Paint Codes And Colors

Body's in prime ready to paint but having trouble with the paint color or code. The Marty report said medium mettalic copper, but the paint lady said that code is bay berry from the Marty report. The only one that had a copper-ish metallic base was chestnut. Of course not knowing any of this stuff does anyone know then what the original color was called or the code? I figured I also may just pick something that's modern that's mettalic and copperish and have fun with it. 

Thanks

Body's in prime ready to paint but having trouble with the paint color or code. The Marty report said medium mettalic copper, but the paint lady said that code is bay berry from the Marty report. The only one that had a copper-ish metallic base was chestnut. Of course not knowing any of this stuff does anyone know then what the original color was called or the code? I figured I also may just pick something that's modern that's mettalic and copperish and have fun with it. 

Thanks

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Medium copper metallic in 1973 is color code 5M. Here is a picture of it on my recently restored car and a copy of Ford color chart page with 5M. The paint chip on the chart is scanned and not an accurate representation of the color. Note the Color chart labels it as Medium Chestnut Metallic. I can only assume that Ford Marketing dept thought that Medium Copper Metallic was a better name for it.





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the color code on my Marty is 5m as well but the numbers after it came up with the bay berry. However if yours looks like that with the chestnut because the chart I saw as well didn't look correct, in getting a spray out tomorrow and hopefully it will look like the copper color. 

Body's in prime ready to paint but having trouble with the paint color or code. The Marty report said medium mettalic copper, but the paint lady said that code is bay berry from the Marty report. The only one that had a copper-ish metallic base was chestnut. Of course not knowing any of this stuff does anyone know then what the original color was called or the code? I figured I also may just pick something that's modern that's mettalic and copperish and have fun with it. 

Thanks

Click to expand...

Medium copper metallic in 1973 is color code 5M. Here is a picture of it on my recently restored car and a copy of Ford color chart page with 5M. The paint chip on the chart is canned and not an accurate representation of the color. Note the Color chart labels it as Medium Chestnut Metallic. I can only that Ford Marketing dept thought that Medium Copper Metallic was a better name for it.





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Hi spikhead,

Rich's reply is correct. Going back to the old color charts, you can identify the color and the color code  5m.

The trouble will be going to your local auto paint shop outlet, and getting them to provide you with a matching or corresponding paint formula to go with that old paint code, so they can mix up that particular color.

You may get lucky, but i doubt it. These old colors usually have to be made up and matched by color eye matching or spectros, because the original old paint formulas were thrown out by the paint companies many years ago.

You say that you're not too concerned about dead on accuracy with your end result color, so eye matching or spectro would be your best and easiest working option here to deliver a color to your liking i would think.

Cheers,

Greg.

I agree the old code are not much help so finding more modern paint to match is a bit of a challenge. I had a section if the body tail panel between the the tail lights that was still the original paint since it had been covered by the black trim panel. At the suggestion of my body guy was to cut that out and he had his paint supplier use a spectrometer? to match it up with a more modern paint formula. long story short, we ended up mixing equal parts of two the paint selections together to produce The closest match (see picture in my previous post). I can tell you the color I have does not show well under florescent lights, but in the light of day it is a pretty sight. We did clear coat, but left a good amount of orange peel effect in the finish. The black out is another story.