam is a lighter, non gloss shade. You can see the bumper and bumper trim in the middle.

Actually it's easier to see in this pic, sorry.

so what is it you need saga

Seems like saga wants to match the blanking plates with the bumper trims(inserts) and lip spoiler which are normally faded by now ,in most cases the blanking plates are colour coded to the body colour,diamant schwarz in your case .You could get the blanking plates matched to matt (faded) grey at a paint shop ,or satin black is an option .