Bit of a long shot but wondering if it is possible to get a driver quality paint match on this Copper Metallic car? Rear trunk lid and then some scrapes needed improvement.

Faded paint doesn’t help, and Metallic may be a kiss of death..

Anyone been there and succeeded at that?

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Start with some elbow grease. See my Project Nugget thread for a before/after pic with just claybar and hand rubbed polish.

Wow that is the most faded copper metallic car I have ever seen. - L99K?

I would say having one as well that ended up getting repainted is I would say you will not be matching this, and to consider a wrap or repaint, but you will want to sand down to the original primer unless you have to go to metal in areas of rust.
This is what my guy did. BTW we tried PPG and it was way off not even close.
Limco(lower quality paint supposedly) was a perfect match with no modification to how it came. we did 3 coats of base and 4 clear.

do you have a better area to use as a sample, like the trunk or frunk? how do those look? Look at Jim Hoyland's car its original I don't think ever repainted. here is what mine looks like after repaint

Thats a respray in my opinion. I dont think you'll be able to match the dullness of the rest of the car or specifically the metallics.


IMHO I would just spend a year or so and slowly get the body nice and straight and in primer in your garage, then take it to a mayco or similar and have them spray it. Mask it off yourself and remove the bumpers/trim/lights/ect.

These cars are no longer 2-3k cars... 3k in a cheap paintjob goes a long way towards a really good looking car and is a great investment now.

@Chris914n6 - I did see that come up for sale, good luck with it. In this case the rear deck lid is a different color entirely however, but that section you tested looked great.

@DRPHIL914 - AZ sun will do that. Thanks for the paint info, very helpful.

@Andyrew , yeah, think you and @DRPHIL914 are right. That should be the approach.

It's gonna take a respray, but in the meantime, paint the trunk and frunk panels in a flat or satin black for a contrasting look. Would go well with the wheels.

+1
I agree with this.
You'll never get anything to match.
The freshly sprayed parts will look too out of place.
Good luck with whatever you do!

I didn’t mention that when I bought my car it had been moved east to NC by a marine officer that had been stationed in 29stumps(29 Palms Ca for you civilians) and it had some type of Maco cheep respray on all the outside, but not in the trunks so we had a good idea of original unfaded color. But it did a job of protecting the outside for a time- it was probably badly faded from that sun as well, the interior seat vinyl was so dry it almost turned to powder when you touched it! That desert sun is harsh! Unfortunately my car started its life in Ohio so this is where the longs rust came from. Anyway if it’s a true copper metallic car , restore it the best you can they are rare. Jim’s May be the only original not repainted one I know of. There was one in Florida a couple years ago but it got snatched up and shipped back to Germany I believe.
Enjoy the restoration, keep us posted on what you end up doing.

Phil

Alex Buller and Barbara LaFargue in Oakley, CA had a nice '75 copper with white interior, it was pretty

Hi guys, thanks for the responses.

This car was Olympic Blue from the factory.

well you can leave it as it and drive it, or put a wrap on it for a while and it will look pretty nice, but if you are restoring i vote for returning to Olympic Blue, that's a great 914 color!

Thanks, I agree that Olympic blue was a very handsome color on these

there is a downside to the restoration or repainting- before i didn't worry much about where i parked or about driving it and getting stone chips or dirt or what ever and now i realize I have more of a show car and really need and plain daily driver kind of 914 as well. - i was afraid that's what would happen if i took it up a notch and did a nice repaint etc. - you have a couple cars right? i think keeping one clean but more of a daily driver quality is a good idea.

I saw that you were selling this car on eBay or Craigslist for $3500.

Don't waste your time, dump (sell) it.

Drive the car. If it gets scratched, fix it. If you wear out the paint, repaint it. I've never understood the "too nice to drive" comment. It's a car. Driving is what it's made for. And Porsche's deteriorate just as fast by sitting as they do driving.

Good morning, it’s listed at $5,999. It’s better than it looks and I am enjoying picking at it.

Well said, and except for the 911 and GTV they are all presentable but drivers.

If you are trying to get away for cheap, just take your car to a paint supplier in town and have them match your faded color with a 2-stage paint and just spray the 1st color coat. No clear on top and you should get a decent match to make it look better. That is what a 2-stage paint base coat looks like flat and people are digging that today for their cars. I do not know why. To me shiny is best. More shine more better

Bob B

Here's another option....if on a tight budget.

Wrap it!!! All colors and finishes available. Under $1,000 DONE



Oscar

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Clever idea Bob, had not thought of that.

Thanks

Oscar!

I looked into that for another car but it was a much as painting it. Is there a local place that’s woukd do it for $1,000?

I tried some wrapping myself on projects hear in my shop not for cars but I looked at the UTube directions from some pros. It is really not that hard to do. You just need to follow the tips from pros. What I did came out great. You can get film from EBay or from Amazon.

If a section does not come out well just pull it back and take another stab at it. It is much easier than painting.

I may think our 914 Porsche guys have more talent than they have but most of our brothers can do almost anything. Wrapping is not that hard. Just need some very simple tools


Bob B

That reminds me of a song from my yute:

Rap, rap, rap, they call him the rapper
, Rap, rap, rap, you know what he's after,
So he starts his rappin', 
Hoping something will happen
, He'll say he needs you, 
A companion, a girl he can talk to, 
He's made up his mind
, He needs someone to sock it to
Rap, rap, rap, they call him the rapper
, Rap, rap, rap, you know what he's after

https://www.amazon.com/stores/page/85BC002D..._web_9167379011

You will need the wide stuff so you can do the hood and trunk with one piece.

THis is not wide you need like 5ft x 10 or 20 ft

Bob BClick to view attachment

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aU8f8pi06Hs

Good one on how to do this. It make it so easy to do.

Some of the guys could help out. This is a great video They have contest on how fast they can do a car

Bob B

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgNa0R6kz4w


COOPER Hood


Bob B

And it looks great in person. That's how I'll be doing my Suby car.

Hey TD-

Let's have a wrap session at my place

Buy some.

Oscar

Sell me that targa top broski



-Ed

ah, I sugguested it on my first post......

Oscar came up with the idea and pictures of his car wrapped

Bob B

TD-

@TDskip

I have some spare wrap and a few of my mini hoods at home.

Come on over and practice wrapping.



Price is right....

Oscar

@ValcoOscar that would be fun, thanks for the offer. Let me figure out when I can grab some free time and I will ping you.

Hi - Bob suggested leaving the clear off but your post suggested spraying it.

I do appreciate all the ideas and responses. I have some welding to do on this one, will keep everyone posted.

Thanks!

My experience has been that the digital print wrap, like Oscars, is half the cost of the fancy 'paint' wrap material. And labor rates are cheaper at a sign shop than 'specialized' auto wrap places despite being the same basic application techniques.

Just saw this thread. Awesome that you have a 75 copper car! As you know it was a one-year color and is one of the rarest of all the 914 colors. I went through the VIN registry a while back and estimated that there were probably less than 20 left, at least in the US.

Not at all bragging - because it is a source of great pain - I may have more experience than anyone on the planet with Copper Metallic paint/wraps. I painted my 914 twice with L99K (first color coat didn't take, had to sand, reprime, respray, reclear). That's the one in the classifieds. I also own a - wait for it - copper wrapped 968. No joke.

Copper Metallic L99K is a really hard color to spray. The metallic likes to mottle and it's got to be sprayed under near-perfect conditions to avoid that. If I were to do it again I would go with super high grade basecoat - like Glasurit 90. The upside is that, for some reason, this color runs cheap. IIRC, it's only like 3-4 components so it's not hard for the supplier to mix.

3m makes a Liquid Copper wrap in their 1080 grade which is really really nice. It's more orange than L99K but it's probably close enough for a driver. I had it on my 968 3 years and it wore extremely well in the PNW winter.

Wrapping well is REALLY hard. If you have not done it before it is NOTHING like the youtube videos. The stuff sticks to everything; it tears; it color shifts when you try to heat it. OTOH, it's REALLY cheap compared with paint. You can get 75 feet of 3M 1080 wrap on Amazon for less than half what you would pay for just color & clear alone. So when you screw up, you just pull it off and start over. On that car, you could leave it on forever because you're not exactly worried about what's going to happen to the paint when you take it off.

If you go for it, I would vote to try wrapping. If you spray it, estimate about $800-$1K for materials if you go PPG on the low end (color and clear), much more if you go Glasurit etc. Of course Maaco is a different story... not a terrible idea really if its a driver and you do the prep yourself... It was over 200 hours of work prepping and painting my car.

Here's a mottled respray - this is 6 coats of color and 4 clear - mottling is purely due to technique not prep or coverage:

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Here's the corrected respray (did I mention this car is for sale? ):

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For purposes of comparison - this is my 968 (it's no longer that color and I did NOT do the wrap myself):

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Fellers.com has everything vinyl.

Your post and this experiment you had with your car make me appreciate just how good a job Mike did painting my car. It really is a beautiful color.
The OP said the car was resprayed copper but was originally blue. I think with all that it should either go back to blue or if he doesn’t want to spend that much wrap it, and do any color you want. The Copper mentally 3 M is super nice I’ve seen it on another car in person. And sometimes I wish I had because I am so uptight and worried about damaging the paint that I don’t enjoy the car the way I used to. So I would love to have a DD car again and I think I would wrap it, but I will vote for original on a rare color every time.
Good luck to OP and I look forward to seeing what you decide to do.

OMG, yes, anyone who can color spray metallics well is a certifiable wizard.

I will never, ever - as long as I live - never paint another car. $10K is an absolute bargain for a quality respray. Nothing I've ever done on my car was as difficult or as heartbreaking as painting. I have infinite respect for paint guys/gals.

As an aside - that copper wrap completely destroyed the original paint on my 968, despite what the seller/3M said. I would not recommend wrapping a car with the expectation that the paint will survive - perhaps on a brand new car off the lot it would be fine - but on a car with any prior bodywork the paint will be toast. For instance, my hood was re-sprayed before the PO wrapped it and it came out absolutely perfect; both fenders had older work, however, and the vinyl ripped off thigh-sized sheets of clear and color. (That was, as you might expect, a bad day.)

Certainly this wouldn’t be a big deal on a car where it would need a re-spray anyway, as it would be no big deal to sand the clear flush after the vinyl comes off for a new coat. Expect though that it’s totally going to lift the clear, color, maybe even take some Bondo with it wherever there are prior repairs. Learn from my errors.

Was is hot or cold when it was removed?

[quote name='Chris914n6' date='Jul 19 2019, 06:49 PM' post='2731354']
Was is hot or cold when it was removed?


Good question. It was about 75F. I did the standard rec and used a hairdryer to soften the adhesive as I pulled it off. Didn't matter - anywhere painted in the last couple years it came off great, anywhere that had original clear and especially in the repaired areas it trashed the clear and color together.

I tried sanding the clear and respraying with a 2k clear - it was a big mistake - even with 2000 grit the color coat just burned through almost instantly. I don’t have access to a booth anymore so it will go into my guy next week for a fender respray.

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Just get someone to match the rear deck lid, but with a matt finish... so it matches the rest of the car. Put the money in upgrades. There's something about a rough looking 914 that's mechanically impressive, and runs like a scalded ape! JMHO.

Bingo!

@mzalanka - thanks for jumping in and for the pictures. My car is a ‘74 Olympic Blue originally but I really like the Copper.